Paladin, National Stalking Advocacy Service Annual Report
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Paladin, National Stalking Advocacy Service Annual Report 2016-2017
Paladin, National Stalking Advocacy Service was launched in the House of Lords on July 11 2013 following our successful stalking law reform campaign. Those mathematicians amongst you will have worked out that July 2017 marked Paladin’s fourth birthday this year. We are delighted to be four years old and we are extremely grateful to our funders and supporters, particularly in these times of funding cuts and austerity.
Year in Review: The Highlights We have achieved a huge amount for a relatively small national service including advocating for 640 victims this year and 2117 victims since we launched. Another success was our campaigning, with the victims voice at the heart of all we do, to achieve five law changes – the stalking law, coercive control law, agreement to develop the sentencing guidelines for stalking and domestic violence, new stalking protection orders, and more recently Government agreeing to an increase in sentences for stalkers from 5 to 10 years January 2017. We are extremely pleased the Government have heard us and agreed to these important changes to better protect victims and their children.
Paladin’s 10 Year Blueprint We have recently reviewed and revised our objectives and now have a ten year blueprint, signed off by the Board.
Our mission is: to eradicate stalking to keep victims and their children safe.
Key Objectives • Provide trauma informed support, advice and advocacy to high risk victims • Raise awareness of dangers and risks of stalking • Provide university accredited ISAC training and CPD accredited training to professionals • Analyse the application of the stalking law • Campaign on behalf of victims of stalking • Develop a “Knowledge Hub”– a single port of call for any victim seeking the best support and safety advice, for a professional seeking information about how to respond to stalking and the creation of principles of an effective advocacy service.
Patron: Lady Edwina Grosvenor Directors: Laura Richards, Rachel Horman, Allan Aubeelack, Zoe Dronfield, Shonagh Dillon Paladin – National Stalking Advocacy Service www.paladinservice.co.uk Company Number: 09772287 Charity Number 1163801 We launched our new working definition of stalking at our first national best practice conference on June 29 2017 in London in front of the 190 professionals who attended:
‘A pattern of unwanted, fixated and obsessive behaviour which is intrusive and causes fear of violence or serious alarm or distress’.
We also published our Independent Service Evaluation http://paladinservice.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Paladin-Evaluation-2016- Executive-Summary.pdf Headlines: We have seen a 70% increase in referrals to the service, which is great news. However, we need to increase capacity to match demand and to do this need to seek further funding to increase our ISACs. We know from our data: • 94% of our clients are female • Victims suffer more than 30 behaviours before calling Paladin 77% of victims suffer 100 behaviours before reporting; • 68% DV related • 90% affected mental health • 74% of children are targeted by the stalker.
Our Referrals: • 59% self-referrals • 21% IDVA • 6% Police • 3% National Stalking Helpline • 2% Victim Support • 9% other.
A snapshot of our cases We have also trained over 2500 professionals and advised over 1000 professionals. From 1 January – 30 September 2016 we assessed and gave advice in 801 cases. During the course of a case our ISACs will liaise with 2-7 professionals on average and assess 2-3 secondary victims. This might be children or partners or family members and is time intensive. We are now capturing secondary victims.
Snapshot of our clients from closed cases
Patron: Lady Edwina Grosvenor Directors: Laura Richards, Rachel Horman, Allan Aubeelack, Zoe Dronfield, Shonagh Dillon Paladin – National Stalking Advocacy Service www.paladinservice.co.uk Company Number: 09772287 Charity Number 1163801 Due to the nature of stalking we work with clients for protracted periods of time and this snapshot is from our closed cases (n=129): 60% of clients are aged 25-44 years old; 10% 17-24 years old;
30% of our cases are from London; 20% South East; 16% South; West; 45 Midlands; 6% North East; 4% North West and 4% Wales.
68% of our cases are former intimates; 25% acquaintances (including work colleagues, neighbours, friends) 5% are stranger; 2% family, and;
71% of our clients said they had experienced 31 stalking incidents or more before calling the police.
Some of Our Testimonials From Our Clients “You saved my life” “No one understood” “I would have killed myself that day if I hadn’t spoken to you” “You are the only people who have listened and understood” ‘You’re the first person to actually believe me about this’ “Thank you so much for your advice. It was fantastic and very helpful.” “I wanted to thank you for all your support in getting us to this point. I can’t express how much your help and advice means to us. I know we’ve still got a long battle ahead…. I don’t know what we would have done without your help and advice.”
ISAC Training Paladin ran its 4th ISAC training course this year which is accredited by Brighton University and consists of 11 modules. This means that our network of Independent Stalking Advocacy Case Workers (ISACs) is growing around the country and the feedback for this course was excellent. We will be running the next course in 2018 for those who wish to become accredited.
Testimonials “Found the whole day fascinating” “Kept my attention all day” “very helpful exercises” “Practical practice was useful- good to have a mock professionals meeting and learn how to challenge”.
Our First National Conference We were delighted to host our first national conference on June 29 entitled “Raising the Bar: Best Practice in Stalking cases”. More than 190 professionals from the
Patron: Lady Edwina Grosvenor Directors: Laura Richards, Rachel Horman, Allan Aubeelack, Zoe Dronfield, Shonagh Dillon Paladin – National Stalking Advocacy Service www.paladinservice.co.uk Company Number: 09772287 Charity Number 1163801 police, Crown Prosecution Service, ISAC network and DV services attended. Ian Elliott from Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMIC/CPSI) also attended and presented their findings along with Clive Ruggles, whose daughter Alice was recently stalked and murdered, Brian Altman, QC, Alison Saunders Director of Public Prosecutions CPS, Mandy Banks Sentencing Counsel, Sharon Stratton from College of Policing and Baroness Jan Royall.
