Content area
Full Text
Domestic abuse is nothing to do with employers or the workplace, right? Wrong. Some three-quarters of people who endure domestic violence are also targeted at work, and an abusive home environment can have a serious knock-on effect on health, work and performance. While it can be a difficult and sensitive area for employers, a new toolkit and the example of pioneering employers can all help, as Nic Paton heard at the Health and Wellbeing at Work show earlier this year.
Probably for most of us, the news in June that Sally Challen will not have to go through a retrial of her 2011 conviction for murdering her abusive husband was only right and fair. It was a recognition that, while she self-evidently committed a very serious crime, the level of abuse she had suffered over many years gave grounds for diminished responsibility.
The Challen case has helped to bring the emotional and challenging issue of domestic abuse firmly into the public spotlight. It has also been highlighted by recent research suggesting that women who experience domestic abuse are three times more likely to develop a serious mental illness.
Equally, despite so much of our political bandwidth being taken up by Brexit, domestic abuse is a laudably ongoing focus for the government, with a new package of support measures for victims of domestic abuse being unveiled in May and a new Domestic Abuse Bill working its way through Parliament.
But what has any of this got to do with the workplace and employers? Domestic abuse, surely, by its very name is a domestic issue, something that happens outside of the working environment?
It was precisely to challenge this misconception that three linked presentations on domestic abuse were held at the Health and Wellbeing at Work conference and exhibition in March.
And it was very timely because, as the first speaker Elizabeth Filkin, chair of the Employers' Initiative on Domestic Abuse, revealed, that very day telecoms giant Vodafone had announced it was to offer all staff who experience domestic abuse 10 days' additional paid "safe leave".
The leave is designed to give victims of abuse the time and space to sort out things such as housing, schooling, counselling, appointments with the police, and court appearances, with...