The Mentor Court Project aimed to reinvigorate the Specialist Domestic Abuse Court (SDAC) model nationally, improving the criminal justice response to domestic abuse across England and Wales.
We worked with a range of partners including the Centre for Justice Innovation to better understand the current picture and where improvements are needed to keep victims and survivors safe.
This page contains all the research and event recordings which were carried out as part of the project and further information on setting up an SDAC. If you have any questions, please contact criminal.justice@standingtogether.org.uk.
The project was funded by the DCMS Tampon Tax fund for two years up to the end of March 2023. It delivered two key workstreams:
The Mentor Court Project created a wide evidence base demonstrating the current picture of SDACs across England and Wales. Part of this work involved Standing Together establishing observation and learning sessions at SDACs across the country, conducting national research to find and evaluate courts and provide capacity-building support to other areas. Onward funding was also provided to Advance for the provision of Specialist Criminal Justice IDVAs for the project. Research conducted by our evaluation partner the Centre for Justice Innovation independently evaluated the Westminster SDAC and demonstrates the urgent importance of providing specialised IDVA support for victims and survivors from Black and minoritised communities.
The findings across the research conducted clearly demonstrate the need for specialist court models and tailored criminal justice responses to domestic abuse. While we found pockets of good practice across the country, we also found a serious lack of consistency between regions in terms of specialised court provision.
