Offering high-quality Domestic Abuse training and consultancy services, specialising in awareness, prevention, and early intervention. Funded by the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver free public online training and by the Office of Police Fire & Crime Commissioner for Essex to deliver bespoke sessions for Essex based employers alongside review and implementation of policies, procedures, and guidance. This work is also available to those based outside of Essex and priced based on bespoke requirements.

There is an extremely valuable role to be played by businesses and organisations in helping to break the cycle of domestic abuse. By making your workplace a safe place, where colleagues can discuss, disclose, and ask for help, will organically benefit and ripple out across staff, clients, and the wider community. Alternatively, any member of our community that is equipped to understand, ‘what domestic abuse is’ and ‘respond safely and effectively’ to any signs, provides an invaluable access point to prevention and early intervention, benefiting the victim, the workplace, and the wider community.

We believe many of the costs associated with domestic abuse could be dramatically reduced with more preventative work and robust interventions at an earlier stage. Often high-risk victims will have to leave their homes, families, jobs, and support network and go into refuge to keep themselves and their children safe. Some of these cases sadly end up as domestic homicides where any intervention has been too late or ineffective, but there are early warning signs which, although subtle, can be detected and responded to safely and effectively. This is not to suggest that any one person should try and take on responsibility to ‘fix this’ for someone. Anyone experiencing or perpetrating Domestic Abuse will need multi-agency support to break the cycle. No-one can do this alone; however, it is through awareness, prevention, and early intervention, you may be the first person to recognise the signs and that reaches out to someone at an earlier point in their journey.

Here at Alpha Vesta, we are passionate about our work and considered specialists in our field. Together with a dedicated Board of Directors, Employees, Ambassadors and Volunteers, we have developed a strong reputation and brand across Essex with businesses, organisations, and clients that we work with.

Our Founding Director and Lead Trainer, Lucy Whittaker is available as a speaker in this field having spent years working as a front-line domestic abuse practitioner, specialising in complex case work and child protection. Lucy has also obtained qualifications in Social Sciences, Criminology and Psychology through Open University.

Lucy’s additional roles include:

• Essex Domestic Abuse Partnership Board Member
• SETDAB (Reference Group) Member
• Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference Chair
• Domestic Homicide Panel Member
• Trainer for Essex Front Line Police Offers and Investigators
• Developer of Guidance, Policies and Procedures around Domestic Abuse for Statutory Services, Specialist Services and Employers.

Together, if we can reach people sooner, we can ‘break the cycle’ of domestic abuse and support those affected at an earlier point in their journey which can change lives, it even saves lives.