Our Community Safety Team is constantly reviewing the support it offers to residents. Following a conference in December, the team is now looking at how it could help those with past experience of domestic abuse.

Find out more in this blog from Eleanor Randall, our Community Safety Manager:

The Town & Country Housing Community Safety team works with a range of different organisations and agencies on a daily basis, so I was delighted to attend the West Kent Domestic Abuse Conference in December. The event was a great opportunity to meet up with, and learn from, colleagues from across the region.

The professionalism and passion everyone had for their work was evident throughout the sessions, and it was great to have the time and space to look at some specific issues in greater depth.

Additional support

I was particularly interested to learn more about the Kent Community Domestic Abuse Programme (CDAP), which is designed to help men who feel their behaviour towards their partner has been, or is still, abusive.

Domestic abuse is defined as an incident or pattern of incidents of controlling, coercive, threating, degrading, or violent behaviour, including sexual violence.

While the programme can’t ‘cure’ abusive behaviour or guarantee dramatic change, we heard that men who complete the 27-week programme stop physical violence and significantly reduce their abusive behaviour.

This is a great initiative and one which, I’m sure, we’ll be referring people to in the future.

Can you help us develop a new service?

We’re currently looking at developing a new service to support those who are affected by past experiences of domestic abuse – whether that’s linked to concerns around safety, relationships or needing support with mental health.

This topic was covered in a number of presentations at the conference, including one on the support available to children and young people who have witnessed, or lived with, domestic abuse.

So as well as gaining insights into the approaches we could take, it was also great to connect with partners who could help us to deliver that service.

We want to create this service with our residents, so if you have lived experience of domestic abuse and would be interested in helping to shape our services we’d love to hear from you.

This will be entirely confidential and we will be guided by you on how you’d like to get involved. For more information or an initial chat, please get in touch with us – details below.

You can find out more about our approach to supporting people experiencing domestic abuse, as well as all forms of anti-social behaviour, on our website.

And if you would like any advice or support about domestic abuse, please know that you can contact us in confidence.

How to contact the Community Safety Team:

• Email communitysafetyteam@tch.org.uk or call 01892 501480