There has been a recent media expose of the ineffectiveness of the DASH risk assessment to measure the risk that victims of domestic violence and abuse (DVA) face. Reports refer to a collective of bereaved families who have been aghast that their family members were assessed on the DASH as “low” or “standard” risk before they were killed by their current or former partners. This has started a wider conversation about where the blame should lie (i.e. is it with the risk assessment itself, or inadequate skills of the assessor etc.).
The response from the DVA sector has variously been to claim that the DASH was never meant to be a tick box exercise (although it does lend itself to this approach in its style) but that it has been coopted by services who fail to adequately train staff in using it sensitively, using their own discretion in decision making using it. But I think we need to draw our mind back to what the DASH has done as a core part of the turn to professionalise and corporatise the domestic violence sector, creating a hierarchy of risk and provision.
It is timely to go back and examine the context of the DASH assessment, the wide infrastructure that was created to support it, and to instead locate the issue with this system itself. I think this is actually a moment where we could dare to reimagine otherwise as a feminist DVA sector/coordinated community response system.
The DASH risk assessment was created as one aspect of a new model for DVA support, which professionalised and arguably corporatised the sector, spearheaded by former hedge fund manager turned charity CEO Baroness Diana Barran (now a Conservative peer in the House of Lords) at CAADA (now Safelives), in partnership with Laura Richards (Criminal behavioural analyst) and ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers). It is important to consider the constellation of perspectives that created it as it was a departure from traditional DVA expertise lying within the refuge led feminist DVA sector and it fundamentally altered the DVA support landscape.
The DASH risk management model was designed to be managed through MARACs (Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences) and the survivor supported by an IDVA (Independent Domestic Violence Advocate). This core functioning of this system was to score on the DASH and then manage a system where those deemed high risk (broadly scoring over 14) would be funnelled to immediate support, with those with less would be seen as less of a priority.
The foundational principle of this new system of support was to draw DVA support into the community and away from refuges. This was an important point, as prior to this model the onus was very much on women and children to flee the perpetrator and essentially go into hiding. This new system focused on risk management within the community, which no doubt has shifted the expectation that survivors should be able to stay at home and within their own communities, with professionals managing the risk.
Theoretically this approach supports the concept of a ‘Coordinated Community Response’ (CCR) model, as advocated by the late Ellen Pence. They argued for the creation of community ecosystems which incorporated refuges, legal and criminal justice advocacy, and support groups (Shepard and Pence, 1999, pp. 116–117). At the time they noted the tensions between the refuge sector and community advocates (IDVAs), warning that their responsibilities had become more ‘narrowly delineated and institutionalised’ (1999, pg. 119). They noted the importance of a coherent sector which works in partnership. Technically the DASH was successful in enhancing the view that DVA was ‘everybody’s business’, by mainstreaming the use of it by a non-specialist constituency including police and wider community organisations. Although because the model relies on assess, score, and refer to MARAC- arguably it resulting in referrers feeling their work was then done and the risk had been offloaded to a central point for others. With scarce resources (arguably an enduring political decision to under-fund DVA support), has resulted in a hierarchy of provision and local commissioning decisions which have prioritised high risk support.
This new high-risk model had significant cost and resourcing implications for local areas. Not only did funding need to be spent on the administration of the regional MARACs, but to become an accredited IDVA you needed to attend costly specific training (which resulted in a hierarchy and “professionalisation” of DVA expertise), and then data harvested back to CAADA for monitoring and accreditation (for a fee). These processes enhanced the costs for front-line DVA support by communities, which was often then reallocated from ‘generic’ open-access community support systems (often Women’s Aid associated community organisations) to fund these high risk, data rich, more brief intervention services. Instead of a holistic women centred empowerment support (as traditional Women’s Aid refuge provision had spearheaded) being the norm, DVA support services became about murder prevention (i.e. focus on cases at high risk of homicide).
The DASH model reportedly worked better for a wider group of survivors, including men as well as women victims, which was a key strength in widening support access for more survivors, however again inspired local areas to prioritise generic services rather than women-only provision. It enabled the de-centring of patriarchy and misogyny as core aspects of DVA as the focus became on risk management not a wider conceptualisation of DVA.
