About this page. This page summarises a Domestic Homicide Review published in the Home Office DHR Library. The full report is available at the source link below. Victim and perpetrator names are not included in extracted summaries on this page.

Source · Domestic Homicide Review

Shropshire review

CSP: Shropshire Published: May 2023 Year of death: 2014 Extracted: 17 recs

Statutory domestic homicide review under section 9 of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004. Source: Home Office DHR Library.

View full report (PDF) ↗ Source: Home Office DHR Library

Summary

The review identified inconsistent risk assessment and management, poor inter-agency information sharing, and a failure to adequately safeguard the victim and her child from escalating domestic abuse, compounded by the victim's disengagement and alcohol use.

Extracted recommendations

17 recommendations pulled from the report

#	Recommendation	Addressed to
1	Shropshire Community Safety Partnership to review current local arrangements for raising awareness of the range and availability of domestic abuse support services.	Shropshire Community Safety Partnership
10	West Mercia Police to review current policy and working practice to ensure that in the event of discontinuance of a prosecution and/or the withdrawal of support for an investigation by a victim, this is consistently drawn to the attention of the harm assessment unit for them to consider the need to review the level of risk.	West Mercia Police
11	West Mercia Police to review the feasibility of managing cases where a restraining or other protection order exist by way of a risk management plan.	West Mercia Police
12	West Mercia Police to establish a process whereby protection orders are routinely shared with the Probation Service for managed offenders.	West Mercia Police \| Probation Service
13	West Mercia Police witness care unit need to consider, in conjunction with CPS, the most effective practice to engage with victims who are protected by court orders granted as part of criminal proceedings to ensure the victim understand the terms of the order and what would constitute a breach.	West Mercia Police \| Crown Prosecution Service
14	Shropshire Council Children’s Services to ensure that social workers and managers do not rely on one source of information (alone), in particular self-reporting, and must ensure that there is regular and ongoing dialogue with all key professionals and agencies involved with a family.	Shropshire Council Children’s Services
15	Shropshire Council Children’s Services should ensure that all assessments with non-abusing parents are conducted in a therapeutic and supportive manner when considering the parents ability to protect a child.	Shropshire Council Children’s Services
16	Shropshire Council Children’s services to ensure that in every case the perpetrator is seen and an assessment in respect of the risk posed by the perpetrator to the child should be completed.	Shropshire Council Children’s Services
17	Shropshire Council Children’s Services must ensure that their audit activity ensures that there is sufficient scrutiny of case decisions, case recording and management oversight.	Shropshire Council Children’s Services
2	SCSP to ensure that this effective quality assurance process is introduced for the patient alert process for the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.	Shropshire Community Safety Partnership
3	SCSP to undertake an audit of multi-agency domestic abuse training.	Shropshire Community Safety Partnership
4	West Mercia Police to introduce version control for policy development and to secure outdated policies within the organisational corporate memory to assist in informing any future review processes.	West Mercia Police
5	West Mercia Police in the absence of a Risk Management Plan to record all local policing support visits on the ‘CO1’ crime or incident record.	West Mercia Police
6	West Mercia Police need to consider risk assessment levels when impacted by dynamic factors i.e. residence and prohibition of access to victims. Consideration should be given to the ongoing management of cases and utilising a risk management plan where appropriate.	West Mercia Police
7	West Mercia Police to report progress against the HMIC action plan to ensure a 10% dip sample of standard risk cases.	West Mercia Police
8	West Mercia Police to ensure that when information is being shared with partner agencies the actual relationship between perpetrators and those to be subject of risk review activity is explicitly clear.	West Mercia Police
9	West Mercia Police to remind officers that all high risk must be referred to MARAC, and additionally that there is sufficient flexibility, subject to MARAC capacity to refer other cases.	West Mercia Police
Recommendations extracted from the published report. Source: Home Office DHR Library. View full report ↗