Our office is open Monday - Friday 9am to 5pm. Assessment interviews and programme sessions can take place outside of these hours. We would recommend contacting your assessor or facilitator directly if you need to reach them outside of office hours.

We are based in London, England but deliver services across the UK.

We are a specialist organisation that works with complex cases that are in child protection measures or family court proceedings. Unfortunately, we are unable to give more general support or advice regarding domestic abuse, we would always recommend calling 999 in an emergency. If it is not an emergency you can call the national domestic abuse helpline on 0808 2000 247. Further information on domestic abuse is available on our blog.

Effective information-sharing is a vital element of safeguarding and several Serious Case Reviews have highlighted poor information-sharing as a factor. In order for us to provide an intervention or assessment that will improve the child/ren’s safety we need access to the full court bundle or social work documents if not in court. Third party information is particularly important where there are cross allegations by the parents or where parents are denying the allegations.

We accept referrals from social workers anywhere in the UK. We can also accept referrals from solicitors when this is ordered in care proceedings. At present we are unable to accept self-referrals from parents.

We are unable to deliver interventions when there are ongoing criminal proceedings for offences related to domestic abuse (this can include harassment and stalking as well as domestic abuse offences or assault when it is against a partner or child). It is also difficult for us to complete an assessment in these circumstances, however, if the offence relates to one single incident we may be able to progress if we can base the assessment on other previous offences or allegations that are not included in the criminal proceedings. Please contact the office to discuss this further on 0203 9678368.

For all cases that are in court proceedings we require the full court bundle, a letter of instruction agreed by all parties and the parents contact details. Cases that are not in court proceedings we need a completed referral form and as many documents as possible to help inform the assessment including the social work chronology, any assessments undertaken (child and family, psychological, parenting etc..) and meetings of any meetings or conferences. Police reports are also very helpful if possible. In all cases we prefer to have the parents direct contact details in order to avoid delays in gaining contact information.

You can download a referral form for an assessment here You can download a referral form for an intervention here

The timescale depend upon the type of assessment required. If you require a Family Safety Assessment only of 1 or 2 parents this will take up to 10 weeks from receipt of the paperwork and parents contact details. Additional assessments of sexual harm or psychological functioning will usually take an additional 1 or 2 weeks. Similarly, if further adults are added to the assessment this will add 2 weeks per additional person.

The assessment process starts at the point at which we receive all the required documents and contact details. An assessor will be assigned within 1 week and they will arrange interviews directly with the parents being assessed. For up to date timescales you can contact the assessment team on 0203 9678368 (option 1)

An assessor will only be allocated to a case once we have all the required documents. An assessor is allocated depending upon the expertise or experience required and then availability. We have assessors from a variety of different backgrounds including probation, mental health, academic research and social work. You can find out more about our standards for assessors and our register of experts on our expert register page here https://www.dvact.org/expertsregister