Preventing Domestic Abuse across Greater Manchester: Steering Group Meeting for Home Office Funding

In 2020 we were successful in securing over £1 million worth of funding to tackle domestic abuse in Manchester,

In 2020 we were successful in securing over £1 million worth of funding to tackle domestic abuse in Manchester, Stockport, Salford and Wigan. This has allowed us to extend our whole-family approach to domestic abuse and reach more people, including members of the LGBTQ+ community and those who do not speak English as a first language.

 

 

Last week, we were happy to have attended the Governance Meeting for this work, which was chaired by Bethan Dearden from Greater Manchester Combined Authority. We joined Stockport MBC, Wigan MBC, Manchester Council, Salford Council, the Greater Manchester Police and others to discuss where our service launch was up to and our plans for the future.

 

In the last few months, we’ve been busy mobilising our new projects and have welcomed a number of staff to our domestic abuse department, who have brought a strong and diverse mix of skills and experience.

 

We’ve launched marketing materials to encourage referrals, extended availability of our group services, delivered awareness raising sessions to local partners and started delivery of services.

 

“Before I came, I blamed my partner for everything. Now, I realise how much damage my violence did to my partner and how frightening it was for my kids. I want to put things right”

Marcus, 41*
*Names have been changed
In terms of our services, for Drive we have received 50 referrals, heard 28 cases at the Drive Panel Meetings and accepted 23 cases onto the Programme. Additionally, our community-based perpetrator services are well underway, with over 200 referrals to both men’s and women’s services and nearly 500 sessions have already been attended.

In the coming months we will be focusing on additional recruitment, building our evaluation and outcome framework and tailoring our data for both Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the local districts in which we work.