The Drive Partnership celebrates new funding awarded by The National Lottery Community Fund to change systems and transform the national response to perpetrators of domestic abuse

The Drive Partnership has been awarded £2.3 million by The National Lottery Community Fund – the largest community funder in the UK – to continue its ground-breaking work tackling domestic abuse and protecting victim-survivors by disrupting, challenging, and changing the behaviour of those who are causing harm.

This major 3-year grant will primarily support The Drive Partnership’s national systems change programme, which identifies systemic gaps in responses to domestic abuse and brings together the insights of victim-survivors, service users, practitioners, specialist organisations, researchers, and policy makers to develop sustainable solutions.

The funding will also enable The Drive Partnership to embark on an exciting new programme of work; which will involve building partnerships with specialist ‘by-and-for’ organisations to jointly develop improved responses to perpetrators of domestic abuse within minoritised and marginalised communities. These partnerships will aim to address a lack of specialist provision for racialised communities and for LGBT+ communities, as well as cultural competency within mainstream services, by collaborating and co-developing new approaches to perpetrators of domestic abuse. The Drive Partnership will also develop and deliver improved multi-agency practice in response to unmet need around the intersection of domestic abuse perpetration and disability, including mental health.

Alongside national systems change work, the grant will support The Drive Partnership’s policy and influencing activity, ongoing evaluation of its portfolio of interventions, and an expansion of its cross-sector training and workforce development offer.  The Drive Partnership will continue to deliver The Drive Project in areas across England and Wales, as well as the Restart pilot in London, thanks to ongoing support from a range of statutory and philanthropic funders.

Kyla Kirkpatrick, Director of The Drive Partnership, said:

“We are incredibly grateful to The National Lottery Community Fund, along with The National Lottery players, for their ongoing support for our work to transform the national response to perpetrators of domestic abuse.

We have seen significant progress in recent years, with more and more systems protecting victims of domestic abuse by challenging the behaviour of perpetrators, but we know there’s so much work to do, particularly to meet the needs of victim-survivors in minoritised and marginalised communities.

This funding will enable us to co-develop new responses to better meet those needs and, through the partnerships we build together, shift power and influence to grassroots organisations.”

Phil Chamberlain, England Director at The National Lottery Community Fund added:

“This project will not only improve, but potentially save lives too. In the drive to tackle domestic abuse it’s important that vulnerable, disadvantaged or marginalised communities are not left behind and this means ensuring specialist support and responses are built around their needs. We’re delighted to support The Drive Partnership so they can take their vital work forward and continue to make a real difference to people’s well-being and lives.”

About The Drive Partnership

• The Drive Partnership –Respect, SafeLives and Social Finance- has come together since 2015 with the shared aim of transforming the national response to perpetrators of domestic abuse.
• Together we developed the flagship Drive Project to address a gap in work with high-harm, high-risk perpetrators of domestic abuse.
• We have also been successfully advocating for systems and policy change – to develop sustainable, national systems that keep victim-survivors safe by responding more effectively to all perpetrators of domestic abuse.
• The National Lottery Community Fund has been a significant supporter of The Drive Partnership since 2020. We are hugely grateful to the fund, as well as to National Lottery players, for their ongoing support.
• A previous major grant of National Lottery funding supported the scaling and replication of The Drive Project to new areas in England and Wales, national systems change work to identify and begin to develop models to address systemic gaps, and cross-sector workforce training to upskill professionals in probation, social care, and health settings in responding to domestic abuse perpetrators.