Trigger warning, this article may contain information that you find disturbing.

Domestic abuse and domestic homicide are highly gendered crimes with women constituting most victims and men most perpetrators. Roughly two women a week are killed by male intimate ex/partners and male family members. Around 30 men a year are killed in domestic settings, mostly at the hands of other men. Domestic homicide reviews (DHRs) are a statutory requirement and were introduced in 2011 to learn from such killings by identifying missed opportunities for intervention and making changes to improve responses to domestic abuse. To ensure that DHR recommendations are implemented, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s office is developing a national domestic homicide oversight mechanism which will be informed by our research. In this blog we focus on recommendations made in DHRs for adult social care.

Why focus on adult social care?

Our Homicide Abuse Learning Together (HALT) study found that in around two-thirds of domestic homicides, there were there were no children under 18 living in the household, whilst most policy and practice around domestic abuse focuses on families with children. Therefore, a focus on adults (without children) in abusive relationships is called for. The purpose of this work is to better understand the types of recommendations made in Domestic Homicide Reviews (DHRs) for Adult Social Care, relating both to intimate partner homicide and adult family homicide, with a particular focus on the over-65s.

What did we do in the study?  

Twenty-four DHRs published between 2015-2019 were identified and analysed, with an oversampling of those involving adults over 65. We used a mixed methods approach to systematically extract information from DHRs such as the recommendations made, areas for development and learning, and examples of good practice.

Key Findings

Most victims were female (79%) and most perpetrators male (96%). Regarding ethnicity 82% of both victims and perpetrators were White British, with the remainder coming from Minoritised backgrounds (including White Europeans). Victims ranged in age from 34 to 95 years and perpetrators 21 to 87 years.

Intimate Partner and Adult Family Homicide

Half of the homicides were intimate partner homicides (IPH) (50%). All perpetrators in IPH cases were current male partners and most couples had been in their relationships for more than 10 years (64%).

Just under half of the homicides were Adult Family Homicide (46%). Adult Family Homicide (AFH) refers to instances where a family member (aged over 16) kills another family member. Most perpetrators were sons (45%) or other male family members (36%). Two daughters (one a trans woman) were perpetrators in two cases and a niece instigated a killing (via her boyfriend) in one case. Lastly, one homicide victim was killed by the sons of a friend she cohabited with.

Contexts

Prior domestic abuse was identified in nearly half of the DHRs (46%), with proportions similar across IPH and AFH. Importantly, in 50% of cases perpetrators were acting as the main carer for the victim. Younger perpetrators had high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and violence or criminal history – issues rarely experienced by older perpetrators. Victims over 65 had more physical health problems and other age-related conditions. Younger victims had issues relating to victimisation, drug or alcohol use, and mental health problems.

Improvements in Policy and Practice are needed

Most DHRs (83%) identified that there was a need to strengthen record-keeping and sharing of information across agencies such as adult social care, policing and mental health services to better respond to victims of domestic abuse. Half of DHRs recommended enhancing assessments including carer’s assessments and domestic abuse assessments as these frequently did not take place. Where care was privately funded, there was no oversight of the context of care or the changing nature of care needs. Just over half of DHRs recommended that improvements in professional practice were required including understanding the person in their family context, avoiding stereotypes (e.g., older people unlikely to use violence), and being aware of carer stress and the needs of carers.

All member agencies of the [name of geographic area] Safeguarding Adults Board to ensure staff awareness of carer’s stress and the need for carer assessments where appropriate, including for those who are privately funded (DHR 202, p21)

Just over two-thirds of the DHRs included recommendations for staff training and development including increasing knowledge and skills in identifying different types of abuse (e.g., Adult Family Abuse).

Recommendations to implement, revise, update or expand organisational policies, practice and process appeared in 16 of the 24 DHRs (67%) focussing on developing or amending domestic abuse policy; reviewing or complying with adult safeguarding procedures and reviewing risk escalation processes.

Our policy recommendations

• For adult social care, protecting adult victims from domestic abuse is a murky policy terrain unless the victim has additional needs as specified in the Care Act 2014. This means that there is an important policy gap as there is no statutory requirement to protect vulnerable adults from domestic abuse. Therefore, new statutory processes to protect vulnerable adults from abuse which parallel those within Children’s Services was recommended.
• Some adults over 65 pay for private care. Adult Social Care still have a responsibility to oversee care and assess changing risk. This does not always happen and should be rectified.
• Social work training or continuing professional development is required which includes different types of abuse as well as their intersections with disability, mental capacity, consent and how this relates to specific long-term, debilitating and lifechanging diseases. Training should also explore the intersections between other protected characteristics (e.g., age, gender, ethnicity) and domestic abuse.

For further information, please see a summary the team’s findings on the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s website.