I remember having a one-hour lecture on domestic abuse, I had pretty much no mention of coercive control during my training,” says social worker Cintia. “It didn’t prepare us for what was coming. You feel like you’re thrown into the deep end. After five years on the job, she estimates about 90% of her caseload is linked to psychological and controlling abuse, yet her university course barely mentioned it.
Coercive and controlling behavior (CCB) has been a criminal offence in the UK since 2015. It isolates and harms victims using psychological abuse, and is now accepted to underpin all domestic abuse. Campaigners say understanding CCB is vital. However, nine years on from the law change, a BBC investigation has found more than a third of accredited university social work courses in England are not teaching specific training on coercive control.
As for those who said they did offer training – courses could be up to 20 hours or as little as one hour.
The regulator, Social Work England, says it inspects these courses to ensure they meet professional standards for safe practice. The domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales has described our findings as “baffling” and has called for mandatory levels of coercive-control training for all social workers. Sadly we have two homicides every week that relate to domestic abuse. We have to get this right from the start, not learning on the job,” says Nicole Jacobs.
More than 43,000 coercive control offences were recorded by police in England and Wales in the year to March 2023 – the highest number since it became a crime nearly a decade ago. While men are affected too, research suggests women are more likely to be victims of coercive control.
Source: BBC
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