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    Training for HR & Management Staff

    HR Training Enquiry

    How NCDV helps employers

    Domestic abuse is complex and difficult to navigate without specialist knowledge, but it’s important that employers appreciate the health & safety, legislative, moral and ethical concerns of a business or organisation.

    Our HR Toolkit provides awareness of how to support employees, mitigate against serious incidents, and create a positive culture around domestic abuse. We specialise in short training sessions and are experts at delivering essential knowledge in a relatively short timeframe.

    NCDV can help employers understand the part they play in a civil protection order and their reporting requirements if the order is breached. We also focus on the nuts and bolts of assessing and managing the risks to staff and business assets. We can deliver this training in just four hours.

    HR Toolkit 1

    Domestic Abuse is an employer’s concern

    The following statistics demonstrate why domestic abuse is an employer issue:

    £66 billion

    ¹The social and economic costs of domestic abuse are estimated to be £66 billion. Around £14 billion is cost to the economy from lost output.

    24%

    ² Only 24% of employers have a policy or structured support in place.

    75%

    ³ 75% of women experiencing domestic abuse are targeted at work. Other colleagues can be caught up in these scenarios.
    Victims often flee to an undisclosed address, so the workplace is the one reliable place a perpetrator can find them.
    Domestic abuse in the workplace is a Health & Safety concern. Disturbances and threats can harm productivity and reputation, as well as put employees at risk.

    Appropriately responding to domestic abuse in the workplace is likely to improve unplanned absences, improve productivity, increase employee relationships, and reduce risk to the organisation.

    1Home Office (2019) The Economic and Social Costs of Domestic Abuse

    2EHRC and CIPD (2020) Managing and Supporting Employees Experiencing Domestic Abuse

    3Equality and Human Rights Commission Domestic Abuse: Workplace polices and managing and supporting employees

    What our training includes

    • An introduction to the course
    • Awareness of domestic abuse, its prevalence and effects
    • The impact of domestic abuse in the workplace
    • Dealing with disclosures, and with abusers in the workforce
    • The role of NCDV & civil protection orders
    • Signposting to other services
    • Assessing and managing risks to employees, the public and the business
    • Understanding employer safeguarding, moral & legal responsibilities
    • Developing internal policy & procedure
    • Developing a positive internal culture around domestic abuse

     

    We will also introduce you to our partner organisation, Alpha Vesta, who offer comprehensive CPD accredited training for employers who wish to extend their knowledge further. You can read about them at https://alphavesta.com/

    How it works

    Our competitive introductory offer gives you access for a whole year to:

    Training for HR or Managers

    Access to qualified and experienced staff should you require advice

    A template domestic abuse policy

    A quarterly newsletter focusing on domestic abuse within the workplace

    Your initial training and first year subscription is just £750, with subsequent years (should you wish to continue) charged at £500. Further training if required £250 per hour session.

    Our training is aimed at HR staff and Managers in a range of organisations and sectors. Examples include care, retail, financial services, manufacturing and local authorities.

    Enquire Today

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    Latest News

    Privacy, Data & Cookie Policy. Centre for Domestic Abuse and Violence CIC Reg. 11159687

    Website by e-innovate

    By Fiona Bawden, Times Online (8th May 2007)

    “Steve Connor, a student at City Law School, is a man on a mission. Six years ago he was a fairly directionless 27-year-old. Today, as well as taking the Bar Vocational Course, he is chairman of the National Centre for Domestic Violence, a ground-breaking organisation that he dragged into existence after a friend could not get legal help to protect her from an abusive partner.

    Connor’s route to the Bar has been circuitous. In 2001 he returned from a year in Australia (he says that he would not dignify describing it as a gap year), and took a job as a process server in South London. The job (“I just saw it advertised in the paper”) was not quite as dull as it sounds. On one occasion he was threatened with a machete, on another, he was nearly stabbed by a man he had arranged to meet on Clapham Common to serve with a non-molestation order: “He’d seemed really friendly on the phone…”

    The turning point in his life came when a friend, who was being abused by her partner, turned to him for support. Connor went with her to the police. She did not want to press criminal charges so the police suggested that she visit a solicitor to take out a civil injunction. “We must have seen 12 solicitors in a morning. We just went from one to the next to the next to the next. Everyone was very eager to help until we sat down to fill in the forms for the legal aid means test,” he says. The woman, who had a small child, did not qualify for public funding. But, Connor says, her financial situation as it appeared on paper did not bear any relation to her financial situation in reality. “She had a part-time job and she and her partner owned their home. Yet she didn’t have any money. Her boyfriend was very controlling and controlled all the money; he kept the chequebooks and didn’t let her have access to the bank account.”

    The injustice of the situation got under Connor’s skin. “I just couldn’t believe that there was no help available to people who did not qualify for public funds but could not afford to pay.

    I just kept feeling that this must be able to be sorted if only someone would address it.”That “someone” turned out to be him.

    In 2002, thanks entirely to Connor’s doggedness, the London Centre for Domestic Violence was formed. It started out with him and a friend, but is now a national organisation, covering 27 counties, and has helped approximately 10,000 victims last year to take out injunctions against their partners.

    NCDV now has nine full-time staff, 12 permanent volunteers and has trained over 5000 law and other students as McKenzie Friends to accompany unrepresented victims into court. We have also trained over 8000 police officers in civil remedies available regarding domestic violence. The National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV) has branches in London, Guildford and Manchester and is on track to have branches in 16 areas within the next two years.

    NCDV specialises exclusively in domestic violence work and could be characterised as a cross between McDonald’s and Claims Direct. The high degree of specialisation means that its processes are streamlined: clients can be seen quickly and the work is done speedily and cheaply. “Sometimes, we will have one of our trained McKenzie Friends at a court doing 10 applications in one day,” Connor says.

    Clients are not charged for the service. NCDV staff take an initial statement: clients who qualify for legal aid are referred to a local firm; those that don’t get free help from the centre itself. It runs on a shoestring, heavily reliant on volunteers and capping staff salaries at £18,000 a year.

    Steve expects to qualify as a barrister this summer and hopes that having a formal legal qualification will give the centre added clout. “We are already acknowledged as experts and consulted at a high level, so I thought it would be helpful if I could back that up by being able to say I’m a barrister,” he says. He is just about to complete a one-year full-time BVC course at the City Law School (formerly the Inns of Court Law School) and, all being well, should be called to the Bar in July. Although Connor sees his long-term future as a barrister, he says that he has no immediate plans to practise. “I want to get NCDV running on a fully national level. Then I may take a step back and have a career at the Bar.”