Domestic Abuse Experts

03/09/2026

A man is arrested for assault, strangulation and stalking. He doesn't believe his relationship was abusive. He sees the consequences as things happening to him, not because of him.

This was the reality of one of the families our team began working with in 2025.

Our co-located practitioners engaged him within one of our County's custody suites, at the point of arrest… before conviction. Before he'd accepted any of it was abuse.

Through DAE's intervention and behaviour change programmes, that starts to change. He begins recognising the coercive control he used, not just the physical violence. And when restrictions stop him from seeing his daughter, he understands why: his own choices, not external circumstances.

👉 But accountability was only part of the work.

His former partner was supported to recognise patterns of abuse she'd normalised. Her mother and his current partner were both offered safety advice and ongoing contact too.

And his daughter, who had already had counselling through school, had never spoken about witnessing her father strangle her mother until she felt safe enough to do so during her sessions with us.

The result:
👉 Increased accountability from him.
👉 Recovery and growing confidence for her.
👉 Specialist therapeutic support for their daughter.
👉 And continued safeguarding for the wider family.

This is one example of how our whole-system approach works, holding the person causing harm accountable while supporting everyone else affected around them.

25/08/2026

🗓️ Free webinar: An introduction to Step Forward to Recovery
Wednesday 9th September, 12:30 pm – 1pm, via Teams

Not every survivor is ready to sit in a group and share their story. For some, that pressure is enough to stop them reaching out at all.

We saw this recently with a survivor referred into our support. Group work felt like too much, too soon. So we offered her Step Forward instead, our free, self-paced online recovery programme. She could engage privately, in her own time, while still getting regular support from her keyworker.

Four weeks in, she had the confidence and understanding to join a peer recovery group, something that hadn't felt possible at the start.

That's what Step Forward is built for: meeting survivors where they are, not where a service expects them to be.

Join our free introductory webinar to find out how the programme works and how to refer into it.

👉 Book your place here: https://domesticabuseexperts.myflodesk.com/sfsept2026
(Limited spaces available)

21/08/2026

Nearly 15 years ago, we noticed a growing frustration among survivors: perpetrators weren't being held accountable.

So we started equipping professionals with the knowledge and tools to work with people who use abusive behaviours, rather than just responding after harm had already happened.

👉 Today we're one of the UK's leading authorities in perpetrator behaviour change interventions.

Engage for Professionals is our one-day training for anyone in the public or not-for-profit sector working with families, including social care, family support, early help, housing and charities.

You'll go through the Engage Toolkit in detail, so you leave with the confidence to use it in real situations, plus how to recognise and assess risk in the people you're working with.

Training can be face-to-face or online and takes approximately 6 hours.

📧 To find out more, email [email protected] or visit our website.
(Limited spaces available)

21/08/2026

20/08/2026

⚠️ 65.2% of domestic abuse refuge referrals were turned away last year. The highest rate in five years.

Women's Aid's latest report found refuges just don't have the space. 10,665 women and 11,732 children were supported, but the majority seeking help couldn't get a bed.

Chronic underfunding, inconsistent commissioning, and a shortage of move on housing are named as the core causes.

When refuge capacity fails, people don't stop needing somewhere safe. They have no choice but to stay in unsafe homes for longer.

Many of these women are employees who keep going to work while it's happening. The workplace becomes one of the only stable, consistent, safe spaces they have access to, and one of the few places a colleague or manager might notice something is wrong.

Employers are not expected to become experts in domestic abuse support or crisis housing. But line managers should know how to recognise the signs, respond appropriately when someone discloses, and understand what support and referral pathways are available.

If the safety net outside work is this stretched, what happens inside your organisation matters more, not less.

Nearly two-thirds of referrals to domestic abuse refuges are being rejected due to a lack of space, according to a new report by Women’s Aid, highlighting mounting pressure on support services despite rising demand.

19/08/2026

Misogyny is not a starting point. It is an outcome. 👇

There’s been a lot of conversation around misogyny and what young people are consuming online following the release of Louis Theroux’s ‘Inside the Manosphere’ programme back in March.

It’s tempting to look for one obvious source to blame. One influencer. One toxic podcast. One extreme corner of the internet. But what we’re seeing is much bigger than that.

When we see misogyny, our instinct is to respond to the behaviour. We challenge the comment, punish the incident, block the account, condemn the language. Sometimes that’s necessary. But if that is all we do, we’ll keep missing the point.

Behaviour does not appear out of nowhere. If we want to stop harm, we have to look underneath it. We have to ask what belief sits beneath it, what need is being met, and where the opportunities were to intervene earlier.

That is not about excusing harmful attitudes. It is about understanding how they take hold, so we can challenge them properly.

If we are serious about tackling misogyny, we need to move beyond outrage and into understanding.

We need to start with one simple question: why?

17/08/2026

Could your staff unknowingly help a perpetrator?🛎️

Recent coverage of a domestic abuse survivor whose abuser was able to gain access to her hotel room has, rightly, raised questions about hotel security and guest safety.

But it raises a wider question too. Domestic abuse doesn’t stay behind the front door of your home.

Perpetrators can use hotels, workplaces, shops, leisure venues, transport and customer service teams to gain information, access or control.

And they don’t always look threatening. They can be calm, persuasive, charming and seem entirely plausible.

What looks like a routine request for information, access or help could actually be part of a pattern of abuse.✋

We can’t expect every receptionist, retail worker or customer service adviser to be a domestic abuse expert.

But we can help people recognise when something doesn’t feel right, pause before sharing information or granting access, and know when to escalate a concern.

Policies and security procedures matter. Understanding why someone may be trying to get around them matters too.

We welcome work already happening across hospitality to strengthen guest safety; there is an important opportunity to make sure domestic abuse, and particularly perpetrator behaviour, is part of that conversation.

Sometimes domestic abuse starts with a disclosure, but other times it's disguised as a perfectly ordinary request from a perfectly plausible person.

Would your staff recognise the difference?

13/08/2026

Where does the money go when you book training with Domestic Abuse Experts? 👉 Back into supporting people affected by domestic abuse.

Domestic Abuse Experts is a social enterprise, which means the income we make through our training, consultancy and work with organisations is reinvested into My CWA - Cheshire Without Abuse and its services supporting adults, children and families affected by domestic abuse.

So, there’s a bigger agenda behind every piece of work we deliver.

Your organisation gets specialist knowledge and support to improve its response to domestic abuse, while the money you spend helps make sure vital services are there for people who need them.

We’re really proud to be recognised as a ‘Business for Good’ for the second year running with Social Enterprise UK. For us, it sums up exactly why Domestic Abuse Experts exists.

Good business that helps fund good work.

11/08/2026

The employees walking into your office in five years are the teenagers in this stat:

📊 36% of 13 to 17 year olds who've been in a relationship say they've experienced controlling behaviour from a partner.

They may no longer be in that relationship by the time they enter the workplace. But those experiences don't necessarily disappear with it. They may have affected their confidence, relationships, sense of safety or ability to trust others, and for some, could leave them more vulnerable in the future.

Would your managers recognise when a young employee might need support? And would they know how to have that conversation?

When we talk about being a domestic abuse aware workplace, it's not only about recognising someone currently experiencing abuse. It's also about understanding that people can come to work carrying the impact of experiences that happened long before they joined your organisation.