• Children’s Services Response to Coercive Control 

  • Survey 1 – Victims’ experience of Children’s Social Care in England 

    If you and your children have been/are victims of coercive control domestic abuse AND have had involvement of local authority Children’s Social Care, please complete this survey anonymously. The survey is intended to be anonymous and all efforts have been made to ensure anonymity. The responses to the survey are automatically anonymized and aggregated in a manner neither allowing for the identification of individual respondents nor for the attribution of individual responses to a respondent.

  • For the purposes of this survey we use the terminology of 'coercive control' for ease of use. We understand this type of domestic abuse as that defined in the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the Serious Crime Act 2015. We understand it to include such behaviours as set out in Controlling or Coercive Behaviour Statutory Guidance Framework April 2023: "...the conduct is ongoing and perpetrators will use various means to hurt, humiliate, intimidate, exploit, isolate and dominate their victims".

  • 1. Which gender do you identify with?
  • 2. What is your age group?
  • 3. When were Children’s Social Care involved with your family?
  • 4. Which level of Children’s Social Care have been involved? (Select all that apply)
  • 6. Who initially disclosed the coercive control to Children’s Social Care?
  • 7. Was coercive control identified and acknowledged by Children’s Social Care?
  • 8. Were children identified as victims in their own right?
  • 9. After identification of coercive control what response did you receive from Children’s Social Care? (Select all that apply)
  • 10. Was the coercive control documented on Children’s Social Care records?
  • 11. What types of evidence of coercive control did they consider and/or use?
  • 12. Do you feel the lead social worker on your case had any of the following:
    Rows
  • 13. Did you have the same social worker throughout Children’s Social Care involvement?
  • 14. In your opinion, did Children’s Social Care adequately and accurately assess risks to child and adult victims of coercive control in your family?
  • 15. Were any risk assessments for coercive control completed by Children’s Social Care during the relationship and/or post-separation? (Select all that apply)
  • 16. What risk assessment tools were used to assess for risks of coercive control?
  • 17. If a child and family assessment (or equivalent) was completed for your family, did it a) explore the risks and impacts of coercive control?
  • b) describe the behaviours of the perpetrator?
  • 18. What safety planning was completed for your family in response to the coercive control? (Select all that apply)
  • 19. Do you feel the perpetrator was held accountable for their coercive control domestic abuse by Children’s Social Care?
  • 20. Did Children’s Social Care work collaboratively as multi-agency partners with your IDVA/ DA support service?
  • 21. Did you experience any of the following from Children’s Social Care?
    Rows
  • 22. Did Children’s Social Care actively and openly follow the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and its statutory guidance?
  • 23. Did Children’s Social Care request and use specialist support from a specialist with expertise in coercive control?
  • 24. Finally, do you feel your local Children’s Social Care were equipped to adequately respond to the risk posed to you of coercive control domestic abuse in your family?
  • Should be Empty: