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This content originally appeared on Diana Barran's blog in January 2015 and reflected her views at the time. Caada is the previous name of SafeLives.

One of the questions that goes round and round is why the overall rate of domestic homicide has not budged really over the past 10 or 20 years despite the efforts of so many people locally and nationally to improve services for victims of domestic abuse. I was struck by two things this week which might hold a clue.

Firstly, we are presenting some of the early learning from our Insights data to a group of funders this week and so we were looking at some of the messages from the data. As a reminder, Insights data is collected from IDVAs, outreach workers, refuge workers, and a handful of other specialist roles such as ISVAs and Women’s Safety Workers. We collect data on several thousand cases a year from many different services, so it is a pretty good general reflection. I was struck that about 80% of women who engage with specialist services are separated/separating from their partner. Of course this links in part to the risks associated with the point of separation and the readiness of women to engage with help at this point.

Secondly, I looked at the notes a colleague had sent me from the DVCN conference just before Christmas where there was a focus on the Domestic Homicide Review process and the learnings from this. In contrast, Standing Together reported that out of the 30 DHRs that they had chaired, in about 2/3 of cases, the couple were living together.

Does this suggest that we need to work harder on offering support to women who do not wish to separate or for whom it is too dangerous to do so?