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Clare’s Law is often presented as a straightforward safeguarding tool: ask the police whether a current or former partner has a history of domestic abuse, receive information where disclosure is justified, and make an informed decision about your safety. But domestic abuse is rarely that simple. New University of Leeds research into the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme is examining how the system works in practice, including the experiences of victim-survivors themselves. That matters because information can be protective — but a disclosure is not the same as safety, and a response saying there is “nothing to disclose” does not mean there is no risk.
Clare’s Law Under the Microscope: Why Victim-Survivor Experience Must Shape the Future of Domestic Abuse Disclosure
The University of Leeds is recruiting victim-survivors to take part in major new research examining the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme — better known as Clare’s Law. It is an important project, because giving someone information about an abusive partner is not the same thing as making them safe.
A post shared by Hourglass caught my attention this week.
Researchers at the University of Leeds are looking to speak to people who have experienced the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme (DVDS), commonly known as Clare’s Law, as well as victim-survivors who have views about how the scheme operates.
That matters.
Clare’s Law is regularly presented as an important safeguarding tool — and it can be. But there is a much bigger question behind any disclosure scheme:
What actually happens to a victim-survivor once the information has been disclosed?
Information alone does not remove coercive control.
It does not find somebody somewhere safe to live.
It does not prevent stalking, economic abuse, threats, manipulation, litigation abuse or post-separation abuse.
And it certainly should not become another mechanism through which responsibility for preventing domestic abuse is quietly transferred onto the person experiencing it.
What is Clare’s Law?
The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme has operated across England and Wales since 2014. It provides a framework through which police may disclose information about a person’s previous violent or abusive behaviour where doing so is necessary and proportionate to protect someone from harm.
The scheme operates through two principal routes:
The Right to Ask
A person can ask the police whether their current or former partner has a history of violent or abusive behaviour. A third party, such as a relative or someone concerned about the potential victim, may also make an application. That does not necessarily mean the third party will personally receive any disclosure.
The Right to Know
Police may themselves consider making a disclosure where information comes to their attention suggesting that somebody may be at risk from a current or former partner.
Section 77 of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 placed the DVDS guidance on a statutory footing. Police forces are required to have regard to that guidance when operating the scheme.
Importantly, Clare’s Law is not simply a criminal-record check.
The current Home Office guidance allows police decision-making to take account not only of relevant convictions, but potentially other intelligence, cases which did not proceed, patterns of behaviour towards previous partners, stalking and controlling or coercive behaviour.
Any disclosure must still satisfy the relevant legal tests and must be necessary and proportionate.
You can read the current Home Office Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme statutory guidance here .
A particularly important point: no disclosure does not mean no danger
This distinction is crucial.
If police say that there is no information to disclose, that does not amount to a finding that a partner is safe, that abuse has not occurred or that concerns are unfounded.
The Home Office guidance expressly recognises the limitations of police intelligence. Someone receiving a “nothing to disclose” response should not be led to believe that this means there is no risk.
That is particularly important in domestic abuse cases.
Many perpetrators have no domestic abuse conviction.
Some have never been arrested.
Some offending has been reported but never resulted in a prosecution.
Other behaviour may have been disclosed separately to schools, social services, health professionals, family members or domestic abuse organisations without ever becoming a police record capable of producing a straightforward disclosure.
And coercive control often develops gradually.
A victim may be experiencing isolation, financial restriction, monitoring, intimidation, sexual coercion or psychological domination long before anybody outside the relationship recognises the pattern.
Why this new research matters
The project is entitled:
“The Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme Project: Information Sharing and Domestic Abuse”
It is an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project led by Dr Charlotte Barlow at the University of Leeds, working with Dr Ellen Reeves.
The researchers are examining some of the questions that need considerably more attention:
- How effective is Clare’s Law as a method of information sharing?
- When and in what circumstances do police forces actually disclose information?
- How consistent is practice between different police forces?
- What role do domestic abuse organisations, safeguarding bodies and other agencies play?
- How do victim-survivors themselves share information about abusive perpetrators?
- How is perpetrator accountability incorporated into the system?
- How is DVDS information collected and stored?
- Most importantly, what is the experience of the people the scheme is supposed to protect?
The research includes analysis of DVDS data from all 43 police forces in England and Wales for the period 2019–2025, alongside interviews with professionals and victim-survivors.
That combination is important.
Administrative data can tell us how many applications were received and how many disclosures were made.
It cannot, by itself, tell us whether somebody understood the information, whether it reached them quickly enough, whether disclosure increased danger, whether appropriate support followed, or what happened when they tried to act upon it.
Lived experience supplies the part of the picture which statistics cannot.
You can read more about the University of Leeds research project here .
Information is useful. Information is not a safety plan.
One of the risks with schemes such as Clare’s Law is that public discussion can become overly simplistic:
Ask about him.
Find out whether he has a history.
Leave if there are red flags.
Keep yourself safe.
Real domestic abuse does not operate like that.
A woman may already be financially dependent on the perpetrator.
She may have children with him.
He may control her phone, transport, bank account or access to friends.
He may have threatened what will happen if she leaves.
She may know perfectly well that his behaviour is dangerous but have nowhere immediately safe to go.
She may also understand something professionals sometimes underestimate: separation can itself increase risk.
So the relevant question cannot simply be:
“Was information disclosed?”
We also need to ask:
- Was it disclosed quickly enough?
- Was it delivered safely?
- Was the information meaningful?
