The Westminster government has awarded £11.3m to 25 Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) in England and Wales to support 31 programmes focusing on interventions to encourage behavioural change to help perpetrators stop committing domestic abuse.
“To prevent the abhorrent crimes of domestic abuse from happening in the first place, we must deepen our understanding of who commits them, why they do so, and how it may escalate,” said home secretary Priti Patel.
Funding will also cover projects tackling children-on-parents’ abuse and prevention of stalking.
The methods used by the selected programmes to encourage behavioural change include one-to-one sessions, group therapy and community-based activity.
Key objectives are reducing the frequency and gravity of abuse, lowering the risk posed by the perpetrator and improved safety and protection for victims.
Among projects chosen to receive the funding are those providing:
- targeted support to address substance misuse, mental health and unemployment;
- behavioural change courses for children and adolescents who are abusive, violent or using self-destructive behaviour, often as a result of having been exposed to domestic abuse at home;
- perpetrator support work in schools including education in healthy relationships, delivered by professionals as part of the relationship and sex education requirement of schools; and
- therapy and compulsive and obsessive behaviour programmes to address behaviours linked to stalking.
