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

Chapter 3 – Funding Problems Identified by the Review

In this chapter we explain the history of VAWG funding in Scotland and the problems with current funding which we have sought to address in our recommendations for a new model of funding.

This is not just a 'women's problem'. We have heard that the current funding arrangements have detrimental impacts on access to services and women, children and young people's life chances, mental and physical health and chances of recovery. But what about the wider societal implications around women's inequality and the costs to society? VAWG bears costs for individuals, for families, for communities, for the economy, for all the institutions of the state, locally and nationally.

If addressing VAWG genuinely is a priority, we need to do things very differently.

Sustainable funding for core, specialist VAWG services is vital, but wider attention also needs to be given to funding through mainstream budget allocation and services. Most victims do not approach specialist VAWG services, so ensuring that mainstream services are fit for purpose in relation to VAWG is paramount.

The History of VAWG Funding in Scotland

Funding for local services was initially provided by a mix of grants from local authorities and trusts, although fundraising was always a feature of income generation. A number of UK Government funded job creation schemes were also used to help to move services from entirely run by volunteers to a mix of paid and unpaid workers in the early years. Later, Supporting People funding helped to pay for refuge based support.

There is no doubt that local authorities carried the greater burden of funding for VAWG services initially, and indeed they still do contribute very significantly to this sector. Their contribution has never been quantified in the same way as that of the Scottish Government, but nevertheless it has been foundational in ensuring availability of services.

National Government Funding

Funding for VAWG services has been, in many ways, relatively generous in Scotland compared with other parts of the UK since 2000 and the advent of the £5m Domestic Abuse Service Development Fund (DASDF) established by the then Scottish Executive. This was the first time that central government had funded local services, with 50% of the costs coming from match funding from local partners. This was intentional, to ensure local responsibility, although in many cases the match funding was in kind rather than in cash. This fund was unique in VAWG funding history, in that it received fewer applications than it had resources to cover, and therefore all projects which applied were granted funding.

The sole focus of DASDF was, obviously, domestic abuse, and the funding was allocated in support of implementation of the National Strategy on Domestic Abuse.

Views about the DASDF differ, and we have been told that it may have provided more funding than some recipients were able to manage effectively. It certainly was not subject to the monitoring processes which have now been embedded. However, it did ensure local partners, often statutory services, were financially committed to supporting the work.

When the fund was changed to become the Violence Against Women Fund, it broadened the spectrum from domestic abuse to VAWG and the requirement for match funding was dropped. This was intended to open up the fund to a wider range of recipients, which indeed it did. However, an unintended consequence was that it also centralised the provision of funding for this sector and broke the previous link with local partners, resulting in a dilution of funding locally and a lack of local accountability. There has also been a reduction in strategic planning and commissioning of services in local areas.

The Rape Crisis Specific Fund was introduced at the same time, which supported the development of the helpline and an expansion of rape crisis centres. Each rape crisis centre was provided with £50,000 p.a. to ensure that they could continue to offer a service in the event of any local authority funding being removed. Over the period that this funding was provided, a number of new rape crisis centres were established, including on Orkney and Shetland.

Subsequent funding from the Scottish Government to date, including the current Delivering Equally Safe (DES) fund, £19m per annum has continued in the same vein and therefore continues the unintended consequences noted above.

The main funding stream from the Scottish

Government is the DES Fund mentioned above. It is administered by independent fund managers, commissioned by policy officials, as were several previous rounds of funding. The fund managers run an application process, and undertake the monitoring of the grants. Many of the issues raised with us in relation to funding processes, including by the fund managers themselves, concern the DES fund, in particular its competitive element.

We were able to identify a wide range of work on VAWG issues currently being funded by a variety of cross portfolio money streams within the Scottish Government. Each policy area tends to have its own application and monitoring regime which adds complications to the process for organisations.

Local Government

As noted above, local authorities have also provided funding to support the delivery of VAWG services, from the 1970s to date, well before the Scottish Executive established DASDF. Over time, and in response to funding constraints at local government level, this funding has reduced and local services have become more dependent on Scottish Government and other funding.

The ending of ring fencing as an accepted part of local government funding allocations further eroded funding at local authority level. This situation was exacerbated by the effects of the global economic crash in 2008 and the resulting period of austerity negatively affected the conditions for both spheres of government to work in tandem.

Other Funders

Alongside funding from the Scottish Government and local authorities, a range of other funders have supported work in this area over the years, from Children in Need who funded children's workers for Women's Aid groups in the 1990s to Comic Relief, Big Lottery, Robertson Trust and many others. The non-statutory contribution to VAWG funding has been considerable. We could see that there was deep gratitude for the support these funders had been able to provide, and that they had often made the difference between a service being able to continue and having to close their doors.

Services For Children

Since 2000, there has been little policy or funding attention to services for children in their own right, rather there has been a concentration on children and young people in domestic abuse situations e.g. providing groupwork. Scottish Government funding for work with children and young people has also focused largely on domestic abuse, with the Children's Services Women's Aid Fund (CSWAF), which was eventually subsumed into the VAWG Fund.

The CSWAF was separate and different from DASDF for several reasons: the concern that service providers, local authorities and Scottish Government had not hitherto seen specialist support to children experiencing domestic abuse as a core domestic abuse service; the fear that it would not be prioritised in relation to adult services in applications; concerns that LAs would not match fund this devalued service.

