Domestic abuse

Domestic abuse may start or get worse during pregnancy or after giving birth. Domestic abuse includes a range of behaviours including: emotional, psychological, financial, sexual and physical abuse. A person choses to use this abusive behaviour in order to control their partner, ex-partner or family member(s) and it endangers the woman and her unborn child. The abuse is never the fault of the victim/survivor. If you feel afraid of your partner, ex-partner or family member(s), or change your behaviour as you are afraid of how they might react, you may be experiencing domestic abuse. Domestic abuse is not something you need to manage alone. If you want to access support for domestic abuse, some options are:

• Contacting your local Independent Domestic Violence Advisor service
• Speaking to a domestic abuse helpline:
24 hour National Domestic Violence Helpline: 0808 2000 247
Men’s Advice Line: 0808 801 0327
National LGBT+ Domestic Abuse Helpline: 0800 999 5428
• Speaking to your Midwife, GP or Health Visitor

In an emergency, you should contact 999. The Silent Solution is a police system used to filter out large numbers of accidental or hoax 999 calls. It also exists to help people who are unable to speak, but who genuinely need police assistance. You will hear an automated police message, which lasts for 20 seconds and begins with ‘you are through to the police’. It will ask you to press 55 to be put through to police call management. The BT operator will remain on the line and listen. If you press 55, tap or make a noise, they will be notified and transfer the call to the police. If you don’t do any of the above, the call will be terminated after 45 seconds. If you pressed 55, a police call handler will announce that you are through to the police. If you can’t speak, you will be asked to tap the phone, make a noise or press 55. The police call handler will try a number of ways so that you do not feel under pressure to carry out just one prescribed action. Only by pressing 55, tapping the phone, coughing, or making noise are you guaranteed a response to your call from a police call handler despite your silence. It is much easier to speak to the operator. But if you must stay silent, a mechanism has been provided that you can use to acquire help regardless. Pressing 55 will not bring emergency services to your door and does not allow the police to track your location. By choosing to stay on the line, you are informing the police call handler that you might have an emergency that keeps you from talking, and they will do everything they can to determine your location so they can deploy officers to you. The police call handler will try and engage with you, if you remain silent they will attempt to engage further and ask you to tap the phone if you are unable to speak; for example, yes and no questions can be asked by the call handler and answered using one keypad press for yes and two for no. If the police call handler has concerns about your safety, they will continue to try to communicate through sound. If you are able to speak without putting yourself in danger, the police call handler will ask just yes and no questions if necessary. In some cases, the conversation is led by the caller, who sometimes tries and speaks to the police call handlers in code, if for example the perpetrator has reappeared. If you can say only one thing, please say your location. If you call from a mobile, we can pin point an estimate location but this does not narrow down enough to provide data we can locate you on. Police call handlers can request subscriber checks and can carry out background checks to assist in locating you. This can depend on whether you have contacted the police before. Also, if your phone is registered to you, it could determine whether this will provide a potential location for you. The police call handlers will deal with calls on a case by case basis, as each call is different, and the style of the call is adapted in line with the circumstance. If you feel you are perpetrating abuse against your partner, ex-partner or family member(s), you can contact: Respect Helpline: 0808 802 4040