UPDATE NO 419 04 September 2020

A Perfect Storm: The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on domestic abuse survivors and the services supporting them

Domestic abuse has worsened during Covid-19 and frontline services expect rising demand – Women’s Aid report published 18 August

The report shows how domestic abuse has worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic. It examines the impact on survivors; how abusers use the pandemic as a tool of abuse; and how the services supporting survivors are affected.

Read the full report here

Sarah Davidge Women’s Aid Research and Evaluation manager said: 

“Whilst the Covid-19 pandemic did not cause domestic abuse, it has created a perfect storm of challenges for survivors and the services supporting them. The Covid-19 virus, and lockdown measures designed to fight it, gave perpetrators a tool that they quickly learnt to use for coercion, manipulation and to induce fear. This in turn exposed survivors to worsening domestic abuse, whilst restricting their access to support. At the same time, the pandemic created challenges for the specialist domestic abuse support sector in providing life-saving support, including lost income, staff shortages and additional costs of remote working.”

NSPCC – How Safe are our Children? 2020

Since 2013, our annual How safe are our children? report has compiled and analysed data from across the UK to show the current child protection landscape. In 2020, for the first time, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) took on this task.

We took this opportunity to refocus our annual report. This year we’ve looked in more detail at statistics relating to abuse perpetrated against adolescents. We’ve also included an overview of emerging data on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the safety of children and young people in the UK.

NSPCC say their 2020 report found:

• rates of police recorded physical, sexual and online abuse offences against adolescents are higher than rates against younger children
• rates of adolescents in care are higher than rates for younger children, with the exception in some nations of infants under the age of one
• rates of adolescents subject to a child protection plan or on a child protection register are lower than rates for younger children
• many of the risk factors associated with abuse and neglect have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, while the support services that would traditionally identify and respond to these concerns have been unable to see many of the children and families they work with face-to-face.

Download How safe are our children? 2020 (PDF)

DfE High Needs Benchmarking Tool

DfE high needs benchmarking tool – A comparative tool to help local authorities plan for future high needs spend and provision. Information about high needs funding and the review and planning role of local authorities is in the high needs funding operational guide.

Local authorities can use this tool to periodically assess their own level of need, spend and pattern of provision against:

• those of neighbouring local authorities (both geographically and statistically)
• national trends

Future dates for Network meetings

AD Safeguarding: Friday 11 September 2020 – more information from Mark Evans (contact details below) 

QA Network: Thursday 17 September 2020 – more information from Diane Williamson (contact details below)

Data Benchmarking: Tuesday 15 September 2020 – more information from Alastair Lee (contact details below)

Joint meeting of AD Education and SEND SE19: *Postponed* from Friday 25 September 2020 – more information from Chris Owen or Tracey Maytas (contact details below)

Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board: Tuesday 20 October 2020 – more information from Rebecca Eligon (contact details below)

Data to Insight – National Project – August 2020 Briefing

Data to Insight is a national sector led improvement project delivered through the South East Sector Led Improvement Programme (SESLIP), sponsored by Stuart Gallimore, with East Sussex as the lead local authority.

Our aim is to get local authorities to use data better by enabling resources to be shared that were developed for visualisation, analysis, benchmarking and forecasting. 

The project has been funded by the DfE and a progress briefing is available here

The work programme of the project is overseen by a partnership between SESLIP (Alastair Lee), the London Borough of Waltham Forest (Rashid Jussa), the London Borough of Wandsworth (Jean Malo), Brighton and Hove City Council (Daryl Perilli), Ofsted (Adam King) and Social Finance (Tom Rintoul).

A project manager, Alistair Herbert will take up post on 1 September 2020.

For further deatils, contact Alastair Lee (details below)