Culturally Responsive Intervention: Summary of evidence

We have undertaken this review of literature on culturally responsive and specific interventions to better understand the evidence base on cultural responsive interventions. This highlighted key elements of cultural competency, and learning on culturally specific interventions and the importance of by and for specialist services in development and delivery of those interventions.

The Drive Partnership is working across the domestic abuse specialist sector, public sector partners and beyond to develop sustainable, national systems in England and Wales that respond effectively to all perpetrators of domestic abuse. Our vision is that one day there will be a national approach which sees agencies in all PCC and local authority areas across England and Wales working together with a focus on those who cause harm, the perpetrators, to disrupt abuse and change behaviour, increasing safety for victims-survivors, children and families.

The Drive Partnership is committed to ensuring that the perpetrator sector is effective for and accessible to people who cause harm from racialised communities. We believe this requires:

1. Embedding cultural competency in more mainstream specialist services, including in Drive services,
2. Supporting by-and-for organisations to develop and deliver culturally specific interventions.

Services that do not operate from a ‘by and for’ perspective must become culturally competent to provide relevant, effective, and sustainable behaviour change programmes and interventions for people who cause harm, regardless of their background. Included in this is a need to see a significant change in the diversity of organisations delivering services, particularly at leadership levels. The Drive Partnership is committed to playing a leading role in delivering this change.

Alongside this, we firmly believe that culturally specific interventions, led by by-and-for organisations, are central to the aim. To achieve this, the Drive Partnership is exploring how best it can support by-and-for organisations who are currently working across, or would like to join, the perpetrator sector.

Under the National Community Lottery Fund grant, Elaha Walizadeh, a Systems Change and Practice Development Lead, conducted a review of available evidence on culturally responsive interventions for perpetrators of gender-based violence. This review was timebound and was not a comprehensive review of all literature available on this topic. 46 papers were included within this review, including both academic papers and grey literature. This briefing outlines the key findings and recommendations from that review.