Pilot launched to increase protection to adults with care and support needs at risk of domestic abuse
To coincide with this year's national Safeguarding Adults Week, Norfolk adult social services, in partnership with the police, have launched a pilot to test a new reporting form to better identify adults with care and support needs at risk of domestic abuse.
The standard 'domestic abuse stalking and harassment risk assessment tool' (owned by the police, and often referred to as DASH) has been in adult social services' case recording system for several years and needs to be completed each time staff are made aware there is a risk of domestic abuse.
A recent Domestic Abuse Related Death Review (formerly Domestic Homicide Review) highlighted that the standard DASH tool is not always appropriate to complete with adults with care and support needs as it contains questions that won't necessarily apply, for example questions about whether the person is pregnant, which will not apply to older people. It omits questions that would be very relevant, for example if the person alleged to have caused harm provides care and support. All the questions go towards the scoring, which helps to highlight when a case should be referred to a multi-agency risk assessment conference (or, MARAC), for multi-agency planning to support the person - so, older people and people with care and support needs have been disadvantaged by not being able to reach a higher score.
On 18 November 2025, Norfolk's adult social services department will launch a pilot of a vulnerable and older person's DASH, which has been developed with the support of Isabel Allison from the police's domestic abuse safeguarding team. The vulnerable and older person's DASH will be piloted by two of adult social services' older people's teams, and their learning disability teams. It will be evaluated in the new year and, if successful, will be rolled out to the remainder of the department.
This represents an excellent piece of collaborative work between the police and adult social services in Norfolk, to ensure that people with care and support needs are escalated to MARAC when the level of risk requires multi-agency planning.
Published