The first step to supporting adult and survivors of domestic abuse is to recognise the signs and ask about it. You may notice physical signs like unexplained bruises or injuries, but often domestic abuse doesn’t leave visible scars or wounds. Learning more about coercive control and the range of tactics people causing harm use to enforce control can help you to notice and be worried about what someone is saying about their relationships with their partner or family. You may notice changes in their routines, behaviour, they may not seem like themselves or be struggling to cope. The signs of domestic abuse are similar to signs of other types of abuse, trauma and neglect so it is helpful to ask curious questions and explore things further.
When a victim/survivor is considering talking about domestic abuse, accessing support or leaving this can increase the risk of harm to both adult and child survivors. Safe enquiry is one which does not alert the person causing harm to our enquiry and we are able to put in place safety measure to address the ‘consequences’ to this for adult and child survivors from the person causing harm.
Safety
• Are they alone and in a private space? This is particularly the case when supporting someone over the phone.
• Ask closed questions (yes/no) to establish this.
○ Ask are you alone?
○ Is it safe to ask you some questions about your relationship with…?
○ Is it OK for us to continue this call right now? (for telephone conversations)
• If someone other than the victim/survivor answers the phone, ask to speak to them and then establish that it is safe to proceed again using the above questions.
• If not suggest another time to call back using a closed question e.g. I need to call back another time is tomorrow morning at 10am OK?
• If it is safe to talk, establish a code word or phrase which they can say which lets you know it is no longer safe to talk and end the call e.g. ‘no I’m not interested thank you’. If they use this end the call and call back later or used your established safe method of contact.
• Establish a safe method of contact to continue the conversation if it ends unexpectedly or run out of time. This is important both for you to follow up and for referral to other support which we will talk about in the ‘Refer’ section of this toolkit. This could be having a face to face meeting in a private space. Consider what other practitioners/services might be able to support with this e.g. school, GP, pharmacy.
• If the victim/survivor requires an interpreter – use one. Never use the person causing harm or children as an interpreter. Avoid using other family or community members as interpreters as they may also be abusing the survivor or complicit in the abuse. This reduces the risk of information getting back to the person causing harm and is important for accurate interpreting and creating the safest environment for the victim/survivor to be able to disclose.