Doncaster review

Domestic Abuse Case closure information should be shared with referring agencies, with consent from the client.

To ensure all staff in Adult Social Care have received domestic abuse training, including risk assessment, within the past 3 years.

Haven staff to undertake domestic abuse training.

Where an individual is in receipt of secondary mental health services and moves to an area outside of the Trust boundaries, they should be referred to local services by the original Trust

Training for primary care staff to include learning from previous DHRs.

Review the referral process for domestic abuse and scope the potential to use the Domestic Abuse, Stalking, Harassment and Honour-Based Violence (DASH) risk assessment tool to drive quality practice and provide a referral mechanism to the Multi-agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) process.

Withdrawal of consent to support by clients, should be communicated to the referring agencies.

To ensure all people waiting for Care Act assessments are contacted on a regular basis to inform risk assessment.

All staff are to be reminded of the domains of abuse which may be experienced in domestic abuse (i.e. psychological).

Review of provision and uptake of suicide awareness training for primary care staff.

Develop training and learning material to support staff around recognition of, and response to, domestic abuse and the referral options, to improve staff knowledge and confidence in supporting victims.

To share the lessons learnt from this DHR with Adult Social Care staff, to highlight any missed opportunities.

Explicit dialogue within the 7 minute briefing relating to the links between domestic abuse and suicide should be evident.

Developing Domestic Abuse Guidance for Doncaster primary care staff.

This will be evidenced by audit of the quality and volume of referrals in respect of domestic abuse.

Where there are explicit threats or statements made in relation to the encouragement or assisting of a suicide, advice should be sought from the Safeguarding Team.

Review and update the YAS policy ‘Domestic Abuse: Management Guidance’, to reflect the strengthened pathways for assessment and referral.

Recognition of domestic abuse and then subsequent actions to take / referral onto appropriate services or agencies.

All staff will be reminded of the need to consider domestic abuse within the context of safeguarding, including seeking guidance from the Safeguarding Team and utilising protection planning.

All agencies involved in the review should provide Doncaster Community Safety Partnership with evidence of the training provided to staff in recognising and acting upon coercive and controlling behaviour.

All agencies involved in the review should provide Doncaster Community Safety Partnership with evidence that information has been provided to staff on the links between domestic abuse and suicide.

All agencies involved in the review should provide Doncaster Community Safety Partnership with evidence of the training and information provided to staff on suicide prevention.

South Yorkshire Police should provide the Community Safety Partnership with a presentation outlining their implementation of recommendations 14 – 18 of the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme (VKPP) report – Domestic Homicides and Suspected Victim Suicides 2021 – 2022 Year 2 Report (December 2022).

The learning from this review should be shared with Doncaster Safeguarding Adult Board.