A 15-month project investigating domestic violence and abuse (DVA) within military families in the UK by talking to people who currently provide, use, and refer to specialist DVA services, in order to determine what constitutes ‘specialist DVA provision’ for military families, and then sharing these findings with UK Refuges Online who will add services meeting these criteria to their online system specialism to enable workers to better support military families suffering DVA. Read the press release.

Recorded Impact

This research was the first to identify a criteria to define a domestic violence and abuse (DVA) service as offering a specialism for military families.  The research team identified 24 DVA services as providing specialist services for UK Armed Forces families and these are now included within the government funded support database, Routes to Support.  The identification of the services and inclusion on Routes to Support will help to ensure that victims of DVA from military families are signposted to specific services that offer the support they need.

The research also led to the creation of a National DVA Conference, held in March 2020, which brought together stakeholders across the military and civilian sectors. Conference partners included FiMT, The Royal British Legion, the Ministry of Defence, University of Bristol, Birmingham City University, Women’s Aid England and Birmingham City Council.