Victims/survivors of domestic abuse - multi-agency risk assessment and interventions: report

13. Useful Resources

Violence Against Women and Girls and Domestic Abuse

60. Equally Safe is the Scottish Government and COSLA's co-owned strategy to prevent and eradicate violence against women and girls in Scotland. It was last updated in April 2018 and a further refresh will be published in Autumn 2023. The strategy was developed by the Scottish Government and COSLA in association with a wide range of partners from public and third sector organisations. It provides an overarching framework for change and outlines our vision for a Scotland in which every women and girl is safe and free from gender-based violence in all its forms.

• Equally Safe: Scotland's strategy to eradicate violence against women - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)

61. In order to help us realise this vision, we published an Equally Safe delivery plan which ran from 2017 to 2021^[4]. In June 2022 the Scottish Government and COSLA published a new short-term Equally Safe Delivery Plan, containing 33 actions, which will run until Autumn 2023 (a new Equally Safe Delivery Plan will be drafted over the course of 2023). The short-term Delivery Plan continues to promote a collaborative approach that recognises the different roles and expertise of organisations from the public, private and third sectors.

62. The Scottish Government worked with SafeLives to develop an e-learning resource for professionals in housing, social work, health and schools to ensure that they have a shared understanding of domestic abuse and know where to access further support.

63. The Domestic Abuse Awareness Raising Tool (DAART) builds on the DA Matters Scotland programme developed for Police Scotland in collaboration with partners ASSIST, the Caledonian System, SACRO and Scottish Borders Safer Communities team as part of the implementation of the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act.

SafeLives Marac Resources

64. Through the Marac Development Programme, SafeLives have produced a range of resources to support the effective operation of Scottish Maracs. A selection of resources is linked below and there are more resources available at the SafeLives Website (www.safelives.org.uk):

• Marac in Scotland – Update report 2020 – an overview of current Marac provision in Scotland and some of the current challenges for effective operation;
• Scotland Marac Toolkit – for anyone involved in the Marac process in Scotland;
• Marac Overview Scotland – overview of the evaluated Marac model and its operation in Scotland, including the 10 principles for and effective Marac;
• Marac Information Sharing Toolkit – a guide to GDPR and information sharing in a multi-agency context (including Marac) in relation to domestic abuse;
• SafeLives guidance for Maracs on sharing immigration information_0.pdf- Guidance for Maracs on sharing information in relation to victims/survivors who may have insecure immigration status;
• Authentic Voice Discovery Report – final report of the Authentic Voice: Embedding Lived Experience in Scotland programme (led by SafeLives, Improvement Service and Resilience Learning Partnership in partnership with survivors of domestic abuse and trauma and funded by the Scottish Government)