Leeds Women's Aid welcomes plans to put domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms
The idea was successfully piloted in West Yorkshire but discontinued when funding ran out
A West Yorkshire charity is welcoming plans to put domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms to help tackle violence against women and girls.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has announced the measure to make sure calls for help are treated urgently, and that police recognise the dangers callers may be facing.
Leeds Women’s Aid says the idea was successfully trialled in West Yorkshire a couple of years ago but wasn’t continued because there was no more funding for it.
“What it does is somebody’s ringing in, and there’s a specialist there immediately that can speak to them while the police are being sent to the call,” says the charity’s chief executive Nik Peasegood.
“It means there’s a better assessment of immediate risk. We could then check our own systems as well to see if we’d spoken to the person before, whether there was any recent risk assessments. And it worked fantastically well, but we lost the funding for it.”
Nik says the announcement from the Pontefract, Normanton and Castleford MP is ‘exciting’ but warns it must be backed up with the right resources for it to be successful.
“Hopefully the Home Secretary has seen some of the results from some of the pilots and now feels that that is a good idea to implement across the country, so we’re really intrigued to see what comes of this and whether it’s backed up with any funding,” she says.
“One person in a police control room that has thousands of calls a day is not going to make much difference, it all depends on the scale. And in our experience it takes quite a while for relationships to be built and for police and other agencies to work together and trust each other. Nothing is a quick fix.
“It’s just exciting to see what this government is starting to do in terms of prioritising violence against women and girls.”
Anybody in need of immediate support can contact the Leeds domestic violence helpline via ldvs.uk or on 0113 246 0401.
There is also a 24 hour National Domestic Abuse helpline which can be reached on 0808 2000 247.
Other groups offering support can be found here: https://www.westyorkshire.police.uk/domesticabuse