What is a domestic homicide review?
Domestic homicide reviews are carried out to ensure that lessons are learnt when a person has been killed because of domestic violence.
When this happens, the law says that professionals involved in the case must review what happened so that we can identify what needs to be changed and reduce the risk of it happening again in the future.
Domestic homicide review guidance
The Home Office has published guidance on when we need to set up a domestic homicide review and how to do it.
The guidance defines a domestic homicide review as a review of the circumstances in which the death of a person aged 16 or over, has or appears to have resulted from violence, abuse or neglect by a person whom he/she was related or had been in an intimate personal relationship, or a member of the same household.
The purpose of a domestic homicide review
Domestic homicide reviews are not inquiries into how the victim died or into who is responsible.
The purpose of a domestic homicide review is to:
- Establish what lessons are to be learned from the domestic homicide regarding the way in which local professionals and organisations work individually and together to safeguard victims.
- Identify clearly what those lessons are both within and between agencies, how and within what timescales they will be acted on, and what is expected to change as a result.
- Apply those lessons to service responses including changes to policies and procedures as appropriate.
- Prevent domestic violence homicide and improve service responses for all domestic violence victims and their children through improved intra and inter-agency working.
Reviews in East Hampshire
To date, only one such review has been done in East Hampshire. The review found that this tragic case could not have been predicted.
Learning from this review may help to identify cases of domestic abuse more swiftly, but there is not an identified course of action that could have prevented this death.
The full review has been conducted and shared with relevant parties.