- Was the survivor believed?
- Was the pattern of coercive control understood?
- Was a realistic safety plan created?
- Were children considered?
- Were specialist domestic abuse services involved?
- What happened next?
The danger of placing responsibility back onto women
There is another issue here which deserves careful scrutiny.
Domestic abuse policy must not drift into a model in which women are expected to become their own investigators, risk assessors and safeguarding professionals.
Clare’s Law should provide an additional route to protection.
It should never become the basis for asking a victim afterwards:
“Why didn’t you check?”
That would fundamentally misunderstand domestic abuse.
Responsibility for abuse belongs with the person choosing to perpetrate it.
Responsibility for identifying and managing dangerous perpetrators must also remain a core responsibility of policing, criminal justice, safeguarding services and the wider state.
Victim-survivors should have access to information which can help them make informed decisions. But access to information must not become another form of responsibilisation: another expectation that women should somehow have predicted, researched and prevented the abuse committed against them.
The principle should be simple:
Give victim-survivors information, choices and support — but keep the focus firmly on perpetrator behaviour and institutional responsibility.
Why information-sharing matters beyond policing
This research also matters because domestic abuse information rarely sits neatly within one organisation.
One agency may know about an assault.
Another may know about stalking.
A school may have safeguarding information concerning the children.
A GP may have recorded injuries or anxiety.
Social services may hold previous referrals.
A former partner may have experienced almost identical behaviour.
Family courts may later receive allegations of coercive control or post-separation abuse.
Individually, those pieces of information can appear disconnected.
Together, they may reveal a pattern.
That is one of the central safeguarding challenges in domestic abuse: systems often see incidents while victim-survivors are living through patterns.
Effective information-sharing therefore has the potential to be extremely powerful. Poor information-sharing can be catastrophic.
How long should a Clare’s Law application take?
Current statutory guidance provides a suggested maximum period of 28 days from the start of the DVDS process to completion, although justified exceptional circumstances can extend that period.
Importantly, where immediate risks are identified, safeguarding action should not simply wait for the disclosure process to finish.
The guidance envisages ongoing safety planning and risk assessment throughout the process.
That distinction is vital: an administrative timetable must never become a reason to delay an urgent safeguarding response.
Have you experienced Clare’s Law?
The University of Leeds research team would like to hear from victim-survivors.
According to the current recruitment information, researchers are interested in speaking to people who:
- have experienced Clare’s Law / the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme; or
- are victim-survivors who have views about the DVDS.
Participation involves an interview which can take place online by video or telephone, at a suitable time and date.
For further information, contact Dr Charlotte Barlow at c.barlow@leeds.ac.uk or visit the DVDS Project website .
Research involving lived experience needs to be undertaken carefully and ethically. Nobody should feel pressured to participate, disclose information they are uncomfortable sharing or place themselves at risk in order to contribute.
But when victim-survivors choose to speak, their experience can expose things that policies, statistics and institutional processes cannot.
What this means for family justice
There is an obvious connection here with the family courts.
Domestic abuse rarely fits comfortably into a single legal jurisdiction.
A person may encounter the police, an IDVA, social services, Cafcass, a GP, a school, the criminal courts and the family courts — sometimes simultaneously.
Evidence about previous abusive behaviour or police safeguarding interventions may later become relevant in proceedings concerning:
- child arrangements;
- domestic abuse allegations;
- coercive and controlling behaviour;
- stalking and harassment;
- non-molestation orders;
- occupation orders;
- risk assessments;
- Cafcass assessments; and
- the safeguarding and welfare of children.
But disclosure evidence still needs to be handled carefully.
Its existence does not automatically determine a family court issue, just as the absence of a police disclosure does not prove the absence of domestic abuse.
Family courts are required to consider the evidence before them, the particular facts of the case, the welfare of any children involved and the applicable legal framework.
The bigger question
Clare’s Law was created because information can save lives.
That principle remains compelling.
But more than a decade after the scheme was rolled out nationally, it is right that researchers ask harder questions about how it works in practice.
Does important intelligence move between agencies?
Are disclosures consistent between police forces?
Do survivors receive meaningful support afterwards?
Are patterns of coercive control recognised?
Are perpetrators being kept in view — or are victim-survivors still being required to carry too much of the burden of managing their own risk?
Those are not academic details.
They go directly to whether safeguarding systems actually safeguard.
Information can be protective. But information alone is not protection.
The test of any domestic abuse disclosure scheme must ultimately be what happens in the real lives of the people it was created to protect.
Need help organising domestic abuse evidence for family proceedings?
JSH Law provides practical, evidence-led support for people navigating family proceedings, particularly where cases involve domestic abuse, coercive control, safeguarding concerns or complex patterns of behaviour.
Support can include organising evidence, preparing chronologies, drafting statements, preparing schedules of allegations, reviewing Cafcass material, hearing preparation, non-molestation order paperwork and helping litigants in person present complicated histories clearly and coherently.
Need practical help making sense of the evidence?
Book a consultation with JSH LawImportant: This article provides general information about the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme in England and Wales and should not be treated as legal advice about an individual case. Domestic abuse and safeguarding cases are fact-specific and may require urgent specialist advice.
If you are in immediate danger, call 999. If you cannot speak on a mobile call, press 55 when prompted where the Silent Solution system applies.
If you are worried about abuse affecting you or an older person in your life, Hourglass operates a free 24/7 helpline on 0808 808 8141.
