Toolkit

To help you raise awareness among your community about domestic abuse and how to spot the signs and support victims, we’ve compiled a range of free campaign materials that you can use to inform and educate people in your neighbourhood.  These resources will help people recognise the signs of domestic abuse, either as a victim themselves or as someone close to a victim, and know how to help.

Resources include:

  • Leaflets and posters that you can print off and hand out at events or leave in public places such as GP surgeries or schools, for people to pick up. However, leaflets should not be put through letterboxes, just in case a perpetrator sees it and suspects the victim is seeking help or reporting their behaviour.

  • Online materials such as campaign websites, videos, GIFs and graphics that you can email to your Neighbourhood Watch group members and share on social media sites such as your Neighbourhood Watch Facebook group or Twitter feed.

  • A PowerPoint presentation based on this information pack, for you to use at a public meeting.

  • A template campaign action plan.  You don’t need to follow this to the letter, but it gives some ideas of how to use the toolkit materials in a multi-week awareness and prevention campaign.

  • A template cover letter, that you can use to introduce domestic abuse and this information pack/toolkit to your Neighbourhood Watch members, by email or as a Facebook post.

Printable resources

  • Neighbourhood Watch has produced a collection of leaflets, which you can find in the Downloads section below:
    • Domestic abuse – what it is, spotting the signs, how to help
    • How to talk to someone you suspect may be in an abusive relationship
    • Honour-based crimes
  • Women’s Aid has a selection of leaflets and posters at this webpage.
  • The government has produced a useful leaflet called Female genital mutilation: the facts.

Online resources

Websites

  • Women’s Aid and Avon launched a campaign called #LoveRespect. The website, www.loverespect.co.uk, hosts a range of tools and materials. These include advice, a quiz, survivors' stories and some questions and answers about healthy and unhelathy relationships.
  • Avon & Somerset Police have launched a campaign website called www.thisisnotanexcuse.org.
  • The government’s Disrespect NoBody campaign is aimed at preventing teenagers from becoming victims or perpetrators of domestic abuse, and the website offers advice on abuse, rape, consent and pornography.
  • Women’s Aid has created ‘The Survivor’s Handbook’, a comprehensive resource for women experiencing domestic violence. It has also launched The Hideout, an online space to help children and young people understand domestic abuse, and how to take positive action if they are a victim of it.
  • The Women’s Aid website has helpful instructions to help you cover your tracks online, in case you are worried that their abuser might check their browsing history and see that they’ve visited the Women’s Aid website.  These instructions can be found here.

You can get help and advice on FGM in the UK from:

Films

  • The Government’s Forced Marriage Unit has published a film aimed at raising public awareness of the impact of forced marriage, and warning of the criminal consequences of involvement. The film is told from the perspective of a victim’s older brother, who is complicit in arranging her forced marriage but unaware of its true impact until it is too late.
  • The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has produced a short film called Right to choose: Spotting the signs of forced marriage: Azim
  • The Home Office has also worked with Jasvinder Sanghera, founder of Karma Nirvana and a survivor of honour crimes and forced marriage, who shared her experiences to produce a film.
  • Women's Aid has produced a video called Everything you need to know about coercive control.

Quiz