Equally Safe: final report

Overarching Priorities

The following reflects progress in relation to the overarching priorities outlined in the Delivery Plan:

Human rights

• The Scottish Government continues to support ratification of the Istanbul Convention and has liaised with the UK Government on outstanding articles, specifically on extra-territorial jurisdiction (ETJ) of offences under the Convention.
• The Domestic Abuse Bill introduced in the Westminster Parliament will, if passed, make provision to provide Scottish courts with ETJ over the other criminal offences covered by the Convention, including assault, sexual offences committed against adult victims and stalking.
• The Scottish Parliament has approved a Legislative Consent Motion for the relevant areas of that Bill that fall within the competence of the Scottish Parliament.
• The National Human Rights Taskforce continues its work, including consideration of incorporation of relevant international human rights treaties such as the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The Taskforce is expected to report in March 2021.
• Legislation on incorporating the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has been introduced to Parliament. The Scottish Government's approach to tackling violence against women and girls continues to form part of our input to international human rights treaty reviews, and the Scottish Government and COSLA collaborated on a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women around VAWG and Covid-19.

Gender equality

• A key priority remains engagement with and response to recommendations from the First Minister's National Advisory Council on Women and Girls.
  The latter focus of the Council has been on improving intersectional gender architecture and embedding this within policy development in Government.

Children and young people

• We have continued to strengthen links with work in relation to Children and Families, and a cross-Directorate group focused on children, families and domestic abuse has been established in the Scottish Government to drive this forward.
• The Children (Scotland) Bill^[11] passed by Parliament will improve protections for victims of domestic abuse and their families, and ensure that the voice of children is heard in contact cases.

Intersectionality

• We understand that women and children have varied and complex needs and have sought to understand these through engagement with stakeholders who work with women and children in BME and LGBTI communities.
• We have also scaled up work in respect of women with learning disabilities and have created a working group in the Scottish Government in recognition of the fact that disabled women and girls are at greater risk of violence than non- disabled women and girls and women with a learning/intellectual disability are more likely to experience sexual abuse than other disabled people.

Men and boys

• In October 2019 the Scottish Government hosted a roundtable event to explore our policy position in respect of men as victims; as perpetrators and as allies in our fight to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls. Learning from the event was shared with stakeholders and we have used it to help inform our approach in this area.
• We have continued to fund services which provide support to men including the Men's Advice Line, ASSIST and SACRO's Fearfree service.
• We also continue to fund and engage with White Ribbon Scotland to help progress initiatives to engage with men and boys to understand the crucial role they play in calling out unacceptable behaviour.

Local delivery

• With funding from the Scottish Government, COSLA has recruited an Equally Safe Policy Co-ordinator. This post supports further focus by COSLA's leadership and implementation of Equally Safe across Local Authorities in Scotland.
• The Scottish Government has also funded the Improvement Service (IS) to provide support to all multi-agency VAW Partnerships across Scotland to help them to measure the progress being made to implement Equally Safe at a local level and identify any areas for improvement.
• To support this, in May 2018 the Scottish Government, COSLA and the Improvement Service published the 'Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework'. The key findings from the 2019/2020 data returns are outlined in this report.^[12] The following graph highlights the progress that VAW Partnerships have made in progressing the priorities set out in Equally Safe, since the publication of this framework:

Improving participation of lived experience

• The Scottish Government has worked in partnership with Young Scot to launch the online resource 'That's not Ok'.^[13] The resource was developed with Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women's Aid and Young Scot are hosting a series of workshops with children and young people from various different backgrounds and with lived experience, to help shape, develop and refine the content.
• Also, through the Victims' Taskforce the Scottish Government are striving to improve support, advice and information for victims of crime and their families as they interact with the Scottish criminal justice system. This taskforce has a specific gender based violence work stream led with Rape Crisis Scotland and incorporating the voice of lived experience is a crucial strand of this work.
• To help facilitate increased participation Rape Crisis Scotland has established a Survivors' Reference Group: a diverse group of survivors from across Scotland willing to share their experiences and expertise to make policy and practice better.

Yello!

Yello! are an expert group of young people who have experienced domestic abuse and the civil courts. They are part of the Improving Justice in Child Contact project, a European Union funded partnership project across five countries seeking to enhance children’s participation in decision-making. Yello! work closely with Scottish Women’s Aid to advise and inform policy and practice. They had a significant positive impact on the shaping of the Children (Scotland) Bill, participating throughout the Bill’s journey through Scottish Parliament to ensure MSPs were informed of their views and recommendations on how the Bill could be strengthened for other children and young people.