Measuring the effectiveness of UK support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse

Developing effective responses to domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DVSA) is critical. In the UK there are many support interventions and services, primarily provided by the third sector. Previous systematic reviews of the global evidence have found benefits of such interventions on a range of outcomes.

Despite this, there is limited understanding of which exact outcomes and outcome measures are currently being used both within and across DSVA support services and interventions in the UK specifically. Further, existing systematic reviews only focus on a single type of intervention or service, prohibiting comparisons across service types. Many also have only included evidence published in academic journals, potentially limiting and biasing findings.

For their VISION Policy Briefing, Drs Annie Bunce and Sophie Carlisle, carried out two evidence syntheses:

  1. A scoping review to identify, group and explore outcome measures that have been used to assess the effectiveness of UK-based DSVA support interventions or services.
  2. A systematic review to assess the effectiveness of these interventions or services in terms of the most commonly reported outcomes identified in the scoping review.

Findings include:

  1. Outcome measures assessing the effectiveness of support interventions and services are varied and inconsistent.
  2. Where consistent measures have been used, meta-analyses demonstrate potential benefits of UK-based advocacy and outreach services, psychological support interventions, and perpetrator programmes.
  3. Studies and evaluations assessing the effectiveness of support interventions and services are often methodologically flawed.
  4. Conflicting demands and lack of sufficient funding make robust testing and evaluation difficult in the third sector, reflecting a circular challenge.
  5. There was a lack of evidence for certain types of services and interventions (e.g. specialist sexual violence services/Independent Sexual Violence Advisers [ISVAs] and by-and-for services).

Recommendations

Further high-quality research into the effectiveness of DVSA interventions of perpetrator programmes are required, including randomised controlled studies where appropriate and ethical, to improve certainty regarding the effect estimates generated from evidence syntheses. Published protocols, adherence to reporting guidelines such as CONSORT, STROBE and SQUIRE 2.0, and considering and accounting for confounding factors where randomisation is not feasible, will strengthen the research.

Developing a core outcome set via co-production with survivors and service users, practitioners and service providers, commissioners, policy makers and researchers will increase consistency in reported outcomes and create the cohesion.

To download the VISION Policy Briefing: Measuring the effectiveness of support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse in the UK

To cite: Bunce, Annie; Carlisle, Sophie (2025). VISION Policy Briefing: Measuring the effectiveness of support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse in the UK. City, University of London. Report. https://doi.org/10.25383/city.29852984.v1

For further information, please contact Annie at annie.bunce@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Policy Series