{"id":3705,"date":"2026-09-01T12:14:50","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T12:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/contentosocialhomes.com\/blog\/?p=3705"},"modified":"2026-09-01T12:14:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T12:14:52","slug":"children-are-being-hurt-by-domestic-abuse-and-most-get-no-help-at-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/contentosocialhomes.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/01\/children-are-being-hurt-by-domestic-abuse-and-most-get-no-help-at-all\/","title":{"rendered":"Children Are Being Hurt by Domestic Abuse, and Most Get No Help At All"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Scotland, 276 children were referred to police or social work last year because of domestic abuse in their home. That’s up from 217 the year before, according to NSPCC Scotland, and the charity says referrals have risen 73% since it began recording this figure in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The children behind those numbers are rarely the ones people picture when they think about domestic abuse. NSPCC caseworkers describe children who stop sleeping, who become aggressive or withdrawn, who fall behind at school. One mother told the charity that after living through her ex-husband’s abuse, her children “didn’t really behave like children at all.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the research shows<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Women’s Aid, which has tracked child deaths linked to domestic abuse for three decades, published a report in 2025 called Nineteen More Child Homicides<\/em>. It documents 19 children in England and Wales killed by a parent over the past nine years, in cases where that parent was a known perpetrator of domestic abuse. The killings happened during contact visits, some arranged by family courts, some informal. Over 30 years, Women’s Aid has recorded 67 such deaths in total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Women’s Aid argues the pattern is not random. Its researchers say professionals repeatedly underestimated how dangerous coercive and controlling behaviour can be, and assumed a man who abused his partner could still be a safe father. That is the charity’s interpretation of the cases it reviewed, not a finding of any inquest or court. On the strength of it, Women’s Aid is campaigning to remove the legal presumption that children should have contact with both parents, in cases involving domestic abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Separately, Women’s Aid says a woman is killed by a current or former partner roughly once a week in England and Wales, and that only around one in ten child victims of domestic abuse gets support from a refuge or community service. If that figure holds across the country, the great majority of children affected by abuse are not being reached by any support service at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where families go when they leave<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Leaving is rarely the end of the danger for a mother and her children. It’s often the point where the most practical, least visible problem takes over: where do they sleep tonight, and can they stay there safely for more than a few nights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the work Contento Social Homes does. We house women and children after they have left an abusive home, and we stay involved past the first night in a refuge bed, through the period where a family is trying to rebuild something stable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one-in-ten figure from Women’s Aid is a national estimate, but the shape of the problem it describes, women and children who need somewhere safe and can’t get it fast enough, is the same shape we see in our own referrals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The response, and what’s missing<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Family courts are under renewed pressure from Women’s Aid to change how contact is decided when domestic abuse is known. Domestic abuse charities more broadly have said for years that funding for specialist support has not kept pace with demand. Neither of those things has changed yet. In the meantime, the referral numbers keep going up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Housing is the part of this we can do something about directly. If you can support that work, whether by donating, referring a woman who needs somewhere safe, or simply passing this on to someone who can help, that’s what moves a family from the one-in-ten who get help to the majority who currently don’t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources<\/h2>\n\n\n\n