I think it would be interesting to put this information up, having done some training this week in relation to my work. I am a health professional. Every three years I am required to do training for safeguarding both children and those defined as “vulnerable” who are adult.As a health professional, were I do have a disclosure of domestic violence where there was a potential second victim who was either a child or a vulnerable adult, I am required under law to report this through to the child protection services OR SOVA panel. If the person reporting to me, says they don’t want further action – this is something I can highlight in the reporting process, however I must report it regardless – the sharing of information in child protection or SOVA takes precidence over consent for that information to be shared. People in the social sector (education, social work, voluntary organisations such as scouts etc) are also bound under the same legislation. The reasoning behind this information sharing is that there have been some awful deaths of both vulnerable adults and children where different agencies KNEW there was something going on, but no one put the bits and pieces of the jigsaw together. To compell professionals to do this, our registration can be revoked if something happens harmful to the child or vulnerable adult and we were later found to have information that might have assisted an intervention. In 13 years of practice I have only once had to use the child protection system as part of my work, and I have once done it to report a concern regarding a child in my neighbourhood who at age 6 displayed some concerningly sexualised behaviour to me as an adult walking by in the street. I have also been on an evaluation panel for a SOVA situation with a learning disabled adult, as there was a concern the abuse or neglect fell into my area of specialism.There is quite a specific definition of vulnerable under UK law, and many times adults experiencing domestic violence from spouses are not classified as vulnerable. However, for the first time there was a fairly extensive session outlining the processes and proceedures that can be enacted for the victims of domestic violence which have been agreed in an interagency approach including health, social services, ambulance and importantly policing.If I had a disclosure of domestic violence in my work, where the person disclosing was NOT a vulnerable adult, and they wish to get assistance, I can get them linked into the MARAC system. The first stage of MARAC is a standard form which is used by everyone the police in response to a domestic incident. Believe me, an abuser would not want to go through a MARAC interview trying to make up the answers to the questions, because there are some questions that are clearly there for checking the consistency of a story. If at the end of a MARAC interview, if the complainant does not want to take it forwards – then any one achieving a “threshold” score is still registered into the MARAC system to be flagged up, should there be another disclosure of abuse or incident recorded against their name.The MARAC has been designed to be completely gender neutral and could be used in any form of partner domestic violence, m vs. f, f vs. m, SLGBT. In addition, there is training at various levels being rolled out through all organisations including the police highlighting domestic violence issues and presentation. Locally, there is serious talk about starting a “just ask” campaign, saying that people who are victims of domestic violence, should “just ask” for help, and conversely people like myself if we suspect domestic violence in our client contacts, should “just ask” the client if they are being vicitimised. One of the figures given was 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse, but also 1 in 6 men will too. We had two male social workers on our course both who were shocked how high that figure was, and I challenged one of them on his clear lack of belief, asking if he had ever seen a male friend being “henpecked” by a spouse in public…when he said yes, I said “So if that is happening in public, how much worse might it be behind closed doors?”The facilitator and I spoke later and she said “You are a survivor of abuse aren’t you?” I said “Yep, and supporting others too.” She said “We need more people like you – keep up challenging the stereotypes!”