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

Chapter 7 - Service Standards

In this chapter, we describe how service standards will be ensured.

Ensuring high quality services are available across Scotland, accessible to all who require them, was a key part of our remit. Currently, there is much variation in the quality of services and in how they are delivered. Some of this may be appropriate, and cater to local needs and we want this to continue, reflecting what we heard from our engagement. Significant work to develop standards for organisations providing services for women, children and young people who have experienced violence and abuse needs to be undertaken, if we are going to achieve the aspirations of the Review. This work must be collaborative and include participation of victims/survivors.

Funders are entitled to expect, and indeed require, their money to be used to deliver high quality services, and to be able to make different decisions about what to fund if this proves not to be the case.

We have more to say about commissioning services elsewhere in this report. This section is focussed on what we need to do to move towards a position where the same quality of services is available everywhere.

Standards and Performance

Both Scottish Women's Aid and Rape Crisis Scotland have national service standards, in the former case recently updated and significantly improved. These standards should be used to form the initial basis of ensuring a consistent quality of services throughout Scotland.

We have said a lot in this report about the accessibility of services and therefore recommend that standards around accessibility should also be developed.

The Improvement Service Equally Safe Quality Standards and Performance Framework for VAWPs are an important step in working towards consistency of approach across Scotland and establishing agreed standards. As we recommend that VAWPs are put on a statutory footing, the standards and performance framework will have to be reviewed and amended to take the new circumstances into account.

Standards for domestic abuse court advocacy for women are in development by ASSIST and SafeLives. This will be an important step forward in ensuring consistent, high quality services and should also be carried out for court advocacy for children and young people.

Standards for MARACs and MATACs will also help to drive consistency. We heard about differences in how these operate and are co-ordinated and chaired across the country. Agreed national standards for MARACs and MATACs will be needed alongside their inclusion in the statutory footing for VAWG we recommend.

One suggestion, which came from Women's Aid managers, was that there should be a bespoke inspection regime for their refuge services. Currently, they are inspected by the Care Inspectorate as a housing service which is not an exact fit for them. We agree that this would be a helpful development.

We also note that the current regime of standards does not take cognisance of other models of training, definitions, measurement or monitoring. For example, training on FGM in Scotland still focuses on cultural and traditional values as the main pillars of harmful traditional practices. While these may have been the common reasons in the past, FGM was driven by patriarchal interests which treated girls as commodities to be traded for dowry in marriage. In recent years, African feminists have argued that harmful practices are about economic, social and sometimes political systems and structures which are about power and dominance. Additionally, there are examples of successful community engagement and interventions which show that more and more parents stop cutting their daughters and forcing them into early marriages when they learn that, as doctors, teachers and other professionals, the daughter can contribute more money to the family than dowry.

We therefore recommend that a standing committee for minority ethnic women and girls should be established to scrutinise, inform and advice on policies and practice on all matters relating to VAWG.

As noted in Chapter 10, Commissioning & Tendering, a focus on the lived experience of those affected by violence against women and girls should be central for monitoring and evaluation as well as the design of services and appropriately resourced.