Safeguarding Victims of Domestic Abuse during Covid-19: Challenges and Opportunities

The overall aim of the study is to inform the development of national safeguarding policies and practices regarding domestic abuse (DA) in pandemics and other emergency situations. The World Health Organisation (WHO, 2020) warns of an increased risk of DA in emergencies, including epidemics. Domestic homicides in England have risen 50% since lockdown, with substantial increases in calls to national domestic abuse (DA) hotlines (The Guardian, 2020a). Safeguarding refers to protecting the rights of adults and children to live safely and taking necessary steps to protect them from abuse having (reasonable) regard to the wishes of the individual/s concerned alongside a positive duty to promote well-being and positive outcomes. Safeguarding is embedded in statutory guidance (DoE, 2019; DoHSC, 2020) and operationalised via multi-agency working. Safeguarding practices of agencies that aim to identify, respond and support families experiencing DA has changed during Covid-19, but little is known about the impact of such changes (cf. SafeLives, 2020). The study's objectives are to: • Investigate how Covid-19 impacts domestic abuse safeguarding interventions, roles and processes; • Identify examples of good practice, challenges, multi-agency relationships, new work practices and innovation during lockdown and as lockdown unfolds; • Analyse the effect of Covid-19 on the identification of DA victims and the support offered to them by different safeguarding agencies; • Document survivor perspectives including Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) survivors living with DA during the pandemic and their experiences of help-seeking; • Contribute to the development of national safeguarding policy and guidance during pandemics and beyond.