Samantha Keogh and Jenny Smith-Littlejohn from the Improvement Service (IS) Protecting People team reflect on their recent visit to the European Conference on Domestic Violence.
The European Conference on Domestic Violence (ECDV) brings together practitioners, policy makers and researchers working to address domestic violence and abuse across Europe, and beyond, and takes place every two years. The conference is an opportunity for practitioners, policy makers and researchers to learn from each other and exchange ideas and practice, the 2025 conference took place in Barcelona with 1400 registered delegates.
Samantha Keogh and Jenny Smith-Littlejohn from the Improvement Service (IS) Protecting People team had the opportunity to attend the conference to present on two of the teams’ projects; the Authentic Voice Project (a partnership project with SafeLives) and Embedding Domestic Abuse Informed Systems. This was an opportunity for the IS to share learning from our work supporting Scotland’s local authorities to create systems and services that are informed by the lived experience of victims and survivors, and help to improve outcomes for children and families experiencing domestic abuse.
Embedding Domestic Abuse Informed Systems
Alongside Anna Mitchell, Subject Matter Lead at the Safe & Together Institute, the IS presented on our work supporting 12 local authorities across Scotland, funded through the Scottish Government’s Delivering Equally Safe (DES) Fund, to generate learning on the impact their work to embed the Safe & Together Model across their local areas is having on the long-term ambition to embed domestic abuse-informed systems, services and workforces across Scotland.
We were able to share key learning and reflections from our year three learning report - Implementing Safe & Together in Scotland: Creating Domestic Abuse-Informed Workforces, Services and Systems - about the work that the 12 local authorities and partnerships supported through the DES fund are progressing to embed the Safe & Together Model across their local areas and organisations, and the emerging impact of this work. We also reflected on some of the recommendations from these 12 local areas on priorities for future development and next steps for the development of a Scottish delivery model for Safe & Together.
The Authentic Voice project
The Authentic Voice Project is a collaboration between the Improvement Service and Safe Lives. The Authentic Voice Project is overseen and informed by the Authentic Voice Panel, a group of women with lived experience of domestic abuse, dedicated to ensuring that survivor voice is at the heart and start of services, policy, and strategy. The project has developed an ongoing toolkit of resources and has developed improvement support for local authority workforces in Scotland to support meaningful participation work with people affected by violence, abuse and other forms of trauma.
Improvement Service and SafeLives presented at the ECDV on the learning from the Authentic Voice project’s engagement activities and the development of resources. It was also a great opportunity to connect with other stakeholders at the conference around examples of research and practice which have been informed by survivors in various contexts, and to share key learning around this work.
Take-away reflections
The conference was a great opportunity to take part in knowledge exchange and discussion with other domestic abuse and VAWG practitioners and researchers from across Scotland, Europe and beyond, and to promote the Improvement Service collaborative approach to improvement planning. We enjoyed hearing about all the work happening to generate new learning around what works to address and prevent domestic abuse and wider forms of VAWG and to connect with other researchers and practitioners to reflect on future priorities and areas for development. There were opportunities to hear about both ongoing and emerging challenges in the prevention and eradication of VAWG, such as data challenges and the increasing risk of digital violence. There were also many examples of innovative approaches to collaboration and inspiring projects to learn from.
In two years time the conference is moving to Dublin and we are already considering the learning from our current projects to bring there!