Impacts of an intervention to improve the identification, referral and safety of those experiencing domestic violence: a mixed methods study in the UK

This study is the first evaluation of the impacts on long-term health issues (and associations with ethnicity and poverty) of a domestic violence intervention, Identification and Referral to Improve Safety (IRIS). IRIS is a domestic violence training, support and referral programme based mainly in primary care settings. This was a convergent, parallel, mixed methods UK study. In the quantitative phase, we matched the health records of 294 patients who had a marker for domestic violence with records from a domestic violence support service to track the health conditions of participants before and after referral to IRIS. In the qualitative phase, we conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 21 women who had received IRIS support and thematically analysed the data. Descriptive statistics indicated that, at the point of referral to IRIS, participants had a variety of health conditions, with a reduction on a number of mental and overall physical health conditions post-IRIS. Qualitative data are reported under five prominent themes: life before, driving forces for help-seeking, experiences of support, perceived impacts and recovery as a journey. Overall, we found that IRIS support was associated with a positive impact on participants. The study highlights the benefits of improved identification and referral of domestic violence survivors.