Cripplegate Shifts
The Cripplegate Foundation has a programme to transform thinking around domestic abuse in Islington. It brings together women with lived experience of abuse, and leaders of civil society organisations and state institutions working to reduce and respond to abuse. The programme is unusual in that this group collaborate over a five year period. The work has reached the half way stage.
It took sometime for relationships to build, and for that pattern of work to settle down. Five shifts were evident during this early period, some of which seem relevant to GNP as it reaches its mid point. They are:
From I to We
From Now to Future
From Problems to Solutions
From What to How
From Public Systems to Whole Systems.
Taking each in turn.
Quite naturally, as the group formed they talked about the experiences of individuals. About women who experienced abuse. Abuse practitioners trying to prevent or respond to abuse. Very often the “I” was named, frequently it was someone in the group. Over time, the group began to talk about how ‘we’ experience abuse, and how ‘we’ respond to abuse. Gradually the ‘we’ extended, from those in the core group to all victims and all practitioners in Islington; from women to men and women; from those in contact with the public system, to everyone in the Borough.
The people in the group live with abuse every day. Their concerns are immediate. But slowly they began to shift their attention to the future, to reflect on how the people of Islington may come together to do things differently in five or 10 years time.
The domestic abuse system in Islington is a mess, as is the case in most parts of England. Some of the women reflected ‘I feel more abused by the services than I do by my perpetrator’. It was important to establish the problems. But the richness of the work has come from thinking about solutions, and transforming the way the Borough thinks and acts.
That meant also shifting from ‘what’ we do when somebody is badly abused to also considering ‘how’ we respond. This has been called ‘how not what’. In fact, it is ‘how and what’. Much of this has focused on the recovery of compassion, and the sense that abuse is ubiquitous, not the experience of a small minority of women.
Finally, the group has come to realise that only a small proportion of women who are severely abused are known to public services in the Borough, and that Borough services play a very small part in the lives of the abused women they are supporting. The group is now focused as much on what happens in civil society to prevent and respond to abuse, and how this can be better supported.