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The economic burden of child maltreatment and co-occurring parental domestic violence and abuse in the UK

Child maltreatment (CM) and parental domestic violence and abuse (pDVA) impose considerable lifelong adverse outcomes on those affected. Approximately 8.5 million adults in England and Wales are estimated to have been exposed to CM (physical, sexual or emotional abuse or emotional or physical neglect of a child by a parent or caregiver) before their 16th birthday. Despite sharing multiple family and environmental risk factors, the economic burden of child exposure where they co-occur has not previously been estimated in detail.

VISION researcher Professor Gene Feder estimated average lifetime societal costs resulting from CM or childhood exposure to pDVA, and incremental costs for scenarios where they co-occur with lead researcher Dr Kevin Gilbert at the University of Cambridge and others.

The findings showed that lifetime costs for childhood exposure to CM and/or pDVA, were £71,309 per child (non-fatal exposure), and £1,292,377 per CM fatality, with £27.8 billion projected costs (2013 UK birth cohort).

Total costs for exposure to pDVA alone was £1.0 billion (£16,639 per child exposed), rising to £2.0 billion (£71,037 per exposed child) for children reporting awareness of pDVA. Co-occurring CM and pDVA imposed greater costs than either alone, including costs from child perpetration of intimate partner violence.

As a result of the research the team concluded that CM and/or pDVA exposure incurs large personal and societal economic burdens. Costs from both pDVA exposure and intergenerational transmission of IPV perpetration highlight the importance for policies to address both CM and domestic violence and abuse in affected households.

Given the scale of burden accrued over the life course after CM and/or pDVA exposure, this model can provide a framework upon which policy makers can identify the best use of resources to maximise the societal benefits from the effective interventions needed to tackle a complex social issue.

To download the article: The economic burden of child maltreatment and co-occurring parental domestic violence and abuse in the UK

To cite: Herbert K, Feder G, Gilbert R, Powell C, Howarth E, Morris S. The economic burden of child maltreatment and co-occurring parental domestic violence and abuse in the UK. Child Abuse Negl. 2025 Mar 31;163:107435. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2025.107435. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 40168916.

For further information, please contact Kevin at kch28@medschl.cam.ac.uk

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COVID-19 adaptations to a training and support programme to improve primary care response to domestic abuse

Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, VISION Deputy Director has recently published, COVID-19 adaptations to a training and support programme to improve primary care response to domestic abuse: a mixed methods rapid study in the BMC Primary Care journal, with Lucy Downes, IRIS Network Director.

Increased incidence and/or reporting of domestic abuse (DA) occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the lockdowns across the UK, services providing support to victims had to adapt and consider adding methods of remote outreach to their programmes.

Identification and Referral to Improve Safety (IRIS) is a programme to improve the response to domestic abuse in general practice, providing training for general practice teams and support for patients affected by DA. The COVID-19 pandemic required those running the programme to adapt to online training and remote support.

Estela and Lucy employed a mixed methods rapid approach to this research in order to gather evidence around the relevance, desirability and acceptability of IRIS operating remotely. Quantitative IRIS referral data were triangulated with data from surveys and interviews. They found that the adaptation to online training and support of IRIS was acceptable and desirable.

This study contributes to practice by asserting the desirability and acceptability of training clinicians to be able to identify, ask about DA and refer to the IRIS programme during telephone/online consultations. The findings from this study may be of interest to (public) health commissioners when making commissioning decisions to improve the general practice response to domestic abuse.

For further information please see: COVID-19 adaptations to a training and support programme to improve primary care response to domestic abuse: a mixed methods rapid study | BMC Primary Care (springer.com)

Or contact Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa at e.capelasbarbosa@bristol.ac.uk

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Podcast on police and domestic violence publication

Hear VISION Senior Research Fellow, Ruth Weir, in conversation with Jackie Turton, University of Essex, as they discuss their recent publication, Policing Domestic Violence: Risk, Policy, and Practice, with Jules Pretty of The Louder than Words podcast series.

Ruth and Jackie collaborated with two serving police officers, Kate Barrow-Grint and Jacqueline Sebire, to write a book that improves police force understanding of the dynamics of how domestic abuse occurs, how best to respond to and investigate it, and, in the longer term, how to prevent it.

It is a unique collaboration of real-life policing experience blended with the latest academic research and best practice to update some of the theoretical analysis and to highlight areas of good practice like what works and why.

To listen to the podcast please see: The Louder than Words podcast

Or contact Ruth at ruth.weir@city.ac.uk

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Webinar: Parental and child mental health and intimate partner violence

This webinar is in the past.

27 June 2023, 17:00 – 18:30 BST, Zoom

VISION director, Professor Gene Feder, led the webinar, Interrelationships between parental mental health, intimate partner violence and child mental health – implications for practice, with Dr Shabeer Syed and Dr Claire Powell on behalf of the NIHR Children and Families Policy Research Unit.

They presented findings from a mixed methods study that seeks to improve responses to families affected by intimate partner violence (IPV) and parents and children’s mental health problems.

Then, they presented preliminary findings on the relationship between parental IPV and a range of clinically relevant adversity and mental health-related indicators (www.acesinehrs.com) in anonymised health records from parents and children presenting to GPs, A&E and hospital admissions between one year before and five years after birth.

Their research shows that 1 in 5 (20%) families experienced IPV, although only 1 in 50 (2%) had IPV recorded in the GP record. Recording of other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) was better, with 1 in 2 (53.4%) families having at least one recorded in the early life course. Compared to families without ACEs, families with ACEs had a higher risk of parental IPV, especially when at least one parent and child had recorded a mental health problem. Gene will discuss the implications of these findings for national guidance on supporting families experiencing IPV and mental health problems, articulating how data already within medical records can help identify those families.

For further information please see: Interrelationships between parental mental health, intimate partner violence and child mental health – implications for practice – ACAMH

Photo by Sebastián León Prado on Unsplash

Reducing the impact of parental intimate partner violence

A fifth of children in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children experienced parental intimate partner violence in early childhood. This analysis sought to identify which positive experiences might reduce the chances that such children would go on to develop depressive symptoms in adolescence.

VISION Interim Director, Professor Gene Feder, collaborated with Bristol University colleagues. They found that exposure to parental intimate partner violence in early childhood was associated with more depressive symptoms at age 18.

Most positive experiences were linked with lower levels of depressive symptoms regardless of parental intimate partner violence exposure. However, among those exposed to parental intimate partner violence, this association was found only for relationships with peers, school enjoyment, neighbourhood safety and cohesion on depressive symptoms.

Interventions aiming to nurture positive relationships with peers, school experiences and neighbourhood safety and cohesion have the potential to improve adolescent depression, including among those exposed to parental intimate partner violence.

For further information please see: Factors mitigating the harmful effects of intimate partner violence on adolescents’ depressive symptoms: a longitudinal birth cohort study — University of Bristol or contact Gene at gene.feder@bristol.ac.uk