Safeguarding in Adult Social Care and Coercive Control: Perspectives from victims and Adult Social Care Practitioners

Background There is a dearth of research in England directly investigating what impact the criminalisation of coercive control has had on adult safeguarding.

The two-year report by the Vulnerability Knowledge and Practice Programme(Bates et al,. 2022) showed that controlling behaviour was strongly present in both intimate partner homicide and suspected victim-suicide cases, as well as in suicides of women.

Research is required to understand how ASC can continually improve its services, promote good practice, and collaborate effectively to safeguard adults experiencing coercive control (Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman, 2021).

Aims To understand how local authority ASC services undertaking safeguarding processes can better support women with care needs who are victims of coercive control. Research Questions RQ1.

How do different local authorities carry out safeguarding enquiries under s42 of the Care Act 2014 where there are allegations of domestic abuse? RQ2.

What is the nature, patterns and impact of coercive control in the lives of women with care needs, and consequently, their support needs? RQ3. What are their experiences of support from ASC services and to what extent does this meet their needs? RQ4.

How do social workers in ASC understand, recognise and respond to coercive control in the context of adult care assessments and support, including through multi-agency working practices? RQ5.

What (if any) are the gaps and dissonances between the needs of victims/survivors and the support offered by services, and (any) examples of good practice? RQ6.

How can safeguarding processes and ASC support services be adapted to improve responses to victims of coercive control who have care needs?

Methods This will be a phenomenological mixed-method study, using triangulation of data, entailing life/relationship histories with survivors supplemented by case file analysis, followed by semi-structured interviews with ASC professionals.

The study will take the form of 3 work packages, commencing with a scoping review to assess the state of existing literature on coercive control and adult safeguarding.

The 2nd phase will involve interviewing 12 survivors with care needs using life/relationship histories narrative method, supplemented by a document analysis of the safeguarding case files notes to identify emerging gaps, patterns, dissonance and/or correlation between the victims' accounts and practitioners' constructs.

The 3rd phase will involve semi-structured interviews with ASC social workers across two boroughs to explore practitioners' perspectives of service delivery. Interviews will be transcribed and coded for analysis using NVivo software. At each phase, the researcher will consult with the 'lived experience' advisory group.

Anticipated Impact and Dissemination By drawing upon lived experiences of an under-researched category of survivors (women with care needs) and practitioner perspectives, this study will aid a comprehensive phenomenological understanding of the problem to develop research-informed safeguarding protocols for protection planning and client-focussed outcomes in coercive control cases.

Local/national dissemination of recommendations will be through existing applicant and supervisory team networks at: The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS), the London Adults Safeguarding Network, Making Research Count (MRC) and through British Association for Social Workers (BASW) Community care webpages and my PPI&E support groups.