'If I left I knew I’d never see my children again': ‘Huge gaps’ in support for young people in abusive households ahead of Christmas

The children’s charity says it dealt with 7,825 inquiries in the year to March 2025, from adults concerned about children living in environments where abuse between partners had occurred – an increase of 14% on the previous year.

Sophie, not her real name, spoke exclusively to LBC about the impact the domestic abuse she suffered had on her son.

She told us when she tried to break up with her then-husband, "he alienated me from my son and made sure that he did everything with him and I wasn't allowed to do anything with him."

"I lived in the house for two years from me saying I want to finish this relationship and on various occasions he told me I could go but I had to leave the children behind."

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She said: “I didn't feel like I could leave the children because of the amount of abuse that I'd received I didn't want that to be then onto the children.

"And I knew that if I did that, I'd never see the children again. I couldn't leave the children in his care, so that was emotional abuse and it just got really intense in those two years."

The NSPCC says it expects cases like Sophie’s will continue to rise over Christmas, and that it is often harder for victims and their children to escape from their abusive partners when schools are closed, leaving many trapped and afraid at home. It says it received nearly 3,000 calls to its helpline Childline over the festive period last year.

There are also concerns about long-term funding for services dedicated to supporting children and young people exposed to domestic violence.

The charity Women’s Aid says that its annual audit of community led services showed the number without dedicated funding had doubled during 2025 to more than 30 percent.

In a statement the charity said: "Given the findings of the Annual Audit 2025, Women’s Aid is concerned that services may be forced to shut down, ultimately leaving the estimated 1.6 million women and 1.8 million children in England who have experienced abuse in the last year unable to access lifesaving support, unless there is an urgent cash injection to fill the funding gap."

The Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales Dame Nicole Jacobs told LBC that she has concerns over the government’s manifesto pledge to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

"To halve domestic abuse you must look at the earliest points of intervention, you must help children as early as possible”, she said.

"We do have some good practice - we're just not seeing the concentration and the commitment within government to make sure that this is happening in all places for all children and that's absolutely what we must have.

"Consider what it would feel like as a child growing up in a home where your primary care giver is being abused themselves and perhaps that abuse... is extending to you as well. What that does to your sense of belonging, the isolation you'd likely feel.... there's so much that is impacted.”

A Home Office spokesperson told LBC: “No child should ever be trapped in an abusive home.

"We must stop violence before it starts by focusing on prevention and tackling the root causes of such crimes.

“In November, we made the Operation Encompass scheme the law.

"Police in England and Wales now have a duty to notify a child’s educational setting when they’ve attended a domestic abuse incident in that child’s home.

“It is our mission to halve violence against women and girls within the next decade.

"Our upcoming Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy will outline the action we are taking to protect children and to intervene before, not after, violence is perpetrated.”