Council to address issue of domestic abuse in Carlisle

Cumbria County Council’ Local Committee for Carlisle met on Wednesday to discuss a number of issues affecting the district.

And a presentation on domestic abuse in the city was given by council officers: Derek Houston, senior manager for care integration and Louise Cavanagh, domestic and sexual abuse business co-ordinator for children’s social care.

In particular, the presentation was focussed on children as the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 formally recognised children as being victims of domestic abuse.

The new act recognises that young people can suffer from hearing or seeing domestic abuse, or from living in a home where it is taking place.

Data shown to councillors revealed that the number of incidents responded to by police, with a child in the house has steadily increased over the last three years.  

Mr Houston said: “Covid-19 and lockdown has played into this so we have to treat these figures as not necessarily representative of what happens all the time.”

Explaining one of the projects around domestic abuse and young people, Mr Houston said: “Step-Up is a programme which works with children and young people who are themselves having violent relationships within their families.

“We’ve just recently secured funding to extend that for another 16 months and that will be used by the youth offending team to work with young people who are potentially going down a path.”

The piece of work aims to catch that behaviour at an early stage and address it.

READ MORE: Cumbrian organisations gather to tackle drugs in the county

Leader of the council Stewart Young expressed concerns about the potential increase of domestic abuse, due to the increasing pressures of the cost of living crisis.

Cllr Young said: “On the slide about the data, it’s quite striking that just over half of the domestic abuse referrals come from not even from two divisions.

“With the current cost of living crisis which is getting worse and will get worse over the next few months, sadly I suspect we’ll see further increases of that because what’s behind a lot of these things is pressures and stress of people in low paid jobs. It’s not a good prognosis really.”

Cllr Elizabeth Mallinson said: “An awful lot of work has gone on behind the scenes, it has been a tremendous uphill activity. It’s an ongoing hidden issue and I think we need to get a handle on this.

“I’m chair of the Community Safety Partnership, I sit on parenting and other bodies and I think this is an issue that has far too long been kept within a very close knit taboo.

“And I think it now needs to be put out there.”

READ MORE: Police deal with 80 domestic abuse crimes in Cumbria a week