The police will attend as soon as possible after a 999 call. The phone operator will advise you what to do until the police arrive.

When the police arrive on scene they will deal with the emergency i.e. remove the suspect from the address if they are still there and assess the situation. Once things have calmed down they will look to take a statement from you, assess the risk to you and look at immediate safety i.e. do you need a new lock etc. Taking details to assess the situation may take time. 

You should be told that the Domestic Abuse Team will be in contact soon, probably the next day. When they get in touch, you should be allocated an officer who will deal with your case, including telling you if the suspect has been bailed, charged and if so, when they are attending court. They should tell you what is happening throughout the case and ask what you want and need to happen around safety i.e. if going to court, they will talk to you about restraining orders etc. 

If you call the police and live in Leeds, one of our workers is often in the control room. They can call you to offer support after the police have done the initial assessment of the incident. In the long term, our IDVAs can also support you throughout a case going through the criminal justice system. You can find out more about their support here.

Our helpline is open 24 hours a day and a trained helpline support worker is always ready to listen and offer support in whatever way they can. If you just want to talk to us about your situation, we are here to listen. We can also refer you into our service, give you more info on how we can help or signpost you to other services if needed. 

We will ask you at the start of the call for your consent to keep your details and details of our conversation on our database. You don’t need to share anything you don’t want to and can stay anonymous if you would prefer.

Click here for more on what a call to our helpline is like. 

Emails sent to our [email protected] address should be answered within 24 hours, except on a weekend, when they will be answered as soon as we can in the next few working days. 

Our response will depend on what you have emailed us about. If you have given brief details, you will be invited to give us a call to go into more detail. If your contact details were given, then we may ask when would be a safe time to call you. If you have given a lot of detail, we will then give some options available to you but you will always be invited to speak to someone on the helpline if you would like to.

If violence and/or abuse happened earlier and/or is not an emergency, you can call 101 to report the incident. In these cases the operator will take more details and advise when a police officer will be in contact or could make an appointment for you to go to the main police station in Leeds to make a statement. However, if you want help right now, please never worry about wasting police time. 

You can also call or email us to get support with the situation.