After a lengthy period of neglect within criminology, the study of men's violence towards female partners gained a high profile during the 1980s as a consequence of feminist activism and feminist research with victims and survivors. Attention was drawn to the pervasive and extensive nature of violence against women, the greater danger posed by men that women know (as opposed to male strangers), the continuous relationship between physical and sexual assaults and emotional abuse, and the criminal, sometimes fatal, consequences of this abuse (Dobash and Dobash, 1980; Kelly, 1988; Hester et al, 1995). Yet, it was not until the mid-to late 1990s that the British government undertook to develop a coordinated response to the problem of ‘domestic violence’ (Home Office, 2000).

The model of intervention that followed was heavily inspired by experimental work undertaken in the US, notably by Ellen Pence and her collaborators in Duluth, Minnesota (Pence and Paymar, 1993). However, the extent to which North American ideas and practices were imported unmodified into the UK is easily overstated (Newburn, 2002). Many British practitioners have been sceptical of the value of ‘one-size-fits-all’ provision (Bell, 2000). In fact, the National Practitioners’ Network (now RESPECT) has, in recent years, looked more explicitly at Scandinavia and Australia for examples of ‘good practice’ than it has towards the US. Similarly, proposals to introduce pro-arrest styles of policing have been received less favourably in the UK than in the US by women's groups, victim support organisations and the police themselves (Goodall and MacKay, 1998). Indeed, whatever the policy documents say, many British practitioners have been keen to infuse New Labour's preoccupation with evidence-led practice with a fair dose of the social work values they picked up when they entered the field (Vanstone, 2000; Robinson, 2002).

The establishment of the UK's first Women's Unit in 1998 no doubt aided women's activists who had been organising local support for tackling the problem of violence against women – notably from the police, local councils and social services – since the early 1980s (Hague and Malos, 1995). Many towns and cities gained their own ‘domestic violence forums’, where representatives from Women's Aid worked hard to coordinate the efforts of social workers, lawyers, housing officers, police officers and probation officers in order to enhance the safety of women and children. To this day, services remain desperately underfunded in this field.