DOMESTIC violence and coercive control will be a major challenge for Worcestershire in the years ahead.

That’s according to Professor Keith Brown, chair of the county’s independent Safeguarding Adults Board.

Speaking to the county council’s cabinet, he said: “I think the thing we’re going to be thinking about and vexed over the next few years is coercion and coercive control.

“We are just beginning to understand something nationally about the scale, the size of the problem - domestic violence, coercive control, these areas are just going to make our work bigger and more important.

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“How we resource and manage that is going to be tough and difficult. But it’s coming and we need to respond and deal with it appropriately and reasonably.”

Prof Brown said the problem is getting “bigger and bigger” at a time when authorities are already under “unprecedented pressures”.

Council leader Simon Geraghty added: “Technology is driving that as well. As awareness spreads, we discover things that are horrifying that we wouldn’t otherwise know - and hopefully we can tackle collectively.”