Equally safe strategy: easy read

Our plan to end violence against women and girls - Easy Read Version

About this document

This is an Easy Read report.

It will tell you about our work.

Our work is to stop violence happening to women and girls in Scotland.

Violence means hurting someone in some way.

The report has been written by the Scottish Government’s VAWG team.

VAWG stands for Violence Against Women and Girls.

About violence against women and girls

Violence against women and girls means things like:

• controlling their lives
• threatening them
• hitting them
• making them feel frightened
• sexual attacks
• saying nasty things
• taking away their control over money
• following them
• making them have sex with other people for money
• forcing them to marry

Violence against women and girls can happen anywhere including:

• at home
• in the community
• in organisations
• at work
• in school and college
• online

Violence happens to women and girls of all ages and all backgrounds.

It is happening right across Scotland.

It is wrong.

What we want to happen

Our plan is called Equally Safe.

Our plan will help us to end violence against women and girls in Scotland.

Everyone needs to help make sure that all women, girls and children in Scotland are safe.

What we will do

We will stop violence happening before it starts.

When violence against women and girls happens, we will make sure that they get the support they need.

We will help more people across Scotland to understand:

• what violence against women and girls is
• how it changes women and girls lives
• how it changes all our lives
• how big the problem is
• why it happens

We will help these people to agree that violence against women and girls needs to stop:

• politicians
• people who work in law, education, health and police
• businesses and charities
• people in our communities
• ourselves

We will also ask these people to help stop violence against women and girls.

A perpetrator is someone who harms people.

When violence against women or girls happens we will make these perpetrators face up to what they have done.

We will use the law to do that when they have broken the law.

In this report, when we say services we mean things like:

• safe places to stay
• counselling
• advice and support
• money
• legal support
• health care and support
• support to report crimes
• education
• help finding a job

We will give these services to women and girls who have had violence happen to them.

The services will be:

• suited to each person
• trusted
• safe
• everywhere

We will ask organisations to work together.

Together they must make things fairer for women and girls who have more problems because of their:

• ethnic background or race – this means the group we might share a culture, language, skin colour or religion with
• disability – including learning disabilities
• age
• sexuality – this means the people we might have sexual or romantic feelings about
• gender – this means whether we think of ourselves as female, male or in another way
• immigration – this means moving from one country to another country

To do all these things we will need to work with many different organisations around Scotland.

Stopping violence

We need to stop violence against women and girls happening.

It should not happen at all.

We need society to change.

Society means everyone who shares the same culture. In this report it means everyone who lives in Scotland.

We need to spot where there are risks.

And we need to fix these risks.

Working together

No one can stop violence against women and children on their own.

The only way we can do it is to work really well together.

Our Equally Safe plan needs these people to work together really well:

• good leaders
• local organisations – like health and social care, police and councils
• specialist organisations – like charities and experts
• women and girls who have experienced violence

Justice funding

Funding means the money we need to do the work across Scotland.

We have spent more money than ever in the last few years.

We want to make a plan to get funding that:

• is clear
• does not keep changing

We want the funding plan to:

• be about stopping this kind of violence from beginning
• be for good services to work with women and children wherever they live across Scotland
• help all services work well together