Community safety (health and wellbeing needs in South Tyneside)
Unmet needs
- South Tyneside currently has one full time Independent Domestic Violence Adviser. However, based on the current volume of high risk cases being discussed at MARAC, Safe Lives recommends that we have a total of three IDVAs to safely manage the risk of that caseload.
- The Women's Refuge declines two-thirds (66%) of the referrals it receives, 64% of which are as a result of the scheme being full.
- The Borough currently has no specialist support services for discrete community groups (e.g. people from minority ethnic backgrounds, LGBT, etc.) either within existing services or as stand alone services.
- Government's Ending Violence Against Women Strategy recognises that "abused women use health care services more than non-abused women and they identify health care workers as the professionals they would be most likely to speak to about their experience". As a result, it is promoting a model to provide Domestic Violence and abuse training, support and referral programme to support GPs in asking about and responding to such disclosures. However, South Tyneside has lost its recently established specialist GP Domestic Abuse Link Worker, which had resulted in a 540% increase in referrals from GP practices to the Options / IDVA service. As a result, we have lost the different paradigms of care that were offered, which extended beyond the traditional medical models.
- There is a need to provides support for families where young people who perpetrate violence against parent / carers which can then lead to parents asking for their children to be accommodated by the Local Authority.
- A lack of focus on Looked After Children who offend is an area of concern.
