The UK’s main domestic abuse risk assessment tool is not fit for purpose

Hourglass is the only UK-wide charity dedicated to ending the abuse, harm, exploitation, and neglect of older people. The organisation has responded to comments by the safeguarding minister Jess Phillips, who admitted the main risk assessment tool for domestic abuse “doesn’t work”. Its calling on the government and safeguarding partners to recognise the risks older people face – which the existing assessment tool too often misses.

Jess Phillips: domestic abuse risk assessment tool ‘doesn’t work’

The government and Jess Phillips could soon scrap DASH – the UK’s main risk assessment tool for domestic abuse, after mounting evidence shows it has repeatedly failed to identify high-risk cases.

For more than a decade, professionals across the UK have relied on DASH. Yet independent studies have revealed that professionals have often assessed victims who abusers later killed, or subjected to repeated abuse, as only ‘standard’ or ‘medium’ risk. Families who lost loved ones are now taking legal action against institutions that relied on this flawed tool.

Hourglass has long warned that DASH was never fit for purpose when it came to older victim-survivors. Abuse in later life often looks very different: dependency on carers or family members, economic coercion, neglect, and isolation. By contrast, DASH questions were built around the experiences of younger victims. It often focuses on stalking, harassment, or recent relationship breakdowns.

Crucially, Hourglass reminds policymakers that abuse of older people is not just a women and girls’ issue:

• Older men make up a significant proportion of callers to the Hourglass helpline.
• Adult children, relatives, or even professional carers can perpetrate abuse – not just intimate partners.
• Risk tools designed solely within a VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) framework leave older men, and those outside traditional victim stereotypes, unseen and unsupported.

Older abuse victims must not be missed

Chief executive of Hourglass Richard Robinson said:

Older victim-survivors of abuse are too often invisible in the safeguarding system. Hourglass has never believed that DASH adequately reflected the realities of abuse in later life – whether those victims are women or men. Replacing DASH must be more than a technical fix. It must embed an age-inclusive, gender-inclusive understanding of abuse, backed by training, resourced services, and accountability across every agency.

Hourglass is therefore calling on government and safeguarding partners to:

• Ensure any replacement risk tool reflects the unique dynamics of abuse against older people. This must include economic dependence, carer-abuse, coercion at end of life, and age-related vulnerabilities.
• Recognise that older men as well as women are victims, and provide specialist services.
• Mandate specialist training for professionals so they do not ‘downgrade’ or dismiss older victims as low-risk.
• Collect robust age- and gender-segmented data to monitor risk decisions and prevent systemic neglect of older victim-survivors.

Featured image via the Canary