Domestic Abuse and the family law court experience: co-creating support resources with survivors and practitioners

This chapter explores a funded research project with multiple stakeholders working together to deliver digital resources for domestic abuse survivors navigating the family law court system. The digital resources were co-produced with two working groups: the first group comprising English and Welsh domestic abuse survivors and the second being practitioners who support domestic abuse survivors in court (lawyers, domestic abuse support workers, and managers). The survivors and frontline practitioners were entrepreneurial in co-creating and testing digital resources designed to signpost, support, and provide interventions for vulnerable court users. These resources are essential to navigate a system that has been widely critiqued and highlighted as producing harm to vulnerable court users. Alongside enterprising domestic abuse survivors and nationwide support organisations, Cardiff Women’s Aid and Support through Court resources were co-created based on survivor experiences and offered pathways that had been hitherto hidden to new court users by utilising the experiences of those who have gone before them. The case findings are set within a broader literature on public sector entrepreneurship to illuminate the often harrowing journeys through the court system, and how the entrepreneurial use of digital resources has the potential to benefit a variety of stakeholders.