Process evaluation of Operation Encompass

Product Description

Operation Encompass (OE) is a police and education information-sharing safeguarding scheme. The OE charity was founded and launched in 2011 by Elisabeth and David Carney-Haworth OBEs. It aims to enable school staff to offer immediate support to children affected by domestic abuse. The OE scheme provides a route for police forces to notify school staff and, where relevant, local authorities (LAs) about police-attended incidents of domestic abuse. Incidents are subject to an OE notification where (a) child/children aged 17 and under were present or are part of the household. This is done so that information can be shared in a timely manner and support for those children can be put in place.

The Home Office commissioned Ipsos UK and the Connect Centre at the University of Lancashire to undertake a process evaluation of the standard scheme. Another process evaluation was undertaken for Early Years (EY) OE, which focuses on children aged 4 and under. The research also examined the feasibility of extending the OE scheme to additional harms, including exploitation, knife crime, and missing children incidents. The work was conducted from late 2022 and mid-2023.

The aims of the evaluations were to explore:

• how and to what extent the OE and EY OE schemes have been implemented in each police force
• how implementation varied between settings
• what influence variation between settings had on implementation
• the feasibility of expanding the OE scheme to other forms of harm