It was distributed to each local authority to ensure a (largely Women's Aid) refuge, follow on and outreach service to children; it did not reach demand or need. Grant terms were specifically based on children/young people's recommendations from Listen Louder Research

(Houghton 2005, 2013). Ultimately, CSWAF was subsumed into VAWG funding, although a number of projects supporting children and young people continued to be funded

Another issue we were aware of is the separation of childhood sexual abuse in programmes of work and in funding for VAWG. childhood sexual abuse is clearly part of the definition of VAWG used in Equally Safe and is common for both girls and boys – an NSPCC report published in March 2021 suggests that 1 in 20 young people in the UK will have experienced it - yet this has never been connected closely into the strategy. Children's organisations we spoke to felt that this aspect of VAWG had not been given the attention it deserved and children and young people were as a result not receiving the services they required. Provision of therapeutic recovery services remains patchy and insecure, hugely affecting children's 'right to recover'.

We know about the scale and impact of childhood sexual abuse and we cannot assume that VAWG services currently meet the needs of children. Although less common in Scotland than childhood sexual abuse, FGM and forced marriage affect girls in particular.

A Mosaic of Funding

The shift in funding from domestic abuse to VAWG was not accompanied by needs assessment at local, regional or national level. Scope for applications was widened and criteria changed in an attempt to be more inclusive, e.g. supporting projects that focused on learning disability or commercial sexual exploitation etc. This has resulted in a mosaic of funding which does not give a clear picture of what need exists and how well/poorly it is being met. The funding landscape which has developed over the past 20 years has resulted in a lack of consistency of services, services of variable quality (about which we say more in Chapter 7, Service Standards)

and unfairness in allocation; domestic abuse continues to absorb most of the attention and the funding. Children's services in some areas have declined.

Funding is short-term, sometimes from year to year, sometimes for up to three years. Good projects which deliver successful outcomes might not be continued, as some funders seek 'innovation' at the expense of delivering what is known to work. While there is clearly room for, and a need for, innovation to develop new services to meet emerging demands, if services have been shown to be working well, it is our strong view that organisations should be supported to build on this, albeit with clear monitoring and evaluation processes in place.

There is also a need for balance between a minimum core level of services across all areas and variability in terms of local context and need. Funding criteria has not kept abreast of key changes such as development of MARACs and greater appreciation of trauma/need for trauma informed services.

We were also told that the competitive nature of the DES fund is unhelpful. Organisations in local areas are pitted against each other, rather than being encouraged to work collaboratively and assess what the greatest need is in their area. Organisations supporting minority ethnic women have told us that they face great difficulty in securing funding for their work and have stated that they believe this is happening because of racism, or a lack of understanding of their cultures and how they choose to operate. This does not help the development of joined up services to create a smooth service pathway for women, children and young people. If services are essential, they should not have to compete with other similar services for funding.

Local Outcome Improvement Plans from local authorities and their partners in Community Planning Partnerships need to engage more meaningfully in supporting and resourcing local VAWG services as integral to local planning and service design and provision that meets local needs.

With local authority funding, competitive tendering has caused significant difficulties for service delivery organisations, which are often small and focused naturally on service provision, and who struggle to compete with larger, generic organisations. We say more about Commissioning and Tendering in Chapter 9.

VAWPs, which are intended to be the key delivery mechanism for Equally Safe at local level do not at present receive much funding to enable them to fulfil that role as intended. Chapter 6 has more on VAWPs.

Recruitment and Retention

Curent funding also affects staff turnover, as experienced high performing workers often choose to move on rather than wait to see if their post will be successful at the next competitive round of funding. We heard that it is difficult to recruit staff currently, and this may be driven by an understandable reluctance to commit to a job which may not last in the longer term, particularly if it requires relocation.

The patchwork nature of funding for many services also places significant burdens on them. Many have multiple sources of funding, all of which require different information and have different application and reporting schedules. Managers of services told us about the reality of this for them as a never-ending round of applications which are inordinately time consuming and which have no guarantee of success. We heard from one service manager who had recently lost a member of staff to

Amazon on the basis that it was better paid and more secure. The sector cannot continue this rate of attrition of experienced workers which traps service providers in a continuous cycle of recruiting and training which is time and resource intensive for small organisations, and takes away from delivering services to those who need them. Services in rural areas seem to be particularly badly affected, but it is happening across Scotland

Impact on Survivors

And of course, more importantly, short-term funding impacts negatively on the women, children and young people who need these services. We heard a lot from survivors about facing waiting lists for services at a time of huge crisis in their lives, because current funding cannot flex to meet need. They understood the pressures that services were experiencing, but made it very clear that they would have much preferred to be able to access a vital service immediately when they sought help. A snapshot of waiting times for rape crisis support ranged from 2–3 weeks to 12 months, with the lower figure very much an outlier.

The result of this is that women, children and young people who need services are not able to access them reliably. Services may be available in one local authority area and not the next. Services may be available for a period and then disappear. Just when someone has summoned up the incredible courage required to seek help, that service might not be there for them.

This is wrong, and it needs to change.

But the issues with current funding are much wider than services. As we were frequently told throughout the evidence gathering for the Review, we need to move to a more overt focus on prevention and we also have to start to seriously invest in the infrastructure needed to support the delivery of work to address VAWG. We are therefore making recommendations in both of these areas.