Violence against women and girls funding review: analysis of responses

Background

In 2018, the Scottish Government published the updated version of Equally Safe^[3], a country-wide strategy to prevent Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) which aims to work collaboratively with key partners in the public, private and third sectors to prevent and eradicate all forms of violence against women and girls. In this context, the Scottish Government has implemented several interventions in collaboration with local authorities, the Police, statutory services, third sector organisations and communities. A group of experts called the Equally Safe Joint Strategic Board oversees the strategy.

An Independent Review of Funding and Commissioning of Violence Against Women and Girls Services in Scotland ("the Review") was announced by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government during the Scottish Parliament debate held on 25 November 2021 to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls. According to the terms of reference, the Review aims to develop a more consistent, coherent, collective and stable funding model to ensure high-quality, accessible specialist services across Scotland for women, children and young people experiencing any form of VAWG. The Review will produce its recommendations for a new funding model by June 2023.

In June 2022, the Review launched a call for evidence to inform these recommendations. The call for evidence was open from the 6^th of June to the 15^th of August and sought views on several areas, including:

• The types of services that should be available for women, children and young people experiencing any form of VAWG, the role of different organisations in service provision, how barriers to services can be removed and whether access to such services should be a right in law.
• How to achieve good quality in services across Scotland and address unmet needs and regional disparities.
• How to include those who have experienced VAWG in the co-design/evaluation of services.
• The funding application process and the optimum length of funding periods to ensure the sustainability of services.
• Actions that should be taken to reduce/mitigate the impact of VAWG in Scotland.

Alma Economics was commissioned to provide independent analysis of the responses to the call for evidence and produce a comprehensive summary of the views of individuals and organisations who participated. This report provides an overview of the key themes emerging from the responses to 28 questions (22 open-ended and 6 closed-ended questions). The call for evidence received 475 valid responses, with a majority (97%) of responses submitted through the online platform Citizen Space and the remaining via e-mail. Qualitative analysis of all non-standard campaign responses could not be accommodated within the contract terms so 101 out of 221 non-standard campaign responses were randomly selected to be included in the analysis. Scottish Government officials have informed us that they have read all responses and these will be published in accordance with preferences in the Respondent Information Form. Finally, notes from 7 roundtable events, which took place while the analysis was conducted, were shared with Alma Economics and were included in the analysis.