We have been commissioned by the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care to conduct the evaluation of the We Can Talk about Domestic Abuse programme. We Can Talk About Domestic Abuse is a programme that is trying to develop new ways of working to improve the experience of social care processes for those parents and children affected by domestic abuse so that they feel believed, supported and empowered, whilst being appropriately safeguarded.

What is the need?

Social care services in Wirral are not adequately supporting survivors of domestic abuse, who can feel abandoned, let down, disempowered, judged and/or not believed by social workers (Wirral Council, 2020). Based on a consultation with survivors, it is the Council’s view that the application of child protection processes can often alienate, even re-victimise, people affected by domestic abuse (Wirral Council, 2020). The Council (Wirral Council, 2020) reports that victims and survivors of domestic abuse highlight difficulties in working effectively with social care:

• Feeling “abandoned” and “let down” by social workers, not being believed.
• Genuine fear of having children removed from their care.
• Being criticised in their parenting without social workers understanding the impact abuse has on their parenting capacity.
• Being judged for “making the wrong decisions over relationships and who they had children to” and for wanting to stay in the relationship.
• Feeling that their case “opens on social care’s terms and closes on social care’s terms” and being in a “tick box system”

The Policy Evaluation and Research Unit has been commissioned by the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care to conduct the evaluation of the We Can Talk about Domestic Abuse programme. We Can Talk About Domestic Abuse is a programme that is trying to develop new ways of working to improve the experience of social care processes for those parents and children affected by domestic abuse so that they feel believed, supported and empowered, whilst being appropriately safeguarded.

What are we doing?

The evaluation will provide insights into the implementation of the programme, its costs, and whether an RCT would be feasible in the future. The evaluation aims to explore actors’ perceptions of effectiveness and examine change over-time in outcome indicators. It will also consider the extent to which the programme as a whole or some element of it might be evaluated using more formal impact evaluation approaches.

The pilot evaluation will take place over 15 months and consists of three sets of activities:

1. building upon and developing the programme’s theory of change (ToC) through workshops involving strategic and front line staff in order to generate a logic model;
2. empirical research to test the ToC, exploring both evidence of feasibility and evidence of promise through a small number of in-depth longitudinal case studies, a survey, and analysis of quantitative management information; and
3. an assessment of the feasibility of implementing an experimental or quasi-experimental impact evaluation of either the programme or some element of it, through secondary data analysis.

What will be the outcomes?

A research protocol has been published. We will also produce an interim report and a final report at the end of the project.

What are the timescales?

January 2021 – March 2022