Together for Change – Conference on Domestic Abuse.

On 1 October, the charity, Your Sanctuary, which supports anyone affected by domestic abuse, held an inspiring and thought-provoking conference in partnership with the collaborative foundation and educational initiative Laurella & Libby’s Legacy.

The conference brought together professionals, advocates, organisations and charities who seek to prevent domestic abuse, including stalking and violence against women and girls (VAWG). The conference provided an opportunity to share learning, hear powerful lived experiences, explore approaches to the prevention of domestic abuse and discuss how to work collectively to create meaningful and lasting change.

The accounts shared by survivors and frontline professionals were humbling and, at times, hard to hear. The message running through them was consistent: domestic abuse and stalking cannot be effectively tackled when incidents, intelligence and risk are viewed in isolation. Agencies must be able to join the dots — across victims, incidents and organisations — before patterns of escalating behaviour become catastrophic and lead to homicide. No single organisation can create this change alone. It requires working in partnership.

Over the past months, I have learnt that fantastic work is already being done in Surrey in tackling domestic abuse by a range of organisations, such as Your Sanctuary, East Surrey Domestic Abuse Service (ESDAS), South West Surrey Domestic Abuse Service (SWDAS), North Surrey Domestic Abuse Service (NSDAS), Interventions Alliance, Surrey Police and Surrey County Council. I am therefore optimistic that together these organisations can make significant progress and I would be proud to see Surrey recognised as a national exemplar of excellent practice and partnership working.

#TogetherForChange #Surrey4Change