10 THINGS THE EVERYDAY BUSINESS REPORT TELLS US

SAFECHAIN™

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10 THINGS THE EVERYDAY BUSINESS REPORT TELLS US

AND WHAT SAFECHAIN™ PROPOSES IN RESPONSE

By Samantha Avril-Andreassen FRSA

Founder and CEO, SAFECHAIN™ Ltd | samantha@safe-chain.org | safe-chain.org

SAFECHAIN™ is a safeguarding governance framework that strengthens participation, accountability, institutional coordination, and vulnerability-responsive decision-making across justice, housing, healthcare, financial services, and public administration. It was built at the intersection of lived experience, legal analysis, and policy architecture because the systems described below do not yet exist.

1. EVERYDAY BUSINESS™

87% of reviewed family court case files contained evidence of domestic abuse.

73% of observed hearings involved domestic abuse.

That means domestic abuse is not sitting at the edge of family justice. It is operating at the centre of it. If abuse is the operating environment, safeguarding cannot remain an exception. A system built around the assumption that abuse is unusual will consistently fail the majority of the people it serves.

“Why are institutions still treating domestic abuse as unusual when the evidence shows it is everyday business?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes that domestic abuse be redesigned into institutional frameworks as the baseline assumption, not the exceptional case. Every family court process, every financial institution protocol, every housing decision affecting a party to proceedings must be built around the reality the Commissioner has now quantified — not the assumption her report has demolished.

2. THE INVISIBLE ISSUE

Domestic abuse appeared in 73% of observed hearings.

It was treated as a live issue in only 42%.

That 31-point gap is not a measurement rounding error. It is the operational distance between recognition and response. A system can mention abuse and still fail to act on it. When abuse is visible but not treated as decisive, the acknowledgement becomes a form of institutional protection rather than a form of survivor protection.

“What happens when abuse is visible but not treated as decisive?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes the development of Accountability Architecture™ — operational frameworks that require institutions to document not only whether domestic abuse was identified but whether and how it changed the decision that followed. Recognition without documented response is recognition without accountability.

3. COERCIVE CONTROL IS STILL BEING MISSED

The report found that coercive and controlling behaviour was often misunderstood, minimised, or downplayed compared with physical violence. In the 87% of cases where domestic abuse was present, coercive control was frequently the primary mechanism — the architecture of abuse — while physical violence was its most visible expression.

Coercive control controls movement, money, confidence, parenting, housing, legal participation, and survival. It does not end at separation. It evolves into litigation, financial pressure, procedural complexity, and institutional exhaustion. A system trained to identify bruises will consistently miss the mechanism that produces them.

“How many safeguarding failures begin because coercive control is treated as less serious than visible violence?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes Trauma-Informed Practice™ as a foundational institutional standard — not a specialist pathway. This means training professionals across courts, financial institutions, housing, and healthcare to identify coercive control as a pattern of behaviour across time rather than a series of discrete incidents. The pattern is the abuse. The incidents are its evidence.

4. THE PARTICIPATION GAP™

Family courts assume people can participate. But survivors may be navigating trauma, fear, financial control, housing instability, litigation pressure, and psychological harm simultaneously. With domestic abuse present in 87% of cases and coercive control frequently the primary mechanism, participation impairment is not the exception in family proceedings.

It is the norm.

Presence is not participation. A survivor can attend court and still be unable to participate effectively. Formal equality of process does not produce substantive equality of outcome when one party is structurally prevented from engaging with the process that determines their future.

“Can justice be fair if vulnerability prevents meaningful participation?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes Participation Integrity™ as a measurable standard — not a procedural aspiration. This means proactive vulnerability assessment at the outset of all family proceedings, participation adjustments applied as standard rather than on application, and the measurement of participation as a substantive reality rather than a formal appearance. Being present is not the same as being heard.

5. THE PASSPORT OF ERASURE™

Survivors are often forced to repeat their history across courts, housing, police, healthcare, banks, and support services. Each institution creates a separate file. Each encounter begins from scratch. The person carries the complete story. The system holds fragments.

This is The Passport of Erasure™. And it is not merely an inconvenience. It is dangerous. A survivor whose energy is consumed by repeated disclosure has less capacity to engage with any single process effectively. The institutional memory failure becomes a participation failure. The participation failure becomes a safeguarding failure.

“How many survivors are erased by systems that make them start again?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes Documentation Continuity™ — governance frameworks that ensure critical safeguarding intelligence follows the individual across institutional boundaries rather than disappearing at each handover. The history exists. The knowledge exists. The records exist. What does not yet exist is the architecture to connect them. That architecture is buildable. It has simply not yet been built.

6. SILO WORKING™

Domestic abuse crosses family, civil, criminal, housing, healthcare, and financial systems simultaneously. Yet institutions frequently work in isolation, making decisions based on the fragment of the picture they hold without knowledge of what every other institution has already seen.

No single institution is necessarily failing. Each may be performing its function correctly. The failure occurs between institutions — in The Handover Gap™ — the specific moment where critical safeguarding intelligence should transfer and does not. People fall through gaps that nobody owns because nobody is responsible for the space between institutions.

