[Press Release]

Today (17 January 2024) our Director of Criminal Justice and Women’s Services, Nicky Park, gave evidence to the Women and Equalities Committee as part of their inquiry into the escalation of violence against women and girls. 

In this excerpt from her evidence, Nicky Park explains how our intervention works:  

“Our intervention is very much about engaging people who immediately come into police custody, we have a team that is based in police custody suites to provide that reachable teachable moment at the point when they come in.  

We are also in partnership with Black Country Womens Aid to work with the victim-survivor as well. So it’s a two-pronged approach, ensuring that victims-survivors are also supported which is a gap that has been identified. When victim-survivors seek support and help from the police there was always that gap, so we have tried to create an intervention that does both of those things.” 

In this excerpt from her evidence, Nicky Park explains how our intervention also provides wraparound support to address the other problems that can contribute to increasing the risk of domestic abuse: 

“Our particular intervention is very much around supporting people with all the other issues that have a contributing factor to the domestic abuse. Our project has only been going since October 2023 so it is new but already we are seeing huge numbers of cases of men who are homeless, don’t have their own accommodation, don’t have ID, don’t have bank accounts, haven’t got access to Universal Credit, are staying with their partner and the pressures those factors are putting in. It’s never an excuse but what it shows is the contributing factors.” 

At St Giles we have decades of experience delivering support services UK-wide, including tailored support for women and girls. 

We are currently partnering with Women’s Aid (Black Country Womens Aid consortium) on an innovative pilot project in the West Midlands where we systematically provide both support to victims of domestic abuse and a behaviour-change intervention to perpetrators of domestic abuse. 

The purpose of the perpetrator-intervention part of this project is to intervene at a much earlier stage in than most domestic abuse perpetrator interventions, and to do so at a critical point (directly after the perpetrator is arrested) to maximise the possibility of positive behaviour change and desistance from domestic abuse. 

This evidence session follows our submission of written evidence to the Committee, which can be read here. 

The Women and Equalities Select Committee evidence session can be watched in full here. 

Journalists seeking more information should contact media@stgilestrust.org.uk or call 07770 017368 / 07387 410993