Caring for a Child Who Has Lived With Domestic Abuse

Plenty of children come into foster care from a house where one adult was frightened of another. You may never be told the details, and you do not need them in order to help. What helps is knowing what a child carries out of a house like that, and what to say in the first week while they work out whether you are safe.

Please note: this is general information for carers in England and not legal advice. The law and figures here are correct at 6 November 2026. For the current position see the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and the government’s guidance on domestic abuse and how to get help. If anyone is in immediate danger, call 999. Refuge’s National Domestic Abuse Helpline for women is 0808 2000 247, free, 24 hours a day. Respect’s Men’s Advice Line for male victims is 0808 8010 327, free, weekdays 10am to 5pm. Childline is 0800 1111.

A child who only heard it is a victim too, and the law says so

Section 3 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 says that a child under 18 who sees, hears or experiences the effects of domestic abuse is a victim in their own right, where they are related to the adult being abused or to the person causing the harm. That has been in force since 2021. Before it, a child in that house was a witness to somebody else’s problem. Now they have standing of their own.

It matters in an ordinary way. Carers are sometimes told, or quietly assume, that a child “didn’t really see anything” because they were asleep upstairs. Parliament stopped drawing that line, and so should you. A child who learned the sound of a particular footstep on the stairs has been affected, whatever they saw.

This is not a niche specialism you can leave to someone else. In the Department for Education’s children in need figures published on 30 October 2025, concerns about a parent or carer being the victim of domestic abuse came up in around a third of the episodes where assessment factors were recorded. If you foster in London, you will care for a child who came out of a house like this.

What you might notice, and what it does not mean

None of what follows is a diagnostic test, and a child who does one of these things is not necessarily telling you anything. But carers who have done this before recognise the same handful of behaviours in the first few weeks:

• flinching at a raised voice, a slammed door or a dropped pan
• watching your face far more closely than they listen to your words
• going very quiet and very helpful, rather than acting out
• stomach aches and headaches that arrive on school mornings
• broken sleep, nightmares, or wetting the bed again after years of dry nights
• real distress at being apart from the parent who was being hurt

That last one catches people out. A child can be desperate to get back to the house you are relieved they left, and that is not confusion. The parent who was frightened is very often the person who fed them and walked them to school, and loyalty does not wait for a court timetable. Treating that longing as a problem to correct is the quickest way to lose a child’s trust.

One more pattern is worth naming. Some children arrive using the only method they have seen for ending an argument, which is to make the other person stop. If a child hits out, read it as a borrowed script rather than a verdict on the sort of person they are. Our guide to what to do when a child’s behaviour is hard to handle covers that, and the piece on trauma and attachment explains why a settled home can feel unsafe at first.

Four things not to say, and one promise never to make

Our own training material is blunt about this, and it is the most useful page in it. Four well-meant responses hurt a child again, and they all turn up in kitchens every week:

• blame, as in “what made him do that?”
• disbelief, as in “I can’t believe a parent would do that”
• minimising, as in “well, it’s over now”
• judgment, as in “your dad is a very bad person”

Minimising is the one kind people reach for. “It’s over now” is meant as comfort and lands as an instruction to stop talking. Calling a parent a bad person puts a child in the position of defending them, which usually ends the conversation and your chances of a second one.

Then there is the promise. Children often ask you to keep it secret before they tell you anything, and the answer has to be no. Say so before they start, and name your supervising social worker. Do not sweeten it by promising the people you tell are the good guys; a child who has been let down by adults hears that for the sales pitch it is. “I have to tell someone, and I will tell you when I do” is a promise you can keep.

What actually helps is duller than you would hope

Most of the work is ordinary and barely looks like work. You are showing a child, over months, what a house sounds like when two adults disagree and nobody in the building is frightened. The most useful thing you do this week might be how you react when somebody takes the parking space you were reversing into. Children who have lived with domestic abuse read adult irritation as the first step on a staircase whose ending they know. Not raising your voice over a lost set of keys teaches more than any conversation about healthy relationships.

If you want a framework rather than instincts, the Secure Base model developed at the University of East Anglia is the one most used in fostering, and it gives five things to aim at:

• availability, which helps a child to trust
• sensitivity, which helps them manage feelings and behaviour
• acceptance, which builds their self-esteem
• co-operation, which helps them feel effective
• family membership, which helps them belong

Those sit alongside therapeutic parenting and PACE, the approach we train our carers in. And if talking things through with someone outside the house is recommended, your part is getting them there every week, including the weeks they would rather not go.

Family time is the hardest part of this

You will not get to decide whether a child sees the person who caused the harm. That is right, and it will still be hard. Where a child is in care, the local authority has to allow reasonable contact, the word the Children Act 1989 still uses, with their parents. Under section 34(6) it can refuse, but only where that is necessary to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare, only as a matter of urgency, and only for up to seven days. After a week it is a decision for the court.

Knowing that seven-day limit is oddly steadying, because it stops you waiting for a decision nobody has the power to make quickly. Make sure the child’s own view about who they want to see is on the record rather than in your head, then watch what family time costs them, before, during and after. The week a child stops sleeping after a Tuesday visit is information, and only you have it.

Two things most carers are never told

The first is Operation Encompass. Where a police force takes part, after officers attend a domestic abuse incident at a home with children in it, a trained member of staff at the school is told before the next school day starts. Ask your child’s school whether they take part and who holds that role, because it means a bad night does not have to be explained by a seven-year-old at nine in the morning. Coverage is still growing rather than universal, so it is worth checking rather than assuming.

The second is Domestic Abuse Protection Orders. The 2021 Act created them for longer-term protection and you may hear them mentioned in a meeting, but they are still a pilot rather than the law everywhere. Since 27 November 2024 the pilot has covered the London boroughs of Croydon, Sutton and Bromley, with other areas added through 2025. The orders are only available where the person causing the harm lives in a pilot area, so if a conversation about one goes nowhere and you foster in Lewisham, that is usually why.

You won’t have to do this alone

Nobody expects you to arrive knowing any of this. Our carers are trained in therapeutic parenting before a child moves in, you will have a supervising social worker who knows your household, and there is someone on the phone at three in the morning when a child wakes up shouting. Greater London Fostering was inspected by Ofsted from 21 to 25 July 2025 and rated Outstanding in all three judgements.

Fostering with us is paid as a role, not as expenses. The fee is 479.50 pounds a week for a child under 11 and 507.50 pounds a week for a child aged 11 or over, paid per child while they are living with you, with an enhanced fee of roughly 100 to 200 pounds a week more where a child’s needs are higher. It is one weekly payment covering the child’s allowance and your reward, so there is nothing to claim separately at birthdays. Read more about the support our foster carers receive.

Frequently asked questions

Will I be told what happened to the child before they arrive?

You will be told what is known and what is relevant to keeping that child safe, which is not always the whole story. Records are often thin at the start, and children tell you things over months rather than in week one. You do not need the full history. You need to know what frightens them and who to ring.

What if a child wants to go back to the parent who was being hurt?

Most do, and it is not a sign anything has gone wrong. Say plainly that you can hear how much they miss their mum or dad, pass the wish on so it is recorded, and do not argue them out of it. Children who feel their loyalty is being judged stop telling you things.

Can I foster if I have lived through domestic abuse myself?

Yes, and many foster carers have. Your assessment will ask about it, not to catch you out but because your own experience shapes how you respond when a child talks about theirs. What matters is where you are with it now and what support you have. Raise it early, and ask us how it is usually handled.