Kieran Findlay

Hello and welcome to the Scottish Housing News Podcast with me, Kieran Findlay, the editor of Scottish Housing News and former Dundee Housing convener, Jimmy Black.

Domestic abuse has long been on the agenda for many in the social housing sector. Even before CIH presidents, Alison Inman and Jim Strang, championed the Make a Stand campaign back in 2018, social landlords have been challenged to do what they can to provide support for people experiencing domestic abuse within their communities.

Jimmy Black

But now, through the current Housing Bill, this support is about to become mandatory. Under the proposed legislation, social landlords will have to provide support to tenants experiencing rent arrears or risk of homelessness due to domestic abuse, and to publish a policy on how it will exercise these functions. We’re assuming, of course, that the Scottish Government will still continue with this part of the Bill following the change of First Minister.

Kieran Findlay

So today we’ve invited an expert panel to help us explore what a domestic abuse policy could entail and the key role that social landlords could have in tackling the issue. Michelle Meldrum is the chief executive at Berwickshire Housing Association. Eileen McMullan is policy lead at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations. And returning to the podcast is Sophie Berry, a solicitor at Govan Law Centre.

Jimmy Black

Michelle, can we start with you?

The 2019 Good Practice Guide for social landlords dealing with domestic abuse suggested that irregular rent payments and arrears can indicate that something’s going on and landlords need to manage their response carefully. The bill tries to address that issue. So can you tell us how you currently support people who are experiencing abuse and how the bill will change your approach, if at all? Yeah, can do.

Michelle Meldrum

I think before we get into the specifics, I think it’s important to maybe just take a step back and just kind of consider some of the context of domestic abuse, which really supports the reason, I think, why organisations such as ourselves should be involved. So the first thing on that, I think, is that domestic abuse is kind of no respecter of wealth, status, position, gender, ethnicity, and so on. So anyone can be a victim of domestic abuse. And I think, you know, if we think about the colleagues we work with, the customer base we work with, there’ll be many of those people who are experiencing domestic abuse at any one time. So I think it’s important that we kind of understand that.

Quite a stark statistic is that two women in the UK are murdered every week due to domestic abuse. And I think the other related factor here, which doesn’t often get spoken about, is that even more women commit suicide every week due to domestic abuse. So there are at least five women a week are dying in the UK due to domestic abuse

I think one of the critical points for me before I go on to the specifics is that some of the Police Scotland statistics, so the last statistics I’ve got from a couple of years ago was there were 65,000 reports of domestic abuse to Police Scotland and nearly 90% of those took place in a home. So, you know, given that it’s our core business to provide homes we’re social landlords, we own homes, we provide homes for families, we have responsibilities to tenants. And regardless of kind of regulation and legislation, I think we have a moral obligation to support our tenants who live in our homes who are experiencing domestic abuse.

So, yeah, so I think I just kind of help set the scene, but more specifically in terms of what I think landlords can do. So on the rent areas issue, there are some great research actually out there around domestic abuse are much more likely to be in arrears than those who are not experiencing domestic abuse. There’s some Safe Life research out there, there’s some CIH research out there as well which kind of supports that.

So I think there’s a range of things that we can do. I mean just on the financial inclusion part, I think a lot of organisations now do have specialist financial inclusion teams, specialist teams, and I think it’s important they are aware of kind of the signs of domestic abuse. Just asking the right questions really in terms of getting to the root cause of what the debt and the rent arrears may be around. So we know that the definition of domestic abuse is broader than physical abuse and it does include financial abuse now.

So yeah, so I think it’s about building up relationships with your customers, which is what we try to do, our overall delivery model means that our frontline neighbourhood staff have really small patches of around 250 homes and then they are supported by specialist financial inclusion officers who can get more involved where there is a specific or more complex benefit or debt issue and being able to spot the signs of domestic abuse not just from what the person says but perhaps from their broader behaviour, the broader interactions, what’s going on in the home, specific repairs that they may observe, punch holes in doors, broken door locks, broken windows, et cetera. They’re all potentially indications that domestic violence is happening behind closed doors. And, you know, it’s just kind of us getting in there early and working with key partners to try and do something about it with the customer.

Jimmy Black

So Michelle, like every other RSL and council landlord, Berwickshire Housing Association is going to have to publish a domestic abuse policy. Well, you’ve done that already. You’re already a leader in tackling domestic abuse. Can you tell us about what’s in your policy and again, how the bill will extend or change what you already do?

Michelle Meldrum

Definitely. We work across the borders with the other RSLs to have a unified approach because we’re all relatively small. We feel that’s a much more kind of joined up way to do things and it’s really helpful to have that broader customer base and broader staff base to check in with. So in terms of some of the key components that we have in our unified policy, we have a section around preventing homelessness. So you’re probably aware that domestic abuse is the biggest cause of homelessness for women in Scotland. So it’s obviously important that we have a focus on that.

We have a section around having effective approaches to early intervention. I mentioned one there around spotting the signs, you know, building up relationships and so on. We’ve got a section around providing effective housing solutions and obviously that needs to be tailored to the individual case and the individual situation. We’ve got something in there around effective signposting. Clearly we’re not experts on this, but we have relationships and partnerships with those who are.

I’ve got something in there about always ensuring that the victim is at the centre of any approach, so the centre of any joined up support plan with partners, that they are customer led and that the customer is obviously very comfortable with the approach that’s being taken. Then we’ve got something around supporting and enabling colleagues to make sure they’re confident to safely respond and safely report any evidence or disclosures of domestic abuse.

And then there’s something in there about signposting and information sharing and also recognising where there’s alignment with other policies. So child safeguarding, adult and child protection, EDI and so on. So that’s just the kind of the headlines that we have within our policy for customers.

We also have a colleague policy, which I think it’s important to say that as responsible employers, I feel that we should also have a policy for our staff as well, which we do have. And again, the four RSLs across the Borders we work together on that. And we produced our first unified staff policy last year. And one of the features of that, I’ll not talk too much about that, but one of the features is that we have a staff network, a staff support network across the four. So that, you know, if a colleague from my organisation didn’t want to disclose or talk to anybody in BHA, they can reach out to the domestic abuse workplace support volunteers across the other three and have a confidential conversation in a safe environment with somebody effectively they may not know, but it just gives them another option to have a safe conversation and that’s working really well and we’ll be developing that further over the next few months.

Kieran Findlay

That’s great Michelle, thanks for providing that context and sharing the great work that’s going on in the Borders region. Eileen, the SFHA has said that it supports the principal sale in the Housing Bill but also that it has concerns about the resources required to implement them. Could you tell us more about that?

Eileen McMullan

Yeah, I think Michelle’s already said that what it needs is a sort of real concerted effort, I think, in multi-agency response across housing associations and the wider sector. And I think practice does vary quite a lot over across the country. So I think one of the big concern that we have, and it’s really around the homeless prevention duties more broadly, as well as the domestic abuse provisions, is that there doesn’t appear to be adequate resource to support the kind of change that we’re looking at across the sector. I mean, I think a lot of the practices around domestic abuse are in place in a lot of housing associations, but not all. And there is a lot, there is work to do in terms of training, support, investment in staff and, as I said, the wider sector to make sure they’re actually able to respond to domestic abuse.

We’ve done quite a lot of work over the last few years, just trying to tease out what the issues or some of the issues might be. And it’s really interesting because there’s a really strong sense of commitment across the sector and the people that we’ve spoken to to be able to tackle issues around homelessness, domestic abuse. But sometimes I think people feel a bit ill-prepared in terms of actually dealing with that. So I think there is a lot more attention needed to find the kind of resources and support that people need to actually intervene effectively and support women.

There’s a couple of, I mean, there’s been quite a lot of work and research done. Tenancy sustainment services are really key in terms of supporting women who have to move or even sometimes where they stay put in order to support them to tackle some of the issues that are left outstanding from their experiences. Tenancy sustainment, housing support, the breadth of services that people need, but also the links into the other services, which often are sadly, I think, lacking, largely because of the pressures that other agencies are facing across the board after quite a long period of efficiency savings across the various sectors.

So I think, really the principles are really good. They’re really important principles to establish. I guess our concern is we can have great legislation, but that needs to be backed up by support across the sector to make sure that that can happen.

And we’re already taking, we’ve had some discussions with Scottish Women’s Aid to look at what support we might be able to develop. So we’re still at the early stages of that. Because Michelle’s work in Berwickshire is, I mean, we would see that as really, really strong, really, really good practice. Can that be replicated in other areas? Probably not in every area. But certainly if we can look at how we might be able to support networks to develop housing associations to share their practice and develop their practice together, that could be one way of doing it.

So as I said, we’re at the early stages of this. I think it’s quite important to make sure that our members are supported to do to develop that practice and comply with the legislation that will be in place.

Kieran Findlay

Do you think it could have gone further? Could more have been done on tenancy rights or other areas?

Eileen McMullan

Well, there is still a bit of legislation that’s still to be enacted from previous, I think it’s the Domestic Abuse Protection Act 2021. Correct me if I’m wrong about that. And the government haven’t yet implemented the provision that allows joint tenancies to end of the tendency to remain with the victim or survivor of domestic abuse. I think it’s still possible for organisations to get around or to address that in different ways. But I think that would help and that would give RSLs confidence, I think, when there are issues in relation to joint tenancies. I mean, that would be one thing I would say that’s quite key.

Jimmy Black

There is provision in this bill to allow one joint tenant to give notice to another joint tenant and get out of the tenancy. So maybe that’s beginning to happen. Maybe that’s a response to the report that you mentioned.

Eileen McMullan

Yeah, although I think sometimes those kind of decisions should they almost need to be taken out of people’s hands because it can make situations worse potentially. And if the landlord is unable to able to initiate that, that would be a much better option, I think.

Jimmy Black

Okay, Sophie, as a solicitor, you assist women who are experiencing homelessness and women who are experiencing domestic abuse as well. What are the extra challenges, legal and otherwise, when women experience both?

Sophie Berry

I think all of the things that Michelle’s mentioned already has gone through that women face when they’re experiencing or have experienced domestic abuse. Obviously, women are, that’s the lead cause of homelessness for women is domestic abuse. Some of the challenges they face are, well, exactly that, whether to stay in the house or not, whether they can work with the housing association to remove the perpetrator rather than themselves. If they may have children, for example, who are at local schools, those are the sorts of things that can be really top priority for women, even if they’re experiencing domestic abuse.

A lot of the time, I think housing associations, I mean, hopefully this is changing. It does seem to be changing, but jump to the conclusion that she must leave and get away from the situation when that isn’t always the best outcome for her or the children. I think, yeah, as Michelle was talking about financial abuse as well, that can be a really big difficulty for women who are at risk of losing their tenancy because of arrears, for example, which, you know, it can be deliberate sometimes by the perpetrator to create arrears.

And sometimes it’s not easy for them to talk to their housing officers necessarily about what is going on. And sometimes they feel like the risk of leaving is actually a lot higher than the risk of staying and managing the situation with the perpetrator where they know what his reactions are likely to be rather than trying to uproot everything. The risk is the fear of what could happen if they make a big change. So all of these things, I think it’s really important when we’re dealing with women experiencing domestic abuse or who have experienced domestic abuse, are at risk of it. Each individual case is so different. It’s so important to take the lead from the woman herself because she understands the risks better than anybody else and what the best outcome for the family is. Sometimes that’s homelessness, but sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s staying in the house. It really does depend on the individual circumstances, I think.

Jimmy Black

Some of the research which has been supplied to housing associations, to RSLs in general, suggests that women are more likely to have lower incomes than men, that they have less control over the finances of the household. And of course you provide free legal advice to people. But then there’s not many agencies like Govan Law Centre around the country. Is there a lack of legal services here which women can afford to help them get out of situations that they are stuck in?

Sophie Berry

Absolutely, there is, I think, and that especially if women are looking at getting legal aid, it can be really complicated if there’s financial abuse because they may in theory have assets, but in practice not actually have access to them, which means that they may struggle to get legal aid. Our service is completely free, but as you said, there’s a lack of those, a lack of services for women in these circumstances.

And also just a lack of information. Women may not be aware of what services are available to them and the fear of losing everything. If you go down the homeless route or if you’re trying to apply for housing, you might be worried that you own a house, but you can’t stay in that house because the perpetrator is in the house or you can’t get access to the funds because he controls all of the finances and joint benefits claims. All of those things make it really difficult for women to access services to help them escape that situation.

Jimmy Black

Now, you’re not a landlord. Michelle’s a landlord and Eileen is the representative of many landlords. So from your perspective, you’ve got direct experience of the way that landlords attempt to assist people who have experienced domestic abuse. So can you give us some examples of good practice and maybe also cases where landlords could have done better?

Sophie Berry

I think I’m trying to think of the best example of the trouble is most of the time when people come to us, it’s because it’s been a bad example. So we do tend to see the worst examples. But sometimes when we engage with how the associations they do do exactly that. It is I think about partnership working as well to for individual solutions for clients. So we have had clients who once we’ve approached the housing association have acknowledged the situation that women are in. Transfer requests, prioritising clients. There can be really good practice, depending on who you’re dealing with, and a sensitive response to someone’s situation. Most of the examples that we see, obviously, when people come to us when there’s a problem. So a lot of the bad examples would be housing associations immediately saying, “this is a homelessness issue”, or “this is a police problem” and “it isn’t appropriate for us to deal with this”.

There are some housing associations as well that don’t prioritise domestic abuse highly enough within their allocation policies. I would say I’ve seen housing associations who rank domestic abuse alongside under occupancy, for example, as not a top priority. Obviously, it would seem to me a much more urgent situation if someone is at risk of violence than if their house is under occupied. And we do get a lot of housing associations not necessarily handling the situation very well when women don’t respond in the way that they expect them to respond. They say, “well, if you’re that afraid, why haven’t you left?” “Why are you trying to stay in the house?” Or “why are you still engaging with the perpetrator?” Which I think just reflects a lack of understanding about coercive control, as we were talking about earlier, I think.

Eileen McMullan

That kind of demonstrates why we kind of want to able to think about what support we can offer RSLs around this because it’s quite interesting because we’ve been running quite a few workshops at our events and discussions at forums and I think one of the kind of quite common messages that comes through is that a kind of lack of confidence sometimes in actually dealing with the problem which highlights to me that people, you know, that we need to invest in supporting staff as well as kind of being able to support tenants who are experiencing domestic abuse.

And it’s quite interesting, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this Sophie, but I know that Almond Housing Association is another example of where there’s really good practice, but it’s not always been the case and they would say that because when they did their early work around this, a lot of people would say to them, “we wouldn’t even consider going to our landlord for help”. “It wasn’t something that we thought about”. And I think that’s changed because they’ve made a lot of that information much more available to tenants. It hasn’t resulted in a massive increase, but just based on the feedback from people from the work they’ve done with tenants, that was kind of quite key that people will go elsewhere sometimes before they think of their landlord as a place to go for support. So there is something there about kind of messages that go out. That isn’t true in all cases, but in a few that we’ve come across.

Michelle Meldrum

I think on the poor practice, the poor practice point, Jimmy, as well, I think when I’ve talked to survivors of domestic abuse who’ve looked back respectively and kind of shared their journey. And, you know, when we ask them, you know, how can we improve as landlords? Some of the common themes that come out are poor communication and the fact that the victim at the time has had to communicate their story several times to several different organisations and go through the trauma that’s attached to that sometimes. So that comes out quite a lot. And ideally, you need kind of, they need one point of contact who will then bring in the other agencies and communicate with the other agencies so they’re not left feeling vulnerable multiple times going through their story. So that’s one.

And then the other one is stories of frontline practitioners within housing associations saying to them, why don’t they just leave? And as Sophie has said, it’s not quite as easy as that because we know domestic abuse is all about power and control and quite often, you know, victims are just stripped of all of their confidence and self-esteem and they really struggle to kind of take control of finding out an exit strategy and an exit plan that is safe for them. So I think there is a lot of awareness and training that we still need to do across the sector in terms of understanding those two things, you know, why it’s not as easy as saying why do you go back, why don’t you just leave and also making sure that we have really robust communication mechanisms in place across partnerships to support the victim when they’re in a really difficult situation.

Jimmy Black

We could do actual harm, couldn’t we? One of the things that’s highlighted is that you shouldn’t attempt to mediate in the case of domestic abuse.

Michelle Meldrum

It’s a very risky situation, yeah. Yeah, it’s a very risky situation. I think, you know, larger organisations who do have more capacity to have resources in place to help address this, they tend to separate their specialist resource, so a specialist for victims, specialist for perpetrators. It’s unusual to try and have to manage both sort of parties together because particularly for the victim, that can be a risky strategy.

Kieran Findlay

There’s another couple of examples where I think the Housing Association or the social landlord has got it wrong. Sophie was involved in a recent case where the victim was placed close to the scene of a sexual assault that she’d experienced and that triggered more PTSD symptoms and worsened the situation. I understand the practice of using network homes is an issue as well because the perpetrator often would know where the homes are. So if someone has moved, they would know where to go.

I suppose my question, Eileen, is since Covid and the lockdowns are over, is this a way of putting domestic abuse and the need for partnership working and the need for housing association staff to have the right training. Has this put it back on the agenda?

Eileen McMullan

I think it’s been on the agenda for quite a while actually. And I think, I mean, obviously this Housing Bill has been around really, or the proposals has been around for quite some time. I mean, I’ve been in Scotland now for three years recently and I’ve always been aware of it as an issue and I think Covid probably highlighted the massive increase in domestic abuse, obviously because people were forced to stay at home and didn’t have the same sort of outlets that they might have done. So I think that has put it on the agenda, and that’s a good thing if we can respond to it effectively.

But I think it does appear to be, or maybe we know more now, it does appear to be a much worse situation than it has been in the past, just especially, I think, as you’ve said. And I think the other issue that’s been touched on is that quite often people feel, or women especially, feel that the only way that they can actually get out of their situation is to go down the homelessness route. And that’s certainly some of the feedback.

We’ve got funding from Scottish Government and funded a number of homeless prevention projects, one of which was Wheatley, the Revive project. And what they did was, I know this seems to be counter to what everyone says, but it is about choice for people is that they supported women that needed to move to go and live elsewhere, partly because of what people have been saying about everybody’s circumstances different, and sometimes women find themselves really isolated if they’ve moved away from family and friends, et cetera, et cetera. And that, I mean, that project has been really successful because of the additional support that they were able to offer people and the partnership working across the different local areas that they were going into.

So, I think it’s really good that the legislation is going to be there. As I’ve said before, I think organisations across the sector, not just housing, because it’s not just a housing issue, it’s in terms of the support that’s needed. There does need to be some awareness training and just to make this work. Because as I said again before, having really good legislation doesn’t stop things from happening.

Jimmy Black

There is also a bit of a contradiction in the housing bill. The other bit of the housing bill is about asking and acting and trying to get homelessness applications in early. And that just seems to me that some people might misinterpret that and more victims of domestic abuse might find themselves going down that homelessness route. But maybe, well, maybe that will not happen. But another question for Sophie, and I’m going to misquote Sextus Empiricus here. He said, “the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow” or something like that. There’s been a pilot project that speeds up the handling of domestic abuse cases. That’s just been extended to Glasgow after a successful run in Dundee, Paisley and Hamilton. Will this be of benefit to the women that you represent, Sophie, and does earlier resolution of court cases help them find their way to settled, safe accommodation?

Sophie Berry

I think so, I would hope so. I think one of the key issues at the moment as well is that the Domestic Abuse Protection Scotland Act obviously hasn’t been implemented yet. So in terms of quick solutions for women, there aren’t quick protection orders available to women yet. So that is a real urgent issue. I think women have to make long-term plans in order to make the moves, to make the changes, to decide whether to leave the relationship. So I think that the delay in the process is a real issue. It’s a really risky time as well. That period of time is the most risky time for women. So yeah, I do think that I would hope that the faster that we can respond to the situation, the more harm we can prevent, hopefully.

Jimmy Black

I think what you’ve just said is that it’s good that the court cases are taking less time, but there isn’t necessarily a good solution at the end of the process.

Sophie Berry

Yeah, that’s true.

Kieran Findlay

Michelle, what are the practical ways? There’ll be RSLs listening to this, hopefully, who are perhaps not doing all they can do in this field. They’re looking to organisations like Berwickshire Housing Association to see how they can get involved and what Berwickshire can help them to gain added value they could provide with other key partners as well. Where would you signpost them to apart from your good self?

Michelle Meldrum

I think CIH have done a lot of work on this as well. I know SFHA are involved, I know Eileen and colleagues have this featured on many of their conferences which is great. CIH have done a lot of research, I mean they did the ‘Policies not promises’ report with Women’s Aid Scotland last year, I think, which highlighted some of the inadequacies really around sorry inconsistencies of organisations not having policies in place. Of course, we need to do that now through through regulation. So, yeah, I think it’s quite clear there’s a number of housing associations doing a lot of good stuff out there through the SFHA, through CIH.

I mean, some of the practical things that I haven’t mentioned is, you know, we’re talking now about repairs analysis, I know some larger organisations do this already because they have the systems in place, but you know something that’s quite easy for us from an early detection point of view is to have a look at the repairs codes which are typically associated with domestic abuse, you know, so if there’s a particular home had so many repairs of that nature over a time period, so three and a six month period or something like that, the systems tells you to have a look there may be something wrong here, there may be something going on, so I think that’s a practical issue that we can all have a look at doing.

I think, you know, just home inspections, a lot more organisations are doing proactive customer visits. We do them, we call them customer connect visits. So part of that is just to kind of get to know the customers a bit more, gather some data from them and also do a property check while we’re there. So that’s an opportunity. I think it’s about realising all of the touch points or opportunities to identify potential domestic abuse in homes and potential vulnerable customers. So there’s the stuff there and I think stuff we’ve talked about really around, you know, the referral pathways, it’s making sure your frontline staff in particular are really clear about who’s out there, who does what, how to refer safely, how to keep themselves safe.

Another external partner I would suggest, we used them for training last year was Safe Lives as well. So they were really good. They did some awareness raising training with the Borders Housing Network across the four organisations. So I think there is a rich sort of set of organisations out there to support RSLs as they go on their journey with developing their policy and developing their practice. But yeah, we’re quite happy to share what we’re doing across the Borders Housing Network with the sector and I know Eileen’s got other examples as well of other organisations doing some great stuff.

Eileen McMullan

Yeah, and I mean, as I said at the beginning, we are actually working with Scottish Women’s Aid to see what we can offer and I think, especially for small organisations, I mean, Michelle’s already mentioned that some organisations might not feel they’ve got resources to dedicate specifically, but I think there’s some really good examples of organisations working together to support each other around this and if we can capitalise on some of that, that helps. It also helps just because, I mean, one of the other areas is if we are actually getting to a situation where the perpetrator is leaving the home, we don’t necessarily want to make them homeless. So there’s also something there about how associations and councils actually can work together to make sure that person’s housed. Because sometimes if they do end up in a more difficult situation, it just makes the situation worse for the household that stays at home. So I think the more organisations can work together, the more likely we’ll be able to find solutions to this.

Kieran Findlay

Michelle, I think the ethical case for RSLs to get involved is fairly clear for anyone who’s listened this far to the episode. But you talk about the business case for RSLs to be involved. Is that just wrapped up in rent arrears or is there more to it?

Michelle Meldrum

I think there’s more to it. I mean, we’ve mentioned repairs. So, you know, if we’re preventing repairs of that nature occurring ongoingly you’re going to save in your repairs costs. So at the start there is the economic case around collecting rents. So again, if you’re working with the customer to resolve the root cause, which may be domestic abuse, which is preventing them paying their rent, then obviously we’re going to be collecting more income over time.

There’s a report that, when I worked at my previous organisation, Safe Lives, did around the whole economic case for getting involved with domestic abuse, which is quite interesting as well. And they kind of found that all of the things that CIH research found a number of years ago was that, you know, you are more likely to be in rent arrears if you’re a victim of domestic abuse. You’re more likely to have a complaint made against you in terms of anti-social behavior complaint if you are a victim of domestic abuse. So that might be noise from the domestic abuse, so the neighbour reports the noise as a noise nuisance, not particularly domestic abuse.

We’ve got to be really careful in terms of how we respond to these things. So, you know, we may just respond to an ASB report of noise in a certain way, but we’ve got to be very cautious about that and actually have the whole domestic abuse mindset built into your anti-social behaviour procedures as well to think, actually, could this be domestic abuse? The same with your income procedures, the same with your allocations procedures.

And this is one of the pieces of work that we’re currently developing with Borders Housing Network with some external support to say our next steps are to look right across all of our frontline services to see how we are embedding our domestic abuse kind of culture mindset approach, not just in the separate domestic abuse policy, but right across the kind of mainstream frontline services to make sure we’re not missing anything. Because it is so easy just to get your head into the procedure of anti-social behaviour, there’s a complaint of noise, what do I do there? yes, I’ll go out and challenge the person who’s being complained about, but they might be the victim. So there’s quite a lot to think about in terms of your frontline services in its entirety and not just, you know, when you’re clear that you have got a victim of domestic abuse, who you want to support.

Kieran Findlay

Sophie, this will take time, no doubt, but from what you’ve heard today, if housing associations across the country can replicate a fraction of what is going on at Berwickshire Housing Association, that must make your job a lot easier and you should see a reduction in cases down the line.

Sophie Berry

Absolutely, yeah. I think it’s great that the legislation is there in place now that they have to have domestic abuse policies, but they could follow the guidance exactly, the good practice guidance, make an enormous difference, I think, to the number of clients that we see and the experiences that they’re having.

Kieran Findlay

OK, that brings us to the end of this episode. My thanks to Michelle Meldrum, Eileen McMullen and Sophie Berry. I’m Kieran Findlay, editor of Scottish House and News. My thanks to my co-host Jimmy Black and we’ll be back in a couple of weeks.