Through Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together (DART™), children and mothers can talk to each other about domestic abuse, learn to communicate and rebuild their relationship.
The service, which has been recognised by the Home Office, also provides children and mothers with an opportunity to meet others who have lived through similar experiences.
Over ten weeks, mothers and children aged 7-14 meet for a weekly two-hour group session.
Children and mothers work together for an hour at the start of the group, and then take part in activities in separate groups. At the end of each session, they join together again.
Women learn more about:
They’ll also explore experiences and strategies that can be used as a parent.
Children take part in activities together that help them build their own understanding of domestic abuse and how they’re feeling.
Domestic abuse can both directly and indirectly disrupt the relationship between a parent and their child (Humphreys et al, 2006; Buchanan, 2018). It can have a significant impact on the child’s development, education outcomes and mental health (Holt, Buckley and Whelan, 2008; Stanley, 2011; Szilassy et al, 2017).
> Find out more about the impact of domestic abuse
Abuse can happen in any relationship, and both males and females can be abused or be abusers. However, there is a strong body of evidence demonstrating that females are disproportionately affected by domestic abuse (Office for National Statistics, 2017; SafeLives, 2018).
Because of this, our service focuses on work with mothers and their children. Supporting mothers and their children to rebuild their relationship is critical in helping both to recover from and overcome their experiences (Humphreys et al, 2006).
DART is based on University of Warwick research, ‘Talking to my mum’ (Humphreys et al, 2006), and previous statutory guidance (Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), 2010), which stated that children’s outcomes are improved if the mother is supported to take an active part in the child’s recovery.
It also builds on work undertaken by the Community Group Treatment Programme in Sutton, which focused on working with children but found that sessions where the mothers attended were the most successful (Audit Commission, 2007).
DART is for primary-school children aged 7 to 14 and mothers who have experienced domestic abuse.
Both child and mother need to feel safe enough to participate in DART, which means we can’t work with families if they’re still living with the person who has been abusive.
We’re also supporting organisations to adopt, implement and deliver DART themselves.
Where the NSPCC is delivering DART:
> Find contact details for all our service centres on the NSPCC website
We’re supporting other organisations to adopt, implement and deliver DART themselves. Find out how we can support you to implement and deliver this service locally.
We evaluated Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together (DART™) to see if it helps reduce the impact of domestic abuse on the relationship between mothers and children.
After receiving the DART programme:
Barriers to improvements included:
You can find a full list of evaluation reports for this service in our references and resources section.
The evaluation of DART used a mixed-method approach, with quantitative and qualitative data collected from children, mothers, referrers and DART practitioners. The evaluation measured the impact of the service and also included a process evaluation.
Standardised measures were completed by mothers and children at three time points:
We used questionnaires that measured factors such as:
A small comparison group was included in the study. The comparison group participants were children and young people from a women’s refuge who had attended play therapy to support their recovery from domestic abuse.
The impact of the evaluation was measured by comparing the outcomes of the DART group and comparison group. The longer-term effects of the evaluation were measured by comparing the results of the measures collected at time 3 with the time 1 and time 2 data, to see if any improvements had been maintained over time.
We interviewed a sample of DART practitioners, and mothers and children who attended the service. This helped us identify which aspects of the programme worked well and led to positive outcomes, and which barriers may prevent families from benefitting from DART. Professionals who referred families to DART (such as social workers, health professionals and school staff) also took part in a survey to share their views and experiences of the programme.
The evaluation used the following tools:
Smith, E. (2016) Domestic abuse, recovering together (DART): evaluation report. London: NSPCC.
Stokes, I. (2017) Implementation evaluation of Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together (DART) scale-up: impact and evidence briefing. London: NSPCC.
Smith, E., Belton, E. and Cooke, S. (2020) Impact evaluation of the scale-up of Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together. London: NSPCC.
Audit Commission (2007) Seeing the light: innovation in local public services: London Borough of Sutton: helping children who have witnessed domestic violence (PDF). London: Audit Commission Local Government Case Study, 6.
Buchanan, F. (2018) Mothering babies in domestic violence: beyond attachment theory. London: Routledge.
Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) (2010) Working together to safeguard children: a guide to inter-agency working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (PDF). Nottingham: Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).
Holt, S., Buckley, H. and Whelan, S. (2008) The impact of exposure to domestic violence on children and young people: a review of the literature. Child Abuse and Neglect, 32(8): 797-810.
Home Office (2018) Children affected by domestic abuse to benefit from £8 million fund. [Accessed 12/10/2018].
Humphreys, C. et al (2006) ‘Talking to my mum’: developing communication between mothers and children in the aftermath of domestic violence. Journal of Social Work, 6(1): 53-63.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2017) Domestic abuse in England and Wales: year ending March 2017. Cardiff: Office for National Statistics (ONS).
SafeLives (2018) Latest Marac National Dataset. [Accessed 11/10/2018].
SafeLives (2018) Insights Idva: England and Wales dataset 2016-17: adult independent domestic violence advisor (Idva) services (PDF). Bristol: SafeLives
Stanley, N. (2011) Children experiencing domestic violence: a research review. Totnes: Research in Practice.
Szilassy, E. et al (2017) Making the links between domestic violence and child safeguarding: an evidence-based pilot training for general practice. Health and Social Care in the Community, 25(6): 1722-1732.
