On Saturday 12th May 108 riders rode to defeat domestic violence. Lovely day, great ride, fantastic helpers. We can make a difference.

For the full story go to our 112 page

Riding to reduce the 112 women killed as a result of domestic violence

Standing Together

Standing Together Against Domestic Violence helps to reduce the huge social and economic cost of domestic violence in the UK. Each year, 112 women die as a result of domestic violence.

Our proven method supports organisations, including the police, criminal justice partners, social services, healthcare workers and charities, to identify and respond effectively together to domestic violence. Our ultimate aim is to help these agencies to work in partnership, so that people receive the best support at the time they need it.

Saving lives, increasing personal wellbeing, and reducing the enormous damage of violent crime far outweighs the cost of what we do.

The terms ‘domestic violence’ and ‘domestic abuse’ are both used in this website. Our usage of both terms reflects the language used by a range of agencies, but the message in both is that in intimate partner and family contexts, the terms abuse and violence include the full range of types of behaviour, physical or non-physical, used by one person to exercise power and control over another.

This  button is on the top of every page on our website - if you need to leave the website quickly you can click on this button and it will take you to the Google homepage.

Further details on keeping yourself safe online.

Our training makes a difference

 "After Standing Together's training, one of my agreed actions during the following 14 days was to start routinely asking [about domestic violence/abuse].... little did I expect to have uncovered two women reporting DA in the clinic immediately afterwards, the same evening.... one very long standing and very significant had never ever told anyone ...

All highly relevant therefore to my professional work and I feel sad that I hadn't been aware of the need to ask beforehand"

Clinical Lecturer / Associate Specialist

For more information about the training we offer visit our training pages

Ellen Pence 1948 – 2012

A great spirit passes on

We are deeply saddened to hear of the death of that great pioneer Ellen Pence. For us she will always be the most powerful advocate in bringing activists and statutory agencies together to completely re think how we respond to domestic abuse, in a coordinated way.

Ellen first came to Hammersmith, London, U.K. from Duluth, Minnesota USA in 1995 and delivered a whole week of training to a packed hall with people from many agencies. She inspired us to do what seemed impossible at the time. She is why our Domestic Violence Forum set out to build the partnership which then became ‘Standing Together Against Domestic Violence’. We brought the Duluth manual ‘In Our Best Interest’ into the Refuges to inspire us and the women taking shelter there.  We tracked the criminal justice system for gaps and set up the first advocacy project in Fulham.

Ellen continued to visit and to re-inspire us over the years when we thought the barriers were insurmountable and later, when we might be in danger of becoming complacent. She was never complacent. She was always developing her thinking, making new connections, questioning, challenging and looking ahead, right through to our last meeting in September 2011.

Ellen was a truly great teacher, in the very best sense of that word, and like all great teachers used humour and stories to shift the way we looked at ourselves. She showed us that bad outcomes don’t come from bad individuals but from bad systems, and demonstrated this clearly in her more recent work on child protection. Her ability to get diverse agencies to learn and laugh together made encounters with her both memorable and subversive; she cleverly challenged the approaches which we had come to take for granted. Ellen always stressed the collective input into the development of the DAIP in Duluth and PRAXIS International, but for us it was her own analysis and powers of communicating which we experienced and which renewed our approach to the work.

Ellen’s influence remains central to all we do at ‘Standing Together’. She influenced many worlds and her loss will be felt all across Europe and as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.

She battled against cancer with all the courage, humanity, insight and sardonic humour which she brought to all she confronted in her life. Her life was too short. We are hugely grateful that she shared some of it with us, and for all she achieved for women all over the world. Part of her will live on in all we try to achieve in our small corner of the world.
We will miss her spirit, her insights, her endless curiosity and her humour. We will miss her as a mentor, an activist and as a friend. Our hearts go out to her mother Anne, her partner Amanda and their son Liam at this dark time.
The ‘touchstone’ to which she returned was the transforming effects of the early group work with women. Our best memorial to her will be to keep listening to women’s stories and to learn from them; to remember that we work for no less than major social change; a revolution in how people interact with each other and a world in which equality is a reality.

Beryl Foster
On behalf of Standing Together Against Domestic Violence
09/01/2012

Ellen Pence interviewed in 2011 by Casey Gwinn in which she sets out the development of a coordinated response and what key lessons she draws at the end of her career.  To watch the interview click here.

More can be shared about Ellen on www.CaringBridge.org – enter ‘ellenpence’ (all one word) in the website box and register.

For information on her career search Ellen Pence on wikipedia.org

Working for Standing Together

There are currently no vacancies at Standing Together