13th April 2015

APPG Launch Report on New Inquiry into the Changing Landscape of Domestic and Sexual Violence Services

In February 2015 the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Domestic and Sexual Violence, supported by Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis England and Wales, released a report revealing that funding for violence against women services is not fit for purpose. The report concluded the APPG’s Inquiry into domestic and sexual violence service provision, which received both written and oral evidence from over 60 organisations and more than 100 survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

You can access the full report on the Women's Aid website, or you can download it from the DVCN Resources section under VAWG Issues theme.

The key findings and recommendations of the report are:

1. Data collection: There has been no clear improvement on this issue since the publication of the last report on women’s access to justice. It remains the case that data collection is poor, while that which is collected is often unreliable and frequently inaccurate. We continue to recommend that the government reviews data collection procedures and liaise with members of the All Party Group to help establish a more effective means to collect and categorise data.

2. Sustainable funding: The current model for funding specialist domestic and sexual violence services is not fit for purpose. Many services are under huge financial pressure and are drawing upon reserve funding just to survive, whilst some have already been forced to close. More will be lost over the coming years if they continue to be funded on a hand to mouth basis. We recommend that the government introduces a sustainable and secure funding model that protect funding for specialist services. This will ideally require cross-party support to ensure consistency and continuity of service provision.

3. Ministerial leadership: Our inquiry has shown that the current ministerial structure of the UK Government could be improved in order to better coordinate the provision of domestic and sexual violence services. We therefore recommend the creation of a new Minister of State within the Cabinet Office whose portfolio would be specifically dedicated to the prevention of violence against women and girls. The Minister’s primary responsibilities would be the coordination of service provision on a needs-led basis and the introduction of a sustainable funding model to support and maintain services across the entire country.

4. Needs-led approach: Evidence provided by stakeholders and survivors at the inquiry demonstrated the need to fundamentally reform the way in which specialist domestic, sexual and Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) services are commissioned. Many organisations raised concerns that services are allocated using a one size fits all approach that is based purely on financial criteria. The current system therefore does not take into account the specific needs of individual survivors. We need to introduce an equitable needs-led approach that will guarantee survivors are given access to the service best suited to them.

5. Joint Guidance: The All Party Group believes that joint guidance on the co-commissioning of domestic and sexual violence services should be issued by a coalition of government bodies consisting of the Department of Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice, the Department of Health and local government authorities. Coordinated departmental guidance will ensure local authorities and health commissioners are better informed about the UK’s international and legal obligations to provide domestic and sexual violence services in every part of the country.

Recommendations:

1) This APPG recommends that the government adopts a needs led approach to tackling sexual and domestic violence and bolsters services that address women’s needs.

2) This APPG recommends the development of a cross cutting ministerial position based in the Cabinet Office. The Minister’s function will be tackling violence against women and girls and ensuring a cross-departmental approach to regulating the commissioning of services.

3) This APPG recommends that all national and local VAWG strategy, priority setting and commissioning is based on an equitable needs analysis of all forms of violence against women and girls.

4) This APPG recommends the Department of Communities and Local Government, the Ministry of Justice, local government and the Department for Health provide joint guidance on co-commissioning, with clear guidelines for local authority and health commissioners about their obligations to provide sexual violence and domestic violence services under the Equality Duty and the UK’s international obligations.

5) This APPG recommends the development of sustainable and secure funding models for specialist sexual violence, domestic violence and BME-led services ideally agreed on a cross party basis to ensure consistency and continuity of service provision.

6) This APPG recommends that statutory data relating to all forms of violence against women must be sex disaggregated, include protected characteristics and work to consistent definitions.