Domestic Abuse and the Warwickshire Domestic Abuse Accommodation and Support Service - Residents Survey

As part of Warwickshire County Council (WCC)’s statutory duty to regularly review its Safe Accommodation Strategy, WCC conducted an accompanying Needs Assessment with a Call for Evidence to obtain the views and experiences of victim-survivors, professionals, and partners across Warwickshire and inform the refreshed Strategy for 2025-28.

As part of this Call for Evidence work, we asked residents of Warwickshire who may have experienced domestic abuse (DA) about their experiences of seeking out and accessing support, including any barriers they faced, whether their needs were met, where they would like to go for information on DA, and any other comments they had about the support and services available to and for victim-survivors. All residents of Warwickshire were invited to complete the survey hosted on the Ask Warwickshire platform.

We received 55 responses to the Ask Warwickshire survey from across all five district and boroughs. The majority of responses were from women (91%) who identified as either White – British or White – Irish (89%).

• 60% of respondents said that they had previously experienced DA, while 11% said that they were currently experiencing it. 40 respondents shared the area(s) in which they felt DA had most impacted their lives; the three main areas of concern were: mental health, finances, and physical health.
• Of 41 respondents, 61% said that they had previously or were currently seeking support for DA. Of those who answered the related question, 36% said they had at least got ‘some help’ from a support service in Warwickshire, and 28% said that they had received ‘the right help at the right time’. However, 50% of those who had sought to access refuge accommodation felt as though they had experienced barriers. Of those who responded to the question, ‘If you needed to access support again, would you do anything differently?’, 58% indicated that they would.
• 60% of all respondents said that they would know what to do or where to turn for advice and support if they were experiencing DA. The five most common priorities for victim-survivors looking to access a service were: legal advice and support, counselling, one-to-one support, refuge (emergency) accommodation, and creating a safe exit plan.

Through free-text responses, we were able to recognise potential barriers to either disclosing DA to professionals or accessing support following a disclosure. These included: fear of professional judgement; feelings of vulnerability; misconceptions and distrust of services and statutory agencies; being denied support, or feeling under-supported, due to additional or complex needs; not having enough information about where to go or who to turn to for support; concerns about the financial and practical implications of receiving support; and previous negative experiences of help-seeking.

The findings noted from the Call for Evidence work have been shared and discussed with key partners and used to inform Warwickshire’s Safe Accommodation Strategy for 2025-28, which is due to be agreed by Cabinet in November 2024 and published by 31^st December 2024. The findings have been an integral part of, and are reflected in, the Strategy’s five key objectives and its accompanying Delivery Plan, which holds partners to account. The commitments made in the Strategy aim to ensure that both victim-survivors and professionals in Warwickshire are effectively supported during and following experiences of DA.