Deputy Chief Constable awarded Practitioner in Residence at Violence and Society Centre
City St George’s, UoL, offers a Practitioner in Residence programme at the School for Policy and Global Affairs. It is for mid-level and senior policy practitioners within the UK and provides a platform to grow and explore their practice in partnership with the school.
Katy Barrow-Grint, Deputy Chief Constable in Gloucestershire and an executive leader in national policing, became aware of the opportunity via her work with VISION Senior Research Fellow, Dr Ruth Weir, on the VISION adolescent domestic abuse (ADA) research programme. Having recently written a book entitled ‘Policing Domestic Abuse’ with Ruth and others, the research identified a national gap academically and in policing with how ADA is understood.
Katy’s focus will be on how police constabularies document ADA and developing a better understanding of the impact of the statutory age limitations on the practical work police officers do on the front line.
Forces do not routinely record ADA as the statutory guidance states that domestic abuse occurs in relationships where both parties are aged 16 or over. As a result, whilst crimes against young people will be recorded and investigated, they are not necessarily classified as domestic abuse, and it may be that child protection, domestic abuse or front-line response teams deal with the case.
Her project work will seek to understand how forces are recording such incidents, and what type of officer and role is investigating. Katy will work with policing nationally through the National Police Chief‘s Council (NPCC) domestic abuse and child protection portfolios and collate an up-to-date picture across all forces in England and Wales to understand how they are recording and who is investigating ADA.
Katy is also undertaking specific localised work in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Northumbria, hosting roundtables with Dr Ruth Weir and practitioners from all relevant agencies to gain a qualitative understanding of the problems staff encounter when dealing with ADA.
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