“Who is responsible when every institution sees one part of the harm but no one connects the whole pattern?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes Institutional Coordination™ as a measurable governance standard — assessed through the SAFECHAIN™ Index. The Index measures not how well institutions perform independently but how effectively they work together. Coordination is not the same as interference. Independence is not the same as isolation. The future of safeguarding will be determined by how effectively institutions connect what they know.

7. ECONOMIC ABUSE IS NOT A SIDE ISSUE

Economic abuse was identified as one of the forms of abuse present across the 87% of cases in the Commissioner’s review. Financial harm continues long after separation through debt, non-disclosure, housing insecurity, unpaid court orders, damaged credit, loss of employment, and the weaponisation of litigation itself as a mechanism of economic control.

A mortgage arrears case may be a domestic abuse case. A debt enforcement action may be a domestic abuse case. A homelessness application may be a domestic abuse case. Financial institutions that treat economic abuse as a money problem will consistently miss the safeguarding emergency underneath it.

“Why is financial harm still treated as a money problem when it may be a domestic abuse problem?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes that the FCA Consumer Duty be operationalised at the point of enforcement decision in every case involving a customer with documented domestic abuse indicators. It further proposes the development of a domestic abuse flag within credit reference frameworks to distinguish coercive debt from consumer default. Economic abuse is a safeguarding issue. It must be treated as one by every institution that encounters its consequences.

8. THE REFORM GAP™

The system increasingly recognises domestic abuse. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 is landmark legislation. Practice Direction 12J has been strengthened. The FCA has issued vulnerability guidance. The Commissioner has published her report. Recognition has never been greater.

Yet the Fair Shares research found that survivors of economic abuse leave financial remedy proceedings financially worse off than other separating parties. Resolution’s survey found that 80% of financial remedy practitioners believe economic abuse is not sufficiently addressed in proceedings. The Law Commission’s Financial Remedies Scoping Report failed to propose reforms specifically designed to prevent economic abuse or address its continuing consequences.

Recognition without remedy is not reform.

“What is the value of recognising abuse if the outcome still reproduces harm?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes The Reform Gap™ framework as a measurement tool for the distance between what institutions say about economic abuse and what they do about it. Closing The Reform Gap™ requires restoring legal aid for survivors in financial remedy proceedings, making forensic accounting available as standard in cases involving non-disclosure, and incorporating economic abuse as a material factor in the section 25 exercise — not only as a conduct argument in extreme cases.

9. CHILDREN ARE NOT PERIPHERAL

Domestic abuse in family proceedings does not affect adults alone. But family justice has traditionally viewed harm to children through the lens of contact and child arrangements. The Commissioner’s findings demand a broader safeguarding lens.

A mother rendered financially destitute by economic abuse during proceedings cannot provide for her children in the way she would have been able to provide had the abuse not occurred and had the proceedings remedied it. Financial remedy orders are not merely a dispute between adults. They are a child safeguarding outcome. A survivor who leaves proceedings in poverty takes her children with her into that poverty.

Financial outcomes in family proceedings are a child safeguarding issue. Family justice has not yet treated them as one.

“Are we safeguarding children if we ignore the economic and institutional harm around them?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes that financial outcomes in proceedings involving economic abuse be subject to safeguarding review where dependent children are present. The child safeguarding framework must expand beyond arrangements and contact to encompass the financial environment within which children are being asked to thrive. Poverty caused by economic abuse is not background context. It is the harm.

10. THE SAFECHAIN™ INDEX

If domestic abuse is everyday business, safeguarding must be everyday infrastructure.

The Everyday Business findings show why safeguarding must be measured across systems rather than within them. The SAFECHAIN™ Index was developed in direct response to the governance gap the Commissioner’s report exposes. It does not ask how well individual institutions perform. It asks whether institutions are capable of working together to protect the people who move between them.

The Index measures five dimensions:

•       Institutional Coordination™ — Can organisations share safeguarding intelligence across boundaries?

•       Documentation Continuity™ — Can information follow the survivor rather than remaining trapped in separate files?

•       Trauma-Informed Practice™ — Can institutions identify coercive control and economic abuse at the point of decision?

•       Participation Integrity™ — Can individuals participate meaningfully despite vulnerability?

•       Accountability Architecture™ — Can responsibility be traced when safeguarding failures occur between institutions?

“If domestic abuse is everyday business, why is safeguarding not everyday infrastructure?”

SAFECHAIN™ SOLUTION: SAFECHAIN™ proposes that the SAFECHAIN™ Index be adopted as a cross-institutional measurement standard by the Domestic Abuse Commissioner, the FCA, the Ministry of Justice, and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. The Index provides a practical, measurable, and implementable framework for closing the governance gap the Commissioner’s report has exposed. Recognition identified the problem. The Index measures whether institutions are solving it.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s Everyday Business findings have made institutional failure impossible to deny. SAFECHAIN™ exists to build the architecture that makes institutional success possible.

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To engage with the SAFECHAIN™ framework, discuss research and policy partnerships, or explore institutional implementation:

samantha@safe-chain.org | safe-chain.org

Samantha Avril-Andreassen FRSA

Founder and CEO, SAFECHAIN™ Ltd | Company No. 12038453

ORCID: 0009-0009-9479-0819

© 2026 Samantha Avril-Andreassen. All rights reserved. SAFECHAINN Ltd (Company No. 12038453). SAFECHAIN™ is a registered trademark.