We warmly welcome the publication of the Government’s much-anticipated Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy, Freedom from Violence and Abuse: A cross-government strategy to build a safer society for women and girls, and recognise the personal commitment of key individuals who have made this happen. It sets out ambitious aims on an unprecedented scale to address the impact and severity of the harm caused by VAWG.
For survivors, challenges have increased, with many struggling to access support and safety when they need it. Many perpetrators have been free to act with impunity, getting away with causing huge levels of harm to women and children, with no accountability or consequence. Nothing less than urgent and transformative action is required. It is promising that the strategy acknowledges the extent of the problem, with a focus on cross-government working and commitments from a range of key departments.
We are pleased to see the emphasis of the three pillars: prevention and early intervention; the relentless pursuit of perpetrators; and support for victims and survivors to live free from abuse.
This initial response focuses on the first two pillars of the strategy, which are Respect’s key focus.
Prevention and early intervention
We are encouraged to see the focus on boys and young men, and new initiatives to tackle misogyny and promote healthy relationships from a young age. The combined £18 million that has been pledged, to both pilot healthy relationships training for teachers and establish interventions through the school system with young people using harmful behaviour, should create tangible change in the school environment.
We welcome the plans to launch a new helpline in 2026 for young people concerned about harmful behaviour and undertake a major national research programme on teenage relationship abuse.
And we are delighted to see the commitment to creating a statutory definition of child to parent and caregiver abuse, to improve understanding and strengthen frontline responses. At Respect, we have long called for this definition to provide clarity and support a consistent approach to what is often a hidden harm.
Relentless pursuit of perpetrators
We are particularly pleased to see so much emphasis on addressing the root causes of abuse and holding those who cause harm accountable. This includes improvements to policing, such as the expansion of rape and sexual violence offence investigation teams and the use of electronic monitoring and proximity monitoring, as well as the roll-out of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), Multi-Agency Tasking and Coordination (MATAC) and the V100 digital risk assessment tool.
It is hopeful to see commitments to “address the patchwork of provision of perpetrator interventions across England and Wales” and we look forward to hearing about these plans.
The specific attention given to online harm is much needed. Commitments to ban nudification tools and strangulation and suffocation in pornography will be helpful legislative measures in the fight against online sexual violence and abuse, of both children and adults. We look forward to the work of the cross-departmental team that will address the issues detailed in Baroness Bertin’s Independent Pornography Review.
If implemented successfully, these measures will help make perpetrators more visible and accountable in our systems. This will require significant improvements in data, and we are pleased to see a focus on good data throughout the strategy, in line with the call in our manifesto, Stopping Domestic Abuse (link below).
Our concerns and areas of uncertainty
There will be further detail needed to understand some of the elements of the strategy and determine if they will be effective. In the meantime, we have some concerns, which we will be raising with the government in the new year.
Halving VAWG must mean it is halved for all women and girls, particularly the most marginalised and least visible, who are often silenced and cut off from resources, including Black, minoritised and migrant survivors, those living in poverty and those with disabilities. This requires ringfenced funding for ‘by and for’ services and meaningful engagement and consultation with them to understand the harm faced by survivors with no recourse to public funds and insecure immigration status.
Following long-term chronic underfunding and a significant period of uncertainty, services across the country that support survivors and victims of VAWG are facing a funding cliff-edge. The delivery of this strategy will drive increased demand for specialist voluntary sector services, as more victims and perpetrators are identified. Continuation funding is welcome, as are pots for specific new initiatives, but the sector requires large-scale multi-year investment to allow services to effectively recover, respond to current challenges and be ready to meet increased demand.
We have concerns that the strategy is being weaponised, with some attacking the most vulnerable communities as scapegoats for the problem, relying on far-right rhetoric to present the threat to women and girls as a foreign entity, when it has always largely taken place within their own homes. We urge the government to robustly counter this destructive narrative.
We note that the action plan states an intention to:
“14f) Develop national standards for perpetrator interventions by 2026 to support and enable the increased provision and expansion of safe, consistent and high-quality VAWG perpetrator interventions. The Home Office will replace the current standards for domestic abuse perpetrator interventions with one set of standards that covers both domestic abuse and stalking perpetrator interventions. This will include specific consideration of stalking that takes place outside of a domestic abuse context. We will introduce a mechanism to ensure that programmes are meeting these standards, for example through the introduction of an accreditation scheme. We will review these standards to reflect the latest evidence.”
Respect has been supporting the sector since 2008 through the Respect Standard and attached accreditation scheme. We are concerned that we have not been consulted regarding the plans to develop a separate accreditation scheme, and will be asking the Home Office for more information urgently.
The successful introduction and expansion of policing tools and statutory mechanisms will lead to more perpetrators being held to account in the criminal justice system. That system cannot currently cope with the level of cases it has, with court backlogs stretching for years. An increase in cases must be supported by criminal justice system reform and expansion, with a focus on victim safety and wellbeing.
Also, rolling out several new interventions at once (the Drive Project, MATAC, V100) has the potential to cause confusion and inconsistency at the local level, which must be addressed through a cohesive, joined up approach.
Importantly, reform of statutory responses to VAWG will not succeed without the expertise and advice of specialist services. We are concerned to see statutory developments outlined without reference to the work of specialist agencies, for example the NHS Steps to Safety initiative appearing not to include IRISi in its model of delivery.
The publication of this strategy is a landmark moment in the work to tackle VAWG and we are grateful to the Ministers who have rallied the Government to get to this point. Now it is imperative that we see these ambitions realised with clear milestones and accountability mechanisms. Currently there is no detail of these in the strategy or action plan – a delivery plan is needed urgently.
Collaboration will be key
The Government is fortunate that they can draw on a wealth of expertise in this country from a movement filled with specialist practitioners, academics, thought-leaders and grassroots campaigners – many of whom have lived experience of the harm the strategy describes.
Respect and our members look forward to working in partnership with the Government and the VAWG sector to make the aims of the strategy a reality,
Read the Government's VAWG strategy
Ahead of the 2024 general election, we published the Respect Manifesto, Stopping Domestic Abuse. It challenged the new government to make a clear pledge: to stop perpetrators, hold them to account and prevent them from causing any more harm.
