Longford domestic violence to be tackled by collaboration and multi-agency group

Over 150 professionals attended the 'Domestic homicide in rural Ireland' seminar

The seminar, 'Responding to the risk of domestic homicide in rural Ireland' last week saw over 150 frontline professionals in attendance, every single one with the same goal: to help those trapped in abusive relationships, and ultimately prevent domestic homicide.

Tara Farrell, CEO of Longford Women’s Link, the organisation who spearheaded the event, said the strongest way to tackle this issue is to ensure frontline agencies now work side by side going forward.

She explained, “There's two messages that we'd like people to take from today. One is that there is a lot of support out there for anyone that is here today, or anyone that knows someone whom they feel might be in this kind of a relationship or experiencing personal control, that there is help out there from the domestic violence support agencies throughout the country.”

“The second thing,” Ms Farrell added, “is that we’re not going to be able to address the issues that are happening in our society if we don't collaborate as agencies on the front line.

So that's why it's so great to see so many people here from agencies right across the country who are coming together to hear from Professor Monckton Smith.

We're all hearing the same information at the same time and really learning and getting those insights into what the actual 8 stages of domestic violence and homicide timeline are so that they can apply that within their own work.

That's really, really important that we're collaborating as agencies and particularly with the Longford Inter Agency group that we established a number of years ago with the help of An Garda Siochana, particularly Sergeant Emer Farrell has been fantastic, and with the support of Longford community safety partnership and Janine Bartley.

We're very fortunate in Longford that we have that collaborative approach to looking at these kinds of issues and that's been really important.”