An exploration of Black African and African-Caribbean women’s representation and their barriers to disclosing domestic abuse and sexual violence to GPs in Manchester

Baker, Victoria ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9794-3344, Chantler, Khatidja ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9129-2560 and Ansari, Saima (2024) An exploration of Black African and African-Caribbean women’s representation and their barriers to disclosing domestic abuse and sexual violence to GPs in Manchester. Research Report. Manchester Metropolitan University. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Service overview IRIS is an evidence-based domestic violence and abuse (DVA) training, support, and referral programme for General Practices, which aims to improve the identification of patients experiencing domestic violence and abuse and forward referral for specialist support. IRIS is a collaboration between primary care and third sector organisations, and in Manchester is delivered by The Pankhurst Trust incorporating Manchester Women’s Aid (PTMWA, MWA), who have over 40 years’ experience of delivering domestic abuse services. The IRIS model has been positively evaluated using a cluster randomised controlled trial (Feder et al., 2011), and more recently, using a longitudinal study (Sohal et al., 2020). IRIS is cited as an example of best practice in national and statutory policy guidance by the Department of Health (2017) and Home Office (2022) respectively and is endorsed by the Royal College of General Practitioners (IRISi, 2022). IRIS is a well-established and well-integrated programme, having been operating in Manchester for over 10 years, with all 85 GP practices trained. Further, the introduction of IRIS has resulted in consistently positive outcomes with regards to increases in referrals to specialist DVA services and improvement in patient health and wellbeing, including positive feedback from patients themselves (Hussain & Bates, 2021). Research need Through their ongoing process of service improvement, Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (GMICB) identified that there were communities the IRIS service may be underserving. Specifically, Manchester IRIS reported that Black African and African-Caribbean women may be underrepresented in their service, with unidentified barriers which may be resulting in lower disclosure of domestic violence and abuse (including sexual violence and abuse). In order to understand how IRIS may improve the engagement of Black African and African-Caribbean women with their service in Manchester, GMICB approached Manchester Metropolitan University (specifically Professor Khatidja Chantler, School of Nursing and Public Health) to carry out a piece of research to elicit the potential barriers and enablers of service engagement for this specific population.