To “risk assess and manage” carries cultural capital. IDVA services were funded over community outreach. They could prove outcomes with better data, shorter interventions, and fulfilled local areas duty of murder prevention. I would argue this model was the key turning point in the hierarchy of risk becoming central in DVA provision but also was a significant factor in so many community Women’s Aid services losing their funding. It was a turn to professionalism which valued risk management over woman centred longer term support. The ‘hand holding’ and pastoral peer support model of the traditional feminist DV sector had its value eroded by its lack of ability to talk in risk management language. Experienced support workers, many of whom had gained their knowledge through their own lived experiences, were sidelined. Short term risk management support took precedence over longer term holistic support with fuzzier (i.e. harder to quantify and evaluate) outcomes.
The risk management agenda also suited the fact that there was less money to support the number of victims of DVA at any one time. So, the DASH assessment worked for overburdened services trying to decide who is most in need. Lack of overall funding for DVA support has also caused this scarcity agenda, and the DASH was the blunt tool to demarcate who is deserving. In my research using case files I have often seen the phrase, “Women assessed as at standard risk, case closed”.
Let’s be clear though. The DASH never worked for child survivors of DVA. It was never designed to. Instead of the community support workers and teams who may have had a children’s support worker, within the IDVA model it was assumed that by supporting the ‘non-abusing parent’ you are supporting the children by proxy- often never actually seeing or speaking to the children. This model had no due consideration for the impact on children of living with enduring, long term, and ‘low or standard risk’ DVA- which longitudinal research tells us has disastrous impacts on children over the life course. Risk of their mother’s murder is the tip of the iceberg for children- yet using this system it was made the core predominant focus.
Many have noted the likely political motivation of the timing of the media attention- probably related to the recent announcement that Safelives and partners have been given £53 million funding for the Drive project. This works as third sector probation extension for high risk high harm perpetrators. So, risk assessment and management is its core business. A team at the University of Bristol have been evaluating this and have found it to be a success. Although a great step forward in perpetrator management this partnership can’t be seen without also a cynical glance at the general failure of state probation services to manage offenders. Plagued by low staff retention, morale, and funding, probation has been on its knees. Particularly after the failed attempts at outsourcing it. As we are seeing now with the critiques of the DASH being levelled at the feminist DVA sector, by taking on failed statutory functions of risk assessment and management, we are also taking on the responsibility for it. As feminist services we really need to problematise whether taking on failed statutory responsibilities also means that we are in less of a position to challenge the status quo. If the state is the funder we are positioned as ‘within’ state apparatus.
Bob Pease (2019) has written about the issue of the mainstreaming and ‘managerial policymaking’ approach to violence against women which has limited and depoliticized responses to male violence. By individualising the issue and deploying an understanding of violence as resulting from risk factors we turn away from the wider problem of patriarchy, male domination, and gender inequality, which are so fundamental to the problem.
Although I think it is important for us as a feminist DVA sector to pull together in the face of politically motivated outside critique, this can’t mean that we don’t critically look within. The DASH (and adjoined MARAC, IDVA systems) were a turning point for what was seen as valuable types of work for front line support, what appears worth commissioning, who deserves support. I think we need to have a conversation about this which goes further than debating alternative risk assessment models.
Instead, I think we need to ask ourselves whether deciding who deserves the most immediate support through a risk assessment framework is moral or fundamentally feminist. By professionalising the sector and embedding risk management as normal practice we played into the hands of commissioners with scarce resources who justify this based on supporting those ‘at most need’ (read: as murder prevention). When actually women and their children need and deserve so much more than this.
Instead of this moment being about which risk assessment is better, we could instead consider whether the risk management focus has gone too far- and that actually we should return to arguing for open-access and open-ended support for all survivors and their children.
References
Pease, B. (2019) Facing Patriarchy: From a Violence Gender Order to a Culture of Peace. London: Zed Books.
Shepard, M. and Pence, E. (1999) Coordinating Community Responses to Domestic Violence: Lessons from Duluth and Beyond. Thousand Oaks, CA.: SAGE Publications.
jadelevell.com 