CAADA

Co-Ordinated Action against Domestic Abuse (CAADA) is a charity established in the United Kingdom to encourage the use of independent advocacy as a way to increase the safety of survivors of

Mission

The vision of CAADA is to improve the safety for all survivors of domestic violence, including children. Their mission is to help create a consistent, professional and effective response to all survivors of domestic violence in the UK, and in particular those at high risk of harm. They aim to achieve this through the creation of a strong infrastructure for the advocacy sector in particular and other domestic violence professionals in general. They aim to use the evidence of improved safety outcomes for survivors and their children from this approach to shape the attitudes and skills of those working in the sector, those funding the work and those developing policy in the area to encourage the allocation of resources to this work.

Programmes and areas of intervention

CAADA offers a professional and accredited training programme for Independent Domestic Violence Advisors (IDVAs) or advocates that runs throughout the country. IDVAs are trained specialists whose goal is the safety of survivors. They particularly focus on providing a premium service to survivors at medium to high risk of harm.Advocates focus on risk and risk management. They work directly with survivors to provide advice and support to help them make safety plans and understand the options they have. They also assist in accessing the full range of legal and non-legal services and resources and engage proactively in multi-agency work to keep survivors and their children safe.

As part of the Gender Equality in the Gender Equality in the United Kingdom government’s initiative in designating new specialist domestic violence court areas, CAADA is running training on MARACs (Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference).

Sources

• http://www.caada.org.uk/index.html