To curb COVID-19, three periods of severe physical distancing measures (‘lockdowns’) were imposed by the Government throughout 2020 and 2021 in England and Wales: between 23 March and 1 June 2020 (68 days), 5 November 2020 and 2 December 2020 (27 days) and between 6 January and 8 March 2021 (61 days). These lockdowns resulted in societal changes, including full or part-time school and workplace closures, and reduced community mixing.
The pandemic also necessitated a change in clinical consultations in primary care, with a shift from predominantly face-to-face to mostly remote consultations (telephone, digital and video), complicating the provision of care and support, including safeguarding. The lockdowns made it harder for people to disclose domestic violence and abuse (DVA) to health professionals, as online consultations can form barriers to support.
Long and enforced lockdowns can make it harder to disclose DVA and can have a detrimental impact on DVA victim-survivors and their families. Previous studies suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdowns have led to an increase in DVA incidence. Refuge, the organisation running the 24-hour national DVA helpline in England, reported that calls surged by 60% during 2020 compared with the previous year. There is, however, scarce evidence on the impact of consecutive lockdowns over a period of almost 2 years on referrals from primary care to DVA support services in England.
Anonymised data on daily referrals, interrupted-time series and non-linear regression quantified the impact of the three national lockdowns over 2020 and 2021 comparing analogous periods in the 2 years before and after, reporting incidence rate ratios, 95% Confidence Intervals and p values. Time spent at home and workplace visits over the lockdown periods were quantified as proxies for the stringency of the different lockdowns.
The first national lockdown in early 2020 led to a reduced number of referrals to DVA services. Over the second and the third lockdown, there was a possible increase in the number of referrals. The first national lockdown was more stringent (58% decline in workplace visits; 22% increase in time spent at home) than the second (34% decline in workplace visits; 14% increase in time spent at home) or the third (18% decline in workplace visits; 18% increase in time spent at home).
Increased freedom of movement alongside easier access to GP services during the two latter, less stringent, lockdowns compared with the first, stringent, lockdown could have contributed to the different trends in referrals. The research team determined that ensuring access to primary care and adequate and continuing provision of specialist support for people experiencing DVA is important during national emergencies. Further research, coproduced with DVA survivors and DVA agencies, is necessary to establish and evaluate the most appropriate support during both potential future national lockdowns and other systemic closures (eg, school holidays).
Recommendation
More stringent systemic closures will lead to a reduced number of referrals to a specialist DVA programme, while more relaxed system closures may result in increased referrals. This highlights the importance of ensuring adequate access to support, such as primary care, where people can safely disclose DVA and be referred to service providers during system closures, regardless of the stringency.
To cite: Panovska-Griffiths J, Szilassy E, Downes L, Dixon S, Dowrick A, Griffiths C, Feder G, Capelas Barbosa E. Interrupted time series and non-linear regression analyses to evaluate the impact of the three consecutive COVID-19 national lockdowns on the general practice referrals of women experiencing domestic violence and abuse in England and Wales. BMJ Public Health. 2025;3:e002408. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjph-2024-002408
Aisling Barker, Violence Against Women and Girls Workforce Development manager at Islington Council, and qualified social worker, is the latest practitioner to join the City St George’s University of London (CSGUL) Practitioner in Residence programme. She became aware of the programme through her work on teenage relationship abuse with co-Deputy Director of the Violence and Society Centre (VASC) at CSGUL and VISION consortium Senior Research Fellow Dr Ruth Weir.
Aisling and her team in Islington have been supporting professionals in their practice with adolescents for five years. They identified concerning trends in violence and abuse in relationships where the victim was as young as 13 years of age but the person causing harm was also as young as 14 or 15 years old. An alarming lack of support available for these young people was apparent – particularly those who were causing harm to their partners at that young age.
