We know 1 in 4 women and 1 in 6 men will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. But what’s often missing are the voices of those from the most marginalised communities. Imagine having to seek help in a language you aren’t fluent in or having no idea where to go for help because you don’t know how things work. One such community that is overlooked is the trans and non-binary community – and when we look at the statistics for this community, the reality is stark.

In the UK, 1 in 2 trans people will experience intimate partner violence and yet trans and gender-diverse people continue to be overlooked. For trans people, the risk of domestic abuse is nearly double that of cisgender individuals. 50% of trans and non-binary people who make up at least 0.5% of the population of England and Wales (262,000) according to the 2021 Census.

Drawing on decades of expertise within the domestic abuse sector, and the latest research, we know that social workers feel unequipped to deal with domestic abuse and more specifically, responding to perpetrators of domestic abuse and in this post we are exploring this in detail.

Whilst the statistics and data clearly highlight the scale of the problem to fully appreciate the impacts and long-term consequences of experiencing domestic abuse, we must first clearly understand what is Domestic Abuse?