Nursery World - Working with Parents - An essential guide to… Coercive control

What is coercive control, how does this form of domestic abuse affect young children, and what support is available to families? Meredith Jones Russell reports

In its new draft Domestic Abuse Bill, the Government has specifically included coercive control in its definition of domestic abuse for the first time. The draft bill will introduce measures to address coercive control, or controlling and manipulative non-physical abuse, as well as economic abuse and how domestic abuse affects children.

After falling twice, first due to the prorogation of Parliament and then because of the General Election, the bill will now be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a joint committee of both Houses of Parliament. As a result of the bill, England and Wales will join Scotland in recognising coercive control as an element of domestic abuse. Scotland has defined coercive control as domestic abuse since it passed its Domestic Abuse Act in April 2019.

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