A trauma-informed approach allows agencies to support survivors and prevent future abuse, writes Natalie Sands, Justice Advisor at NEC Digital Studio.
When Sarah* found the courage to report her abusive partner, she had no idea how traumatic it would be having to tell the same painful story over and over again.
Explaining what had happened to the police call handler was only the first hurdle. As the following days and weeks unfolded, Sarah found herself recounting the same harrowing details in police interviews, conversations with healthcare staff, chats with social services, a call with her son’s school, and a meeting with a housing officer.
Each organisation, independently, needed to know the background, circumstances and experiences. All of this can contribute to helping plan how to keep Sarah and her son safe, but every time Sarah spoke about it, she was reliving the abuse.
A system in need of a re-think
Sadly, experiences like Sarah’s are not uncommon. One in eight women in England and Wales in the year ending March 2025 experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault, or stalking, according to government figures, although experts agree this is likely to be an underestimate.
Far from breaking the cycle of harm, the next generation is heading for crisis, with alarming levels of abuse in teenage relationships. 39% of 13-to-17-year-olds who have been in a relationship in the past year, have experienced emotional or physical abuse.
This makes the ambition to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) by 2034 all the more urgent.
But halving VAWG can only be achieved if every ‘touchpoint’ agency which notices the signs of abuse can share this critical information – from a GP who sees a woman with injuries which could be related to domestic abuse, to a teacher who spots a child who is unusually withdrawn.
The agencies, authorities and charities who work with survivors of VAWG need to collect sensitive information, but the way systems work currently, can unintentionally re-traumatise survivors.
That’s why we need to look at systems from a different perspective – that of the survivor. It’s how user-centred systems thinking works, it brings people’s experiences into the heart of a system, and keeps testing it to make it work better.
People with lived experience can identify problems with systems which might be invisible to technical and design teams – and suggest solutions which would help survivors engage more effectively with services.
This could include trauma-informed approaches such as dimming the harsh lighting in an interview room, explaining why sensitive questions need to be asked, or allowing survivors to communicate some details through alternative channels.
Create conditions for safer information sharing
We also need to explore opportunities to make data sharing more effective, because this would reduce the number of times survivors have to repeat details to different organisations.
A month before Sarah reported the abuse, her son had gone to school with bruising, raising a safeguarding concern with the local authority. Around the same time, a neighbour reported the sound of loud arguments in Sarah’s flat to the housing authority, and shortly afterwards Sarah visited her GP to discuss her anxiety.
These warning signals could have been noticed by the agencies involved, but they remained isolated and not joined up.
There is a clear need for connected data, but that doesn’t mean creating an enormous central database for VAWG and the related signs and experiences. It is more about enabling relevant organisations to recognise that their individual piece of information forms part of a wider pattern.
To link all these pieces together there needs to be increased interoperability between systems, to make integration easier to achieve. This is the gold standard. With hundreds of agencies involved, including statutory bodies, private organisations and specialist providers, it’s a long way from being achievable.
However, what we should be focusing on now is taking steps to notice and share the warning signs, and prepare the ground for better connection between everyone involved.
Identify vulnerability earlier
When information from a school, GP, housing authority or police call-out is viewed together, the warning signs of escalating vulnerability may emerge much earlier, so services can intervene before something serious happens.
One example is the Families First Partnership Programme which is attempting to join up data and spot warning signs more effectively through multi-agency response. The programme provides an Integrated Front Door which is a single, centralised point of contact for local authorities, police, health services, education and third sector organisations to work together.
When any agency raises a concern about a child who might be at risk from abuse, or in a household where abuse is happening, the agencies collectively triage the situation and determine the appropriate level of intervention.
What we need now is for the systems to keep evolving to make it easier for agencies to share and act on information so they can provide trauma-informed support to survivors like Sarah, and protect other families from abusive situations.
*Name changed for the purposes of the article.
