8th April 2011

Local authority DV coordinator posts and VAWG budgets

Dear All,

We are trying to establish how many boroughs will continue to have a DV coordinator/VAWG coordinator post in 2011/12 and how many will no longer have this post and/or will merge this post into other roles/policy areas.  We have been asked to collate this information for the Home Office by the end of this week to go into a submission for the Home Secretary so we would really appreciate it if you could get back to us ASAP.

Please could you reply to me and copy in Yeliz Osman (Yeliz.osman@london.gov.uk).

The GLA Gender Violence and Partnerships Team is also trying to get an accurate picture of the current levels of VAWG budgets and service provision across London.  I understand you have already been asked for this information but at the time many boroughs had not yet finalised their budgets for 2011/12 and therefore were unable to supply the information. 

I would appreciate it if you could send us the following information:
• What is your borough's budget for violence against women and girls (VAWG) service provision in 2011/2012? 

• What was your borough's budget for VAWG service provision in 2010/2011?

• Has your borough decreased the amount of money it is spending on VAWG services and what impact will this have on service level?

• Do you know of any VAWG services in your borough that will close or reduce their capacity / level of provision as a result of budget cuts?

Please could you include refuge provision and any other provision that may come from outside of community safety budgets e.g. any spend from children and young people's budgets that goes on VAWG services.

If you could breakdown the information according to type of service e.g. IDVA, ISVA, refuge provision, MARAC, and other forms of VAWG services that would be really helpful.

Ideally, if you could send us all of this information by the end of the week, that would be great but if this is not feasible, please could you send us the information on the DV/VAWGcoordinator role ASAP and the rest of the information as soon as you possible can.

We have submitted the following response on behalf of the DVCN:

Hi Rhys, I was talking to Yeliz at the GLA and she said you were interested in the number of DV coordinators (or similar) across the country. As you may be aware we manage the national DV Coordinators Network (www.dvcn.org.uk) and we are beginning to see the effects of local cuts. We think the situation is becoming dire and significantly threatens the successful delivery of Government policy in the localities. Here are some brief stats: ·         In 2010-11 we had 110 members – this year so far 44 have re-joined.  ·         Of these we know from their emails that 15 have lost their jobs through cuts but we suspect that many more have just disappeared for the same reason.  ·         Of the 79 that replied to our question “is your job under threat?”, 38 replied “yes”. Some of the quotes from those disappearing are: “I have had to secure an alternative job as there is not funding for this post beyond March 1”  “My role is at risk as of 30th November, it is looking like i will be made redundant next March along with my whole CSP team apart from the manager. Our CSP budget has been cut by 83%!” “My role was put forward as one of the redundancies.  The reason was that it was a policy role rather that a statutory one.” “My post has been deleted” “My hours have already been reduced to three days a week and now I have been served a redundancy notice and will be unemployed as from the 31st of March” “I am currently going through a 90 day redundancy process so yes the post is under threat” “My role as DVC has been deleted due to a money saving plan” “Was until last few weeks – but saved by councillors” “Post is being deleted – has been confirmed this week” “My role as DVC has been deleted due to a money saving plan, and thus a restructure within community safety”