Following the Commissioner’s visit to their service, IDAS (Independent Domestic Abuse Service) wrote a guest blog to about their REACH project which supports NHS staff who are affected by domestic abuse.
Senior NHS leaders and key stakeholders from across Sheffield came together in October to explore how NHS organisations can better support staff impacted by domestic abuse and create lasting culture change.
The roundtable, hosted by Independent Domestic Abuse Services (IDAS) as part of the REACH project, brought together leaders from across the NHS and Sheffield to meet with the Domestic Abuse Commissioner.
REACH is a partnership between IDAS, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Sheffield Health Partnership, funded and supported by Sheffield Hospitals Charity. The project combines specialist domestic abuse support for individual staff, with training, awareness raising, workplace guidance, and support for managers, HR, Occupational Health and Wellbeing teams.
There is growing recognition of the role health services can play in identifying domestic abuse and connecting people with specialist support. Healthcare professionals may be among the first people a victim or survivor speaks to, making their knowledge, confidence and response critical.
Supporting NHS staff and helping patients are closely connected. By working together to create workplaces where staff feel informed, confident and safe to seek support, NHS organisations can strengthen their ability to recognise and respond to domestic abuse across the workforce and the communities they serve.
Domestic abuse can impact anyone, including NHS staff. The effects can extend into working lives, affecting wellbeing, attendance, performance, retention and a person’s sense of safety at work. Staff subjected to abuse often face additional barriers to seeking help, including concerns about confidentiality, professional responsibilities, caring commitments and the demands of frontline roles.
Research by the Cavell Trust and Bristol University has found that healthcare professionals are more likely to be subjected to domestic abuse than the general population. NHS staff subjected to abuse also report that perpetrators frequently interfere with their work, affecting their wellbeing, attendance, performance and ability to feel safe at work.
REACH research found that 33% of NHS staff surveyed had experienced domestic abuse, while 43% knew a colleague who had experienced domestic abuse. Concerns about confidentiality and stigma were among the key barriers to seeking support.
“It is humiliating having to disclose that you are a victim of domestic abuse and to let people at work know that you are experiencing this… Having managers being trained in how to support staff would be very helpful.”
– Domestic abuse survivor
The roundtable explored how NHS Trusts can build knowledge and confidence across the workforce, create safe and trusted routes into support, and ensure domestic abuse is understood as both a staff welfare issue and a wider health and safeguarding issue.
The Government’s cross-department strategy identifies health services as an important setting for earlier identification of domestic abuse and referral to specialist support. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s current strategy also identifies health as a priority, including improving training and support for healthcare professionals and recognising domestic abuse as a public health issue.
For these ambitions to translate into effective practice, NHS staff need to be supported too.
A workforce that feels informed, confident and safe is better placed to recognise domestic abuse, respond appropriately and help patients access specialist support.
REACH provides an opportunity to explore what this can look like in practice and how learning from Sheffield can contribute to wider conversations about supporting NHS staff impacted by domestic abuse.
Learn more about the impact of domestic abuse on healthcare workers:
Skint, shaken yet still caring. But who is caring for our nurses? – Cavell Trust
Behind the mask: A domestic abuse survey of healthcare workers to highlight support needs – University of Bristol