Aisling presented the work of her team at the first conference on Adolescent Domestic Abuse hosted by VISION in April 2024. Driven by curiosity the team began to analyse cases to understand where there were system strengths and gaps. They found knowledge and practice gaps in services responding to young people where there was harm in their relationships. They also found that young people often had good relationships with practitioners such as youth workers, gang workers and youth justice case workers. Identifying an opportunity for practice improvement, Aisling and her team developed a training and support package for services working with young people affected by criminality and offending behaviour. Aisling also presented the findings from their case analysis and a case study at the second National Working Group on Teenage Relationship Abuse roundtable in November 2024 also hosted by VISION.
With the support of Ruth and the VASC and VISION teams, Aisling’s focus as a Practitioner in Residence will be documenting and examining the impact of this training and support package as an innovative approach to the prevention and early intervention on violence against women and girls.
Blog by Dr Polina Obolenskaya, Merili Pullerits and Dr Niels Blom
The UK government is expected to publish its new Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy later this year. The strategy is part of a broader ambitious commitment to halve VAWG within a decade. A new combined measure of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and stalking, developed by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), has been proposed to serve as the main benchmark for evaluating progress toward this commitment.
Here we outline three main concerns the VISION consortium has with the proposed approach.
Lack of historical continuity
To assess the effectiveness of the VAWG strategy, historical continuity is crucial. Rates of domestic abuse in England and Wales have declined in recent years (Figure 1). Therefore, any assessment of a decline or rise in VAWG needs to be placed in the context of broader declining violence rates. Without this historical continuity, the government cannot distinguish between improvements driven by their strategy and those resulting from long-term social changes that were already underway.
Figure 1 Prevalence of domestic abuse in the last year among people aged 16 to 59 in England and Wales, 2004/05 to 2023/24
However, the new combined measure disrupts this continuity. This is due to changes to the question wording and structure of its composite measures. The new combined measure of VAWG consists of self-completion data from a newly developed Domestic Abuse module (piloted in 2022/23 and 2024/25, and fully implemented from 2025/26), as well as a combination of the old and new Sexual Victimisation module (piloted in 2025/26 and planned for full implementation from 2026/27).
The new Domestic Abuse module had undergone a complete redevelopment, with extensive negative repercussions for historical continuity, which we have outlined previously. While the sexual victimisation module is not being re-developed as considerably, the comparability of the new data to the previously collected data can only be assessed once the first round of results is available. This means a new stable and comparable measure will not be available in its final form until the 2026/27 data collection, despite the government’s strategy period beginning in 2025/26.
Without historical continuity, it will not be possible to produce long-term trends over time in the composite measure of VAWG for England and Wales for some years to come. Given the decline of some forms of violence in recent decades, it is important to examine whether any decline in VAWG is due to genuine policy success, or due to a continuation of pre-existing trends.
Incomplete scope of violence
While the government has indicated that it intends to supplement the new combined measure of domestic abuse, sexual victimisation and stalking with additional metrics, it is currently unclear what these supplementary measures will include or how they will be weighed against the main benchmark. In any case, the narrow scope of the new combined measure has been raised as a concern both among academics and others working in the sector.
Some of the limitations of the measure are due to the unavailability of certain measures in data it is based on – the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The End Violence Against Women coalition (EVAW) has highlighted that the new measure fails to reflect the full spectrum of violence experienced by women and girls, omitting online abuse, child abuse, ‘honour’-based abuse and sexual harassment (EVAW blog) as well as Female Genital Mutilation (EVAW briefing). These exclusions, as EVAW argues, risk distorting the true scale and impact of VAWG. Additionally, given alarming rates of teenage relationship abuse (e.g. Barter et al., 2009; Fox et al., 2013), we consider its exclusion to be a serious oversight in measuring VAWG – including girls – effectively. Since the combined measure excludes experiences of girls under the age of 16, its use as a main tool to measure government’s ambition to half ‘Violence against women and girls‘ may be misleading.
While the gaps outlined above stem from the limitations of the Crime Survey for England and Wales, we also have concerns about the scope of the measure which could be addressed with the data already available.
