Officials highlight gaps in understanding of domestic abuse data in Wales

Twm Owen, Local Democracy Reporter

There is a gap in understanding data around domestic violence in local areas and across Wales according to those attempting to tackle the issue. 

The Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence Act was passed by the Welsh Government in 2015 to put in place a framework to strengthen prevention and support for those affected. 

It requires councils, the police, NHS, probation and the fire service to all work together on a Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence as part of a board operating across Gwent. 

But Sharran Lloyd, the partnerships manager for Monmouthshire County Council, and Amy Thomas the regional advisor on domestic violence in Gwent, said they struggle to understand all the statistical information that is available from across the various public services. 

Safeguarding

Ms Lloyd told members of Monmouthshire council’s public services committee it can look at information from across council departments, from housing to safeguarding and youth offending, but said most of the information currently used is from the police. 

“We can pull out issues from a lot of services and see are we getting upstream of that? But I hate to keep coming back to it, but it’s the data, the fact we will only have recorded crime data is unfortunately too late.” 

The pair told the committee the Gwent board hasn’t currently got a dedicated staff member to analyse data, and instead relies on support from the police and the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board’s public health team. 

Ms Thomas said the board has recognised it needs to develop a framework, such as a data dashboard, of the information it requires and it needs a dedicated resource to analyse it and she said that was common across all the domestic violence boards in Wales. 

Labour councillor Dale Rook asked if the council is confident in its capacity to address domestic violence now it now longer has a dedicated domestic abuse coordinator. 

The loss of post was acknowledged but Ms Thomas said regulations around domestic violence are now “embedded” within the council and said: “It has become business as usual for everybody rather than having one person everybody went to.” 

Advisors

Ms Thomas is part of the four member Gwent team that provides support the area’s five councils on the policy and training, including basic “ask and act” domestic violence training for all local authority staff. 

The intention of establishing the board was to ensure access to support and prevention services across all of Gwent and councillors were told Monmouthshire has a dedicated independent violence advisor, supported as one of 14 working across the region. 

There is also an advisor based at the Grange Hospital in Cwmbran and specialist advice on supporting older victims and the impact of rurality. 

Over the past year the independent domestic violence advisor service had assisted more than 1,500 high risk victims across Gwent, with around 10 per of those from Monmouthshire. 

Ms Thomas also said although the “policy and language” is based on violence against women and girls, due to them being most at risk, she said the service is always clear its support is available to all victims including men.