Implementation evaluation of Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together (DART)

Key findings

Experiences of professionals

Professionals thought the programme was important because it focuses on the relationship between the mother and her child, instead of working with them both in isolation.

After the training, professionals were enthusiastic about DART and said they felt confident about delivering the programme.

Problems delivering DART™

Although eight organisations had been trained, only two were actively delivering DART by April 2017. However, since our data was collected eight organisations have started delivering DART and more have expressed an interest in taking it on.

Professionals reported barriers to running the programme, many of which they did not foresee. These included problems with funding, staffing, transport, venues and issues with taking children out of school.

Improvements to the scaling-up of DART™

Based on our findings, we’ve made improvements to the way we scale-up DART:

• developed stronger assessments to help us find out if organisations are ready to deliver DART
• provide a breakdown of anticipated costs to organisations who are considering taking on the service
• offer more support to tackle challenges which arise
• help organisations to link up with each other so they can share waiting lists, costs and staff members
• organisations are now able to deliver the programme with two volunteers and two staff members (instead of the previous four staff members).