Firstly, the new combined measure excludes other offences which count within the CSEW as ‘violent crime’ or violence against a person. While men are more likely to be victims of such offences, disregarding women’s experiences of these risks undercounting their overall risks and impacts of violence (Cooper & Obolenskaya, 2021; Davies et al., 2025). For example, while a substantial amount of VAWG is covered by domestic abuse, sexual violence, and stalking, women also experience violence in other aspects of life, such as at work or in public spaces. Accounting for the above offences significantly increases the proportion of people experiencing violence and more accurately reflects the extent of violence experienced by women and girls.
Secondly, the new combined measure omits broader violence-related offences, for which data are available in the CSEW. This includes threats of violence and other criminal offences which are coded as ‘non-violent’ by the ONS (due to a methodological process involving priority ordering of offences), even though they involve the threat or use of force or violence (Davies et al., 2025; Pullerits & Phoenix, 2024). These offences should be included in any overall measure of VAWG regardless of who is most affected. However, their omission is especially problematic given that they disproportionately affect women (Davies et al., 2025; Pullerits & Phoenix, 2024), meaning the headline measure is likely to underestimate women’s experiences even further.
Although the government has suggested that other metrics are planned to be used, separately, to assess progress towards halving VAWG, having a narrow main measure risks reinforcing outdated gender norms where women are considered to be more affected by what happens at home rather than outside of it. Such a perspective fails to capture emerging forms of abuse and fails to reflect the full spectrum of women’s lived experiences with violence.
Collected new Domestic Abuse data had not undergone statistical validity and reliability checks and had not been subjected to wider scrutiny (as raised by VISION previously) before the decision to replace the old module with it was finalised.
Changes to the Domestic Abuse and Sexual Victimisation modules appear to have been made independently from each other, with limited coordination across the survey modules. Given the similarity in the phrasing of a few questions across the modules, this lack of foresight and integration appears to have resulted in overlapping content that could lead to confusion both for respondents and for those interpreting the data.
The development process has lacked transparency and consultation with external stakeholders, as raised by EVAW.
Recommendations for improvement
The ONS’s new combined measure of VAWG risks oversimplifying the complex realities of violence against women and girls. Even with supplementary metrics, relying on such a narrow primary benchmark – which lacks historical continuity and is limited in scope – will not adequately support evidence-based policy development or serve the needs of those most affected by violence and abuse.
To ensure more meaningful monitoring, we have three key recommendations to the ONS:
Prioritise historical continuity in Domestic Abuse data collection: We urge the ONS to revert to a Domestic Abuse module that aligns more closely with the previous version to ensure data continuity. While we welcome the inclusion of new questions on coercive control and family-related violence, we strongly believe these additions could be integrated into the long-standing existing framework without disrupting the historical comparability of the data. If a full reversion is not feasible, we recommend that theONS takes steps to ensure meaningful assessment of change and continuity using the new measure. These steps should involve: publishing clear comparability assessments between old and new measures; providing bridging data where methodologically possible; and maintaining transparency about limitations.
Broaden the scope of the ‘combined’ measure and make it explicit that it does not fully reflect the experience of girls: the definition of violence against women and girls should be expanded by using existing CSEW data to include “violence against the person” offences, as well as, possibly, other incidents where violence or threat of violence took place but that are not coded as “violent crime” by ONS. The CSEW currently provides insufficient coverage of technology-facilitated and online abuse, which should be a development priority going forward, given the increasing prevalence of these forms of violence both within domestic contexts but also outside of them. Additionally, since the combined measure does not capture violence experienced by girls under the age of 16, the government needs to make it clear that the headline measure, should it be used in the strategy, reflects only experiences of (young) women, not girls.
Enhance transparency and accountability in survey development: we call on the ONS to address technical and transparency concerns regarding their measures and commit to greater openness in their approach. Any new module should be subject to timely, transparent analysis and external scrutiny of it before it becomes a permanent change in the survey.
If the government is genuinely committed to halving violence against women and girls within a decade, it must first ensure its measurement approach is comprehensive, meaningful and methodologically sound. Relying overwhelmingly on a narrow headline measure risks presenting an incomplete picture of the problem of VAWG, and risks undermining both accountability and progress.
