The quiet skill at the heart of domestic abuse work

Here, Jonathan Hussey, the Managing Director of Red Snapper Managed Services, reflects on the key skills needed to support domestic abuse work.

Some of the most important work in domestic abuse happens quietly, away from the headlines.

It is done by case managers, and it deserves far more recognition than it gets.

Having spent my career in criminal justice, I have watched skilled case management transform outcomes in some of the most complex and high risk situations our sector deals with. This piece is a celebration of that work, what makes it effective, and what the evidence tells us about getting it right.

What great case management actually looks like

Domestic abuse cases are rarely held by one agency alone. Police, probation, children’s services, health, housing, substance misuse services and victim support all hold a piece of the picture, and each brings something essential. The case manager’s craft is joining those pieces together: building relationships across organisations, sharing the right information at the right moment, and making sure that somebody always has sight of the whole case.

It is skilled, patient and often invisible work. Background research before first contact. Regular liaison with victim advocates. Practical help with housing or substance misuse that reduces risk in real terms. Gentle, persistent engagement with people who have little reason to trust services. Anyone who has done this work knows how much expertise sits behind what looks, from the outside, like coordination.

And when it is done well, the whole system around the case gets stronger. Information flows. Agencies act earlier. Victims are safer. The evidence increasingly bears this out.

The evidence is encouraging

A good example is the Drive Project, which works with high risk and serial perpetrators. The University of Bristol’s evaluation of its three year pilot, the largest UK evaluation of a perpetrator intervention with a randomised control design, found genuinely encouraging results: substantial reductions in abusive behaviours, victim-survivors reporting greater reductions in physical abuse, harassment and stalking, and controlling behaviours than a comparison group, and reductions in repeat MARAC appearances that held for twelve months after cases closed.

Notably, 84 per cent of case managers’ recorded activity was multi-agency and coordination work rather than direct sessions. The outcomes emerged from disruption, support, behaviour change work and dedicated victim services running together, held in place by intensive case management. That is a powerful endorsement of the case management role itself, and of the many professionals across the country doing similar work every day.

I use Drive as one example among many. Across the sector, in IOM arrangements, MARACs, perpetrator panels and integrated safeguarding teams, the same pattern shows up: when case management is resourced and respected, everything else works better.

A useful framework every case manager should know

Great case management is built on knowledge as well as coordination, and one framework I would put in front of every case manager is Professor Jane Monckton Smith’s eight stage homicide timeline.

Drawing on her study of hundreds of intimate partner homicides, Monckton Smith identified a progression that many of these killings follow: a pre-relationship history of abuse or stalking, rapid early commitment, a relationship dominated by coercive control, a trigger that threatens the perpetrator’s control, most often separation, then escalation, a change in thinking, planning, and finally homicide.

Its value for case managers is that it turns risk from a feeling into something structured and shared. It gives professionals across agencies a shared language for escalation, helps explain why coercive control and separation deserve the seriousness they now receive, and supports earlier, more confident conversations between services about when to act. For anyone coordinating a complex case, it is a way of seeing where a case may sit on a trajectory, not just what happened last week.

Frameworks like this do not replace professional judgement. They sharpen it. And a shared framework is exactly what makes multi-agency working feel like one team around one family.

Where problems arise, and where they do not

Here is the important point, and I want to frame it carefully. The problems in this field do not come from any one agency. Every service I work with is full of committed professionals doing difficult jobs under pressure. Problems arise in the spaces between services, if and when gaps open up.

If information is not shared, if nobody holds the whole picture, if a case passes between areas without a warm handover, that is when risk finds room to grow. Not because anyone failed, but because the connective tissue was missing. Strong case management is precisely what prevents those gaps from opening in the first place. It is the safeguard that makes multi-agency working real rather than aspirational.

That is why I would argue case management should never be treated as administrative overhead. It is frontline practice of the highest order.

Access to interventions should follow the person, not the postcode
Coordination is most powerful when there is something meaningful to coordinate towards. The best outcomes come when three things run together: skilled case management, access to evidence-based interventions, and practical support with the needs that drive risk, housing, substance misuse, mental health.

And that access needs to be broad. If we are serious about reducing harm, perpetrators of domestic abuse need genuine routes into services and interventions wherever they are, and whenever they are ready to engage. A willingness to change is a window, and it does not stay open indefinitely. The wider the range of interventions available, and the faster a case manager can connect someone to them, the more of those windows we catch.

That is why, wherever possible, we should not be confined by geographical boundaries. People move, relationships cross force and local authority lines, and circumstances change quickly. Nationally and regionally accessible interventions, digital and remote delivery where appropriate, and areas planning together across boundaries all mean that support can continue wherever someone is living. Local relationships, information sharing and accountable risk management remain essential, and they are strongest when the interventions behind them are available to everyone who needs them, everywhere.

A note of appreciation

If you manage cases in this field, in any agency, this piece is for you. The evidence is on your side. The quiet work of joining a system together around a family is some of the most valuable work in criminal justice, and it deserves to be recognised, resourced and celebrated as such.

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For those working in probation, policing, health or the voluntary sector: what is the one thing that most helps you keep sight of the whole case?

At RSMS, we deliver domestic abuse case management and perpetrator interventions across the UK, working alongside many of the agencies described here.