In 1999, under the then UK Labour Government, Scotland became a devolved nation with its own Parliament and right to legislate and decide about key areas such as health and social work, education and training, local government and housing, and justice and policing. Since then it has been possible for Scotland to forge its own approach to tackling domestic abuse. As Marsha Scott, from Scottish Women’s Aid, the main umbrella group for specialist support to victims-survivors, points out at the beginning of the book: ‘It’s different in Scotland’ (p. xi). Importantly, Scotland has a strong history of feminist activism and feminist organisations working to tackle domestic abuse, while being a small country where networking and contact with politicians may consequently be easier. Scotland has thus been able to create a more radical agenda on domestic abuse than that espoused by the UK Government.

The book edited by Ona Brooks-Hays, Michele Burman and Clare McFeely is a useful collection that captures the essence of the ‘Scottish approach’, outlining the underpinning ideas, policy shifts and professional practices to tackling domestic abuse that have resulted. The book is divided into eight chapters, organised largely around policy areas related to criminal justice, health, education and children’s social work – the areas that the devolved Scottish government has legislative control over.

The book conveys the excitement and optimism of the Scottish work on domestic abuse, and shows how Scotland leads the UK in having a distinctly feminist agenda at the heart of policy with a gendered definition of domestic abuse that specifically recognises intimate partner domestic abuse ‘as a function of gendered inequalities’ as Brooks-Hays et al. observe (p. 7). Scotland was also the first of the UK countries to have a specific criminal offence of domestic abuse, and is still the only UK country where such an offence covers all aspects of domestic abuse. Crucially, the Scottish approach is built on the elements well known to be key, such as use of specialist services working with statutory agencies in coordinated multi-agency settings. The book shows how, despite cuts to services in the past decade imposed by the UK government, Scotland has managed to continue to prioritise and embed such an approach, with specialist expertise in police domestic abuse units, dedicated prosecutors, use of specialist domestic abuse courts, and involvement of specialist advocacy and perpetrator programmes. Since devolution, Scotland has been able to create a unified police force, with domestic abuse deemed core police business. Behaviour change work with perpetrators has also been unified across Scotland within one programme model, entitled the Caledonian.

While the UK government has had a general policy of marketizing service provision, the book highlights how in Scotland the health service continues to be funded directly, thus avoiding competition and facilitating ‘a consistent national approach’ according to McFeely and Cosgrove (p. 56). Continuing with the theme of co-ordination, an action plan on domestic abuse and other GBV was developed, based on a systems approach (the CEL_41), and providing ‘an ambitious programme for addressing GBV as service providers, employers and partners’ (p. 66). A National Gender Based violence and Health programme manager was appointed, and a national GBV team established to implement the work across the health service. The approach includes routine enquiry across health service departments, for a range of GBV, and includes emphasis on domestic abuse and other GBV experienced by health sector staff themselves. As the authors conclude, the approach has meant that domestic abuse and other GBV is now regarded as core business for the health service.

At the same time the book is clear about challenges and shortcomings of the Scottish approach thus far. For instance, that the Scottish policy is at an embryonic stage in addressing wider intersections, including age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socio-economic and health status. Also that a gendered definition is not reflected in the otherwise ground-breaking Scottish legislation that resulted in a domestic abuse criminal offence from 2019. While the book outlines the positive work that has taken place in criminal justice and health sectors to deal with the impacts of domestic abuse on victims-survivors, the chapter on education show that where prevention of domestic abuse is concerned there is still much work to be done. Many of us have looked to Scotland for the inspiring work of the group Zero Tolerance, who since the 1990s have developed materials for schools and young people to develop awareness of domestic abuse and sexual violence, and ‘to promote positive, non-violent relationships based on equality and respect’ according to Lombard and Harris (p. 75). However, despite this work and also the development of positive policies that go much further than other countries of the UK to ensure ‘whole school approach’ and relationship education across schools, the authors’ own research indicates that the understanding of domestic abuse as ‘core business’ and linked to gender inequality is not yet evident across schools, and lacking from the primary school sector. None the less, as they argue, the building blocks are in place, with a Curriculum for Excellence and other policies that could and should ensure that a preventative domestic abuse can flourish.

Other work to support children, through children and family social work, is considered by the authors to be developing in a positive direction, but also held back by the highly entrenched notions of focusing on and blaming mothers for domestic abuse that affects their children, rather than focusing on the perpetrators as the problem (Morrison and Mitchell, Chapter 7). Following the wider ‘Scottish approach’ to domestic abuse, the City of Edinburgh has been implementing the Safe and Together Model, which tackles these weaknesses in social work by being child centred, working on strengths of non-abusive parents, and focusing on perpetrator behaviour. As the authors conclude, this ‘appears to be a promising approach’. Indeed evaluations elsewhere have, since the book was published, increasingly showed positive results (Bocioaga, Reference Bocioaga2019).

Overall it is a book well worth reading to gain an overview of how a country can have a unified approach to tackling domestic abuse, including pitfalls and solutions. My one wish would be a further chapter, on housing, which is a crucial issue for women leaving violent men. Housing, or rather homelessness, is mentioned briefly in relation to civil protection in Chapter 3, where Brooks-Hay highlights that exclusion orders are applied very rarely (as has also been found elsewhere in the UK, Bates and Hester, Reference Bates and Hester2020), and that this requires further investigation. But wider discussion of domestic abuse related housing policy in Scotland would have been a welcome addition.