Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) started working with Hestia and the Everyone’s Business team in 2021, in order to develop new internal guidance on domestic abuse alongside training for staff.  Mary-Louise Sears Advisor and Michelle Nightingale who are responsible for Safeguarding at GOSH, say the advice and support has proved invaluable.

In response to the launch of the new Domestic Abuse Bill, our Head of Safeguarding set up a team with staff from across the Trust, and partner agencies from North Central London.  We invited Hestia’s Everyone’s Business team to the meetings to help us build a strategy that included updating policies, processes to improve both our understanding and response to the impact of domestic abuse with all our stakeholders.

Through our work with Hestia we now have guidance in place that gives us greater awareness about the impact of domestic abuse and the confidence to respond in a sensitive and timely manner. Hestia supported us to develop a toolkit so that we can signpost people to support, and we also have trained Domestic Abuse Champions across the organisation so that staff know who they can go to for advice.

What’s been fantastic is that the training with Hestia has empowered our teams from the senior leadership team to our support staff to feel confident in supporting staff who might be experiencing domestic abuse. We’ve had staff tell us that in the past they have had people disclose domestic abuse and they didn’t always know what to do. Now they feel confident in responding and giving the best advice really quickly.

It’s something the whole team feel passionately about and the training sessions were a great way for people to be able to share their concerns about how to support someone experiencing domestic abuse and discuss real life situations. Hestia were able to answer all our questions and the training was very much tailored to the situations that staff at GOSH might be dealing with. The personal and unique approach was why the training was such a success and staff were really engaged. People came out of the training full of ideas, not only on how we address domestic abuse across the organisation but how we promote that advice and support so everyone is aware.

They continued to support, give guidance and advice for our strategy which means that GOSH feels confident from a corporate perspective that we are able to signpost and support staff appropriately and safely.

For now, this work has focused on supporting staff internally but we are now looking at reviewing our response to patients and families as well. So, I would say it has really influenced our entire thinking when it comes to responding to domestic abuse.

I would say to anyone thinking about working with the Everyone’s Business team to just do it. If you want a workplace that is a supportive and responsive to domestic abuse then you need to do this work. We are in a very different place now and our staff are genuinely excited about where we might take this work next. 

 

---

Everyone’s Business works with employers so that they can provide information, resources and practical guidance to employees who have experienced domestic abuse. When employers take action and respond to domestic abuse we know it saves lives. 

If you are an organisation interested in joining the Everyone’s Business programme, take a look at our The Everyone’s Business Offer page, or register your interest by filling in this form. To find out more about Everyone's Business and what support packages are available, download our brochure. 

Subscribe to the Everyone's Business e-newsletter