IFAS launches new three-year strategy to address strangulation across the UK

The Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS) has today launched its new IFAS Strategy 2026-2029, setting out the change it seeks to achieve across policy, practice, education, research and public understanding over the next three years.

Download → IFAS Strategy 2026-2029

Download → IFAS Strategy Executive Summary

The strategy launches at the start of Domestic Abuse Awareness Month, four years after strangulation and suffocation became standalone offences in England and Wales through the Domestic Abuse Act 2021.

Legal recognition was an important step, but lasting change depends on professionals and organisations translating legislation and knowledge into consistent, evidence-based practice. IFAS was established in October 2022 to raise awareness and lead work to strengthen the UK response to strangulation.

From 2026 to 2029, IFAS will work across government, statutory organisations and specialist support services to scale effective approaches, improve weaker parts of the system and respond to changing evidence and experience.

This includes addressing violence against women and girls, recognising the experiences of men and boys, and challenging the normalisation of strangulation in relationships.

The strategy focuses on four strategic priorities:

National Leadership – Taking a Whole-System Approach
Working to ensure that addressing strangulation remains a priority and promoting a whole-system response across criminal justice, healthcare, specialist support and education.

Survivor-Informed Change
Placing survivor experience at the heart of IFAS’s work so that policy, practice, education and resources reflect lived experience of strangulation.

Prevention and Early Intervention
Translating evidence on the prevalence, risks and harms of strangulation and working with partners to identify effective prevention and early intervention approaches.

Pursuing Perpetrators – Turning Evidence into Action
Supporting criminal justice agencies to implement evidence-based policies, pathways and interventions that improve safety, justice and recovery for victims and survivors and hold perpetrators to account.

Bernie Ryan OBE, CEO of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation, said:

“Legislation was an important step, but lasting change depends on translating legislation and knowledge into consistent, evidence-based practice.

“Our strategy sets out the change we want to achieve over the next three years: strengthening whole-system responses, ensuring survivor experience informs our work, developing prevention and early intervention, and turning evidence into action.

“Our goal is simple: to ensure that every person affected by strangulation receives an informed, consistent and effective response, wherever they are in the UK.”

The strategy sets out how IFAS’s interconnected areas of work will support these priorities, bringing together expertise from survivors, practitioners, researchers, policymakers, clinicians, forensic specialists and criminal justice professionals.

Research and evidence will remain central to this work. IFAS will continue to build, translate and share the evidence base so that research informs policy, practice, education and public understanding, with findings translated into practical learning for professionals and communities.

At the heart of the strategy is a clear outcome: Strangulation is recognised, prevented and responded to effectively wherever it occurs.