Here’s what people said about it:
“absolutely inspirational” “I would like to say how beneficial the conference was, myself and my colleague found it extremely useful and hope to use some of the learning from this to improve how our colleagues deal with stalking cases!” “professional, passionate, positive and left feeling inspired” “Excellent day, helped understand risks and positive changes Paladin putting in place” “Fantastic, interesting, informative, and interactive; would love to attend other talks and work with Paladin” “Knowledgeable, passionate that victims are at centre of policy and practice, inspirational” “passionate, informative, good learning”
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate (HMIC/CPSI) We successfully lobbied for and worked closely with HMIC/CPSI who led the inspection into stalking. Their report was published on July 5 2017. Sadly, it showed how victims still continue to be let down and are left at further risk by police and CPS. This is what we have continued to find across the last year and indeed since the law changed. We work hard to raise awareness of the risks and dangers of stalking and also to train professionals to an accredited standard. We are calling for change that lasts. We believe that positive change can be achieved via attitude, aptitude and leadership and making this area a priority of business is vital. To this end we have developed and launched new Paladin CPD accredited training packages for police, CPS and all agencies working with victims of stalking to better protect as well as new consultancy and audit called “Freshtracks”.
Media We have appeared in and generated a significant media interest in stalking to raise awareness about the risks and dangers across the last year including: The Huffington Post – sentences for stalkers increased from 5 to 10 years The Guardian The Sun June 30 – with Clive Ruggles
Patron: Lady Edwina Grosvenor Directors: Laura Richards, Rachel Horman, Allan Aubeelack, Zoe Dronfield, Shonagh Dillon Paladin – National Stalking Advocacy Service www.paladinservice.co.uk Company Number: 09772287 Charity Number 1163801 Good Morning Britain June 5 HMIC/CPSI Victoria Derbyshire The Sun July 7 BBC Radio 2 Channel 5 Best Magazine Cosmopolitan magazine – serial perpetrators ITV South West BBC Radio 4 Women’s Hour Huffington Post on the Spectator cartoon July 18 Bedfordshire News July 28 ITV This Morning – feature and phone in on stalking Jeremy Vine Show
Our Campaigns and Parliament We have written 10 briefing papers, tabled numerous debates and scores of questions. Our campaign to introduce a register for serial stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators has been raised numerous times and more recently by Baroness Royall on July 6 2017 and Jim Cunningham MP on July 20th 2017. Momentum is building and the London Assembly and others came out in support of our campaign in July 2017. All indications are proving positive and we continue to lobby Government for these important changes.
We are a small service with a big voice and reach and we were delighted that Government listened and responded to our calls for a new domestic violence law of coercive control working in partnership with Women’s Aid and Sara Charlton which was achieved in 2015. We continue to monitor how the law is being applied.
We successfully campaigned for sentencing guidelines for stalkers, which the Sentencing Review Panel agreed in 2016 and more recently, working alongside the inspiring Richard Graham and Alex Chalk MP, Dr Ellie Aston and Baroness Jan Royall, we provided overwhelming and compelling evidence to increase the sentences for stalkers from 5 to 10 years with the Government U-Turning on January 6 2017. We are working closely with them on changes.
We campaigned for new stalking protection order for stalkers, which were announced in December 2016, which will be introduced at the end of 2017. We believe these orders will only be truly effective with the register for serial stalkers and DV perpetrators. We have received much support for our calls to include them on ViSOR and MAPPA just like sex offenders are. Our petition has reached over 130, 025 and you can sign our petition here http://paladinservice.co.uk/serial- perpetrator-register-and-order/
Patron: Lady Edwina Grosvenor Directors: Laura Richards, Rachel Horman, Allan Aubeelack, Zoe Dronfield, Shonagh Dillon Paladin – National Stalking Advocacy Service www.paladinservice.co.uk Company Number: 09772287 Charity Number 1163801 We launched a campaign with Lily Allen and the Women’s Equality Party in 2016 called “Joining the Dots” calling for immediate action to bring the law on stalking into full effect and reduce the risk to women http://www.womensequality.org.uk/we_launch_our_campaign_to_support_victims _of_stalking
We continue to campaign for a coercive control and stalking law in Northern Ireland and submitted evidence to Stalking Law Review. I was delighted to meet the Chair of the Justice Committee, Paul Frew, as well as address the Justice Committee in Stormont about why law reform is needed on January 19 2017. We will pick this up as soon as officials are elected and government business commences.
It has been a successful and incredibly busy year and we look forward to growth at Paladin as well as to your continuing support next year.
Laura Richards, BSc, MSc, MBPsS, Asc IA-IP Interim CEO, Director and Founder of Paladin National Stalking Advocacy Service
Patron: Lady Edwina Grosvenor Directors: Laura Richards, Rachel Horman, Allan Aubeelack, Zoe Dronfield, Shonagh Dillon Paladin – National Stalking Advocacy Service www.paladinservice.co.uk Company Number: 09772287 Charity Number 1163801