Our overall aim is for residents and communities to be free of VAWG crime types and make progress towards:
- Increasing the safety of victims;
- Holding perpetrators to account;
- Decreasing social tolerance and acceptance; and
- Increasing people’s ability to have safe, equal, violence-free relationships.
To achieve these VAWG outcomes we will focus on:
- Prevention and earlier intervention: preventing violence against women and girls crime types from happening by challenging the attitudes and behaviours which foster it (eg. through preventative education in schools) and intervening early where possible to prevent its recurrence (eg. developing a domestic abuse surgery and supporting the earlier identification and improved response to domestic violence and abuse in General Practices)
- Provision of immediate and ongoing support: providing high quality support for survivors where violence does occur and ensuring services prioritise the safety of survivors and their children as their first and over-riding priority (eg. providing therapeutic interventions to support recovery)
- Protection and prosecution: taking action to reduce the risk to victims of these crimes, and ensuring that perpetrators are held accountable, brought to justice and provided with opportunities for change in a way that maximises safety (eg. continuing to provide specialist services, such as IDVAs and ISVAs)
- Partnership working: delivering co-ordinated action across all services and partnerships, informed by consistent and coordinated policies, systems and leadership, to obtain the best outcome for victims and their families (eg. developing a training strategy, a public awareness campaign and undertaking domestic homicide reviews to ensure we learn from these tragedies to inform the development of services).
We are also increasing our work on modern slavery, which may be linked to sexual exploitation. Further information is to be found in the section below on Modern Slavery.