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Restart Evaluation Report

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The Drive Partnership is pleased to share a new Evaluation Report of Restart – an innovative pilot project providing earlier intervention for families at risk of experiencing domestic abuse, which is developed and delivered in collaboration with the Drive Partnership, the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime, Respect, and Cranstoun.  

The Drive Partnership commissioned Jo Sharpen and Ellie Hutchinson, freelance consultants who have worked on issues relating to gender-based violence for a combined forty years to produce a report detailing:    

  • Qualitative learning around the impact of the intervention on adult and child victim-survivors’ wellbeing and safety.  
  • Information to inform the development of improved child-level outcomes frameworks in order to improve future impact analysis for families.
  • An understanding of the impact of alternative accommodation pathway for adult and associated child(ren). 

The evaluation took place over a period of 8 months in 2024, with a core focus on centring the experiences of both adult and child victim-survivors and platforming their voices in the final report. This focus builds upon the aims and focus of earlier evaluations produced by RedQuadrant, which found that Restart had a significant positive impact on victim-survivors, people using harmful behaviours, and how Children’s Social Care staff, strategic leads, and services responded to adult and child victim-survivors through accessing Safe & Together training and support. 

Restart brings together children’s social care, housing and domestic abuse services to identify and respond to patterns of harmful behaviour at an earlier stage, and is currently being delivered in Camden, Croydon, Havering, Sutton and Westminster. In June 2024, a sixth Restart site, Barking and Dagenham, was added as part of a feasibility study supported by Foundations, What Works Centre for Children & Families within its REACH Plan – a five-year roadmap to find out what works to prevent domestic abuse and support child victims. This protocol summarises plans for a future feasibility study of the Restart pilot.