Cooper, K. & Obolenskaya, P. (2021). Hidden Victims: The Gendered Data Gap of Violent Crime, TheBritish Journal of Criminology, 61(4): 905–925. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa100
Davies, E., Obolenskaya, P., Francis, B., Blom, B., Phoenix, J., Pullerits, M. & Walby, S. (2025). Definition and Measurement of Violence in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Implications for the Amount and Gendering of Violence, The British Journal of Criminology, 65(2): 261–281. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azae050
Fox, C. L., Corr, M. L., Gadd, D., & Butler, I. (2013). Young teenagers’ experiences of domestic abuse, Journal of Youth Studies, 17(4), 510–526. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2013.780125
Pullerits, M. & Phoenix, J. (2024). How Priority Ordering of Offence Codes Undercounts Gendered Violence: An Analysis of the Crime Survey for England and Wales, The British Journal of Criminology, 64(2): 381–399. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azad047
We are pleased to announce our next webinar for the VISION and Violence & Society Centre (VASC) Webinar Series on Tuesday, 28 October, 11.00 – 11.50.
Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs is a leading international voice on economic abuse and author of Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse.
She also founded Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) in 2017 following her Churchill Fellowship to the US and Australia to learn about best practice in responding to financial abuse. After seeing the innovative responses to economic abuse in these countries, Nicola was determined to ensure that women in the UK had access to the same support. Throughout her leadership, SEA has pioneered innovative practice, policy and legislative approaches to economic abuse in the UK.
After seven successful years, Nicola Sharp-Jeffs stepped down as CEO in May 2024 and now works as an expert advisor and consultant to organisations working to build women’s economic safety and secure economic justice.
In this webinar, Nicola will share her expertise and insight about economic abuse. She will highlight the need to develop effective responses, and the imperative that all women, everywhere, should have equal access to and control over the economic resources they need to live the life they want.
Please join the VISION research consortium and the Violence and Society Centre at City St George’s University of London to hear more about Nicola’s research and practical experience to raise awareness and implement effective measures to reduce and prevent economic abuse.
The purpose of the VISION/VASC webinar series is to provide a platform for academia, government and the voluntary and community sector that work to reduce and prevent violence to present their work / research to a wider audience. This is a multidisciplinary platform and we welcome speakers from across a variety of fields such as health, crime, policing, ethnicity, migration, sociology, social work, primary care, front line services, etc. If interested in presenting at a future Series webinar, please contact: VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a global violation of human rights that damages health and wellbeing across the life course and across generations. Except in its most obvious manifestations as acute injury or distress, VAWG has been largely hidden from the awareness of health services.
National and local VAWG prevention policies are siloed, despite the overlap of different types of VAWG, often affecting the same families, and often part of intersectional vulnerability, amplifying other sources of inequality: class, deprivation, ethnicity, gender identity, disability, and poor mental health.
VISION Director and Professor of primary care at the University of Bristol, Gene Feder, and his Bristol colleagues, argue that the role of general practice needs to be based on the evidence for effective interventions. Despite the relatively recent recognition that violence prevention and mitigation is part of health care, that evidence has grown rapidly over the past two decades. It is strongest for the training of primary care teams linked to a referral pathway to the specialist domestic abuse sector in the UK as well as post-disclosure specialist support for survivors.
Experience of domestic violence and abuse is difficult to disclose and may endanger the patient if the abuser learns of disclosure. Disclosure may be even less likely with the increase of remote and digital access to general practice. Therefore, training for all clinicians should include how to ask about abuse, including in online or telephone consultations, how to appropriately and safely respond to disclosure, and to safely document in the medical record.
Although associated with inequality, VAWG is present in all communities. Prevention and mitigation needs to be across all sectors, with investment in interventions with individuals, families, communities, and tackling structural drivers of violence. General practice must be part of this societal response.
Key messages
There is overlap between different types of violence often affecting the same children, families, and households.
Intersections of deprivation, disability, poor mental health, and racism amplifies the effect of violence and trauma, also reducing access to general practice support.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) requires a team-based general practice response underpinned by trauma-informed training and referral pathways to specialist services, often in the voluntary sector.
Effective responses to VAWG needs to be rooted in trauma-informed care, facilitated by relational continuity and enabled by face-to-face consultations.
Clinician experience of violence and abuse needs to be addressed in training and support.
To cite: Violence against women and girls: how can general practice respond? Gene Feder, Helen Cramer, Lucy Potter, Jessica Roy and Eszter Szilassy. British Journal of General Practice 2025; 75 (756): 297-299. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/BJGP.2025.0244
On a balmy May evening, VISION researchers Dr Anastasia Fadeeva and Dr Ladan Hashemi had the pleasure of presenting at Pint of Social Science, an engaging public event held at a local pub. The event, organised by Caroline (Cassie) Sipos, Business Development Manager for the School of Policy and Global Affairs, City St George’s University of London, was part of the broader Pint of Science movement.
This event, one of many on the same night, is an annual global festival bringing academic research into informal, accessible spaces such as pubs or cafes. The environment enables researchers and the public to connect over important social issues, drinks, and conversation.
Anastasia showcased her research on violence against older people, an often-overlooked area of abuse and harm. She spoke about different forms of violence in older age, including physical, emotional, and economic, and discussed the social and structural barriers that allow this violence to remain hidden. Anastasia also shared the findings from the recent study that measured the prevalence of violence in older age and the associations between violence and mental health in later life. The talk concluded with calls for stronger protective measures and greater public awareness to safeguard the dignity and wellbeing of older populations.
Ladan shared the Breaking the Silence campaign, which uses culturally sensitive animations to amplify the voices of women in Iran affected by violence. Grounded in a survey of 453 Iranian women, the campaign highlights the widespread and multifaceted nature of violence against women and girls, and the urgent need for greater awareness and legal reform. Through powerful storytelling, the animations address issues such as coercive control, economic abuse, and technology facilitated abuse, while promoting the role of active bystanders and signposting available support services. The campaign aims to break taboos, raise awareness, and foster dialogue about women’s rights and freedoms in Iran.
The evening provided a lively and welcoming space for thoughtful conversations and personal reflections. The audience was engaged with both talks, asking insightful questions—often the kind that don’t come up in professional or academic settings. Pint of Social Sciences was a reminder of the value of public engagement and the importance of making research accessible beyond academia. Events like this help to build understanding and inspire collective action towards a more just and informed society.
Domestic violence against women (DVAW) is a public health issue and a breach of human rights, yet evidence on effective interventions remains limited, particularly in low-income and middle-income countries. In Brazil, around one third of women have reported current or previous experiences of DVAW, especially perpetrated by intimate partners. Brazil has a comprehensive policy framework on DVAW, however, their implementation has been piecemeal and low priority.
The research team, led by VISION co-Deputy Director Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, aimed to evaluate changes in identification and referral to specialist support associated with system-level strategies implemented within Brazilian primary healthcare (PHC) to strengthen the response to DVAW as part of the Healthcare Responding to Violence and Abuse (HERA) programme.
The HERA Programme was an international collaboration, involving research partners in the UK, Brazil, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Palestine, which aimed to strengthen the healthcare system response to DVAW, in order to ultimately ensure better outcomes for women and children.
The researchers explored before and aftereffects using difference-in-difference techniques in a quasi-experimental design, using observational data. HERA intervention in Brazil was implemented in eight PHC clinics, while 33 served as controls. Data on DVAW identification and referral were obtained from the national Epidemiological Surveillance System.
Results indicated that the HERA implementation strategies were effective in increasing identification and referral of women who experienced violence and presented at primary care clinics. By prioritising the needs and experiences of women, under a gender and human rights perspective, the strategies may also have enhanced the quality of interactions between healthcare providers and patients.
To the research team’s knowledge, this is the first Brazilian study using a quasi-experimental design to evaluate a system-level set of implementation strategies to DVAW. It provides compelling evidence for the effectiveness of culturally tailored strategies aimed at improving the response of PHC settings to DVAW. The findings reveal significant improvements in both identification and referral rates. The evidence not only underscores the intervention’s potential but offers a valuable framework for policymakers and healthcare providers seeking to implement effective strategies in similar contexts, particularly in low- and middle-income settings.
To cite: Estela Capelas Barbosa, Stephanie Pereira, Loraine J. Bacchus, Manuela Colombini, Gene Feder, Lilia Blima Schraiber, Ana Flávia Pires Lucas d’Oliveira, Healthcare responding to violence and abuse in Brazil: a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences analysis, The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, Volume 47, 2025, 101114, ISSN 2667-193X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2025.101114.
A Warning for Parents, a Teaching Moment, or Just a Drama?
by City St George’s UoL doctoral researcher Sylwia Wypyska-Kieran
I finally got around to watching the show. I braced myself for it. I work in this field, and when I sit down to watch TV, I want an escape. And more importantly, I have a son the same age as the main character. I was scared—I know how dramas can pull the right emotional strings to shake you to your core. And this show does exactly that.
It grips the audience, tapping into their deepest emotions to climb the charts. It spreads fear about youth violence, fueling the anxieties of parents who are already overwhelmed by the mysteries of the online world. At the school gates, friends tell me how upsetting it was. Online, acquaintances share tips on how to ‘better control’ our children, while colleagues publish their expert opinions. Following the discourse surrounding the show is fascinating. But let’s start from the beginning.
Katie was murdered. In a typical narrative about crime, the show’s focus is on the perpetrator – a 13-year-old boy. This compelling drama has done an amazing job of avoiding the othering of the boy who killed, a common and widely criticised practice in the media. Jamie looks young and innocent. His child-looking face shatters the stereotype of a perpetrator, which is so important for society’s understanding of the reality of everyday violence. We feel for him. We see a child whose life has crumbled. We feel for his parents, we feel their pain, self-blame and disbelief. Together with the detectives, we seek the answers. Why?
I was expecting the answer to be the manosphere. The trailer and discourse surrounding the show heavily focused on that. The online world of incels and Andrew Tates. I was surprised and rather confused to see that the manosphere was not a direct effect on Jamie’s behaviour. Katie was bullying Jamie, calling him an incel and telling him that no one will ever go out with him.
How did a drama about a boy who murdered a girl manage to make her seem responsible for his crime? Whilst I pondered whether I misunderstood the implication, I saw a comment online ‘What the boy did was definitely wrong but didn’t it start from the bullying by the girl!!!’.
The detective’s son pulls his Dad aside and tells him about the secret language of teenagers. I work with some amazing people whose work is all about young people’s participation. Teenagers don’t live on The Planet of the Adolescents, to which we have no access. Yes, adolescence is a distinctive period in people’s lives and we do have to understand the psychosocial challenges young people face. But let’s not align adolescence with violence and let’s not separate ourselves from them. It is harmful to them, to us, and to society as a whole.
‘Adolescence made free for schools as Keir Starmer meets creators’, the BBC reports, alongside calls to introduce anti-misogyny lessons. But we can’t teach our way out of misogyny. It seems like a reactive decision made without consultation with experts or young people. The context, complexities and consequences of this decision could be immense.
The boys I have spoken to, as part of my research exploring responses to harmful sexual behaviours, have told me that they feel shut down in conversations about relationships and sex. It is consistent with other studies around the topic. They already feel they do not have a space where they can explore and learn about relationships or their identities as men. Will showing this series to them open up a conversation or prove them right? My bet is on the latter. We risk pushing them further into a corner—driving them toward the very spaces where they do feel heard.
As part of the work, researchers Dr Mirna Guha (Anglia Ruskin University) and Dr Katherine Allen (University of Suffolk), hosted a leadership event on 3 April 2025 for racially and culturally diverse women. Held at a venue provided by the City of London police, the event was part of a leadership programme implemented through the HUM (‘Us) : A Place-based Emerging-Leaders Model designed and piloted by Mirna and Katherine to diversify leadership in domestic abuse and sexual violence services. Research aims include ