Violence Against Women and Girls - Independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of Services: report - easy read

Violence Against Women and Girls: A report about the funding for services: Easy Read

What this document will tell you

The Scottish Government is planning new funding for Violence Against Women and Girls services.

This is a report.

It will tell you what we think are the most important things to make Violence Against Women and Girls services better.

Violence Against Women and Girls means things like:

• making them feel frightened
• saying nasty things
• controlling their lives
• threatening them
• hitting them
• sexual attacks

Violence Against Women and Girls services are things like:

• safe places to stay
• counselling – someone to talk to
• advice
• money
• legal support – advice about laws
• specialist health care
• specialist crime support
• education
• help finding a job

Our aim

We were asked to make a new plan.

The new plan is also called a model.

The new model will make sure that violence against women and girls services get much better.

We want the services to be:

• fair
• reliable – they are always there
• linked to other services well
• funded well with enough money

Our new model is based on lots of human rights, including:

• children's rights
• women's rights
• rights about money
• rights about culture
• rights about society

What we say should happen

We say that violence against women and girls needs to be given the same importance as things like Child Protection.

This is called being statutory.

We have made a list of core services.

Core services mean the basic services that everyone should get.

We say that every woman, young person and child should get offered these core services.

If they get offered more than the core services then that is even better.

We say that people with lived experience of violence should help make the new model happen.

This includes:

• women
• young people
• children

We say that making these services a right in law means that funding will change.

Money will be given to local authorities to only be spent on these services.

The Scottish Government will still pay for things like:

• helplines
• national offices
• campaigns

We say there should be a Scottish plan to stop violence against women and girls happening.

The plan should be made by organisations working together.

We say that in the future these services should get paid 1 pound for every 10 pounds that is spent on tackling violence against women and girls in Scotland.

This is the same aim as many countries in Europe.

We say that there should be a close look at how much money the Scottish Government spends on women and children.

We say that the whole system of services and organisations that is already there, needs to work better together.

This means organisations like:

• NHS
• Police Scotland
• charities
• courts
• local authorities

There needs to be lots of really good training.

There needs to be money for:

• organising everything
• paperwork
• checking and learning

We say there should be a new Commissioner for violence against women and girls.

A commissioner is someone who speaks up for a group and who works to make more people understand.

Violence against women and girls services should be led by someone in the Scottish Government who is in charge of big decisions.

5 actions that need to happen now

1. Work hard to reach everyone on the waiting lists for these services.

2. Give money to start getting organisations and services to work together better.

3. Give money to make sure that women and children in every local area can get help to recover if they have been affected by violence.

4. Start new ways of keeping information and checking how well things are going.

5. The Scottish Government and COSLA need to make a time plan for when all the changes will happen.

It should be written by December 2023.