Made for Life 2025: How can organisations work more effectively to protect and support women and children

A survivor’s experience

Our keynote speaker opened the event by talking about her experience of domestic abuse and the difficulties she faced when trying to protect herself and her son.

Her story clearly highlighted how hard it can be when services are not joined up and the difficulty in navigating each different system on her own.  She described having to repeat the same details to social services, family courts, her child’s school and how important information was not passed on.  This put her and her son at greater risk.

She explained how this situation makes victims feel like they are expected to be responsible for their own safety plus that of their children as although, they are telling all the right services what is happening, no one appeared willing to act.

Listening to her experience of several missed safeguarding opportunities showed the urgent need to ensure better collaboration between services.

We need to look more closely at the perpetrators of violence

Top of the agenda for our panellists was the need to change the way perpetrators are currently viewed. It was agreed that by shifting the focus towards understanding and challenging the behaviour of those causing harm a far more effective safeguarding system could be created.

Currently, agencies typically focus on supporting victims, which, while essential, does not address the root cause of the abuse.

By taking the time to examine why harmful behaviour is happening and by stepping in to challenge it, professionals can reduce the risk of repeated abuse.

This approach places more responsibility on the perpetrator rather than the victim, helping to stop abuse sooner.

The general consensus was, if we want to break the cycle of domestic abuse, we must tackle perpetrator behaviour with the same urgency and coordination as victim support.

How employers can help?

For many victims, their workplace might be one of the only places they regularly go on their own. So, it is essential that employers receive more guidance on how to support employees if they suspect they’re a victim of domestic violence.

Employers need to be fully aware of the risks linked to hybrid working for domestic abuse victims. Remote working can increase opportunities for a perpetrator to use technology to monitor or control someone at home, such as checking browsing history, monitoring online meetings or accessing work emails.

This reaffirmed a core theme of the event that every part of the system, including employers plays a role in ensuring women and children are protected.

Online risks for young people

There were also concerns about what young people are seeing online. The panel talked about how videos or posts that are violent or disrespectful towards women can affect how young people think and behave.

When young people see this kind of content, it can start to seem normal, and they may be more likely to copy it.

It can also make risky or harmful behaviour appear acceptable, leaving vulnerable young people unsure about what safe and healthy boundaries look like.

Social media forms another part of the wider system that needs attention if we are to prevent abuse in the long term.

Applying user centred systems thinking

In the afternoon, it was time to stop talking and start collaborating.

Our service designers led participants through an exercise we often use in our work with public services.

One of our key tools involves mapping out the system of things that affect how well a service works, so we can clearly see where the gaps and opportunities lie.

In the context of violence against women and children, this approach helps us understand where systems fail to protect women and children and where changes could be made to strengthen support, prevention and early intervention.

Working in small groups, participants traced what happens when someone has suffered domestic abuse. What factors affect how victim-survivors will respond after abuse? What things influence the effectiveness of agencies’ or services’ response? What are the knock-on effects created by such problems in the system?   And where might there be opportunities to improve the system, for a better experience?

The maps quickly filled with post-it notes, arrows, ideas and increasingly complex diagrams as the discussions continued.

The aim of the session was to bring together people from different organisations, each with their own experience and expertise, to explore how parts of the system could be improved to provide better support to victim-survivors.

By using user-centred systems thinking, we could see where systems fail to protect women and children and where changes could be made to improve support services.

The session demonstrated how NEC Digital Studio could support organisations in the redesign of services by taking two critical things into consideration – the real experiences of the people who rely on them, and the complex system of factors affecting their delivery.

Takeaways from the event

To better protect and support women and children, we need to make sure our services are designed around what people actually need and experience.

The organisations who victims come into contact with need to share information more easily, and the teams supporting victims need the tools and training to spot problems sooner.

Most importantly, all of these changes have to work together because fixing things in one place won’t work unless the whole system works as one.

The Made for Life event created a safe space for open conversations and a shared understanding that real change will only happen if we keep listening, learning and working together.