The Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance Homelessness and Supported Accommodation Accreditation: An Evaluation

This report evaluates the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) Homelessness and Supported Accommodation accreditation framework and its contribution to improving responses to domestic abuse within homelessness services. Drawing on interviews, focus groups, lived-experience testimony and an illustrative breakeven analysis, the study finds that DAHA helped organisations embed domestic abuse consistently across leadership, policy, safeguarding, training and frontline practice. Staff reported greater confidence in identifying abuse, supporting survivors experiencing multiple disadvantage, recognising perpetrators and linking domestic abuse to housing outcomes. The framework was also associated with safer, more trauma-informed and survivor-led responses, improved organisational consistency and plausible economic benefits through reduced crisis intervention, homelessness and accommodation breakdown. However, implementation required significant staff time, and structural barriers remained, including limited statutory responses, housing shortages and risks within congregate and mixed-gender accommodation. Overall, the evaluation concludes that DAHA is a credible and practical framework, while highlighting the need for stronger quantitative outcome evidence.