10 Things the Everyday Business Report Tells Us — And Why Safeguarding Must Become Infrastructure

The Report That Changes the Question

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner's Everyday Business report should not be read as another domestic abuse report.

It should be read as a systems report.

The headline findings are now widely cited:

• Domestic abuse was identified in 87% of reviewed family court files.

• Domestic abuse was present in 73% of observed hearings.

These statistics are important.

But the numbers themselves are not the most significant finding.

The most significant finding is what the numbers make impossible to deny.

Domestic abuse is not an exceptional feature of family justice.

It is the operating environment.

For decades, safeguarding systems have largely been designed around an assumption that domestic abuse is a specialist issue requiring specialist intervention.

The Commissioner's findings challenge that assumption entirely.

If abuse is present in the overwhelming majority of proceedings, safeguarding can no longer be treated as an additional consideration.

It must become infrastructure.

This distinction matters.

An intervention is something applied after a problem is identified.

Infrastructure is something designed into the system before the problem occurs.

The future of safeguarding will depend upon whether institutions continue to rely upon interventions or begin building infrastructure.

That is the question the report leaves behind.

And it is the question SAFECHAIN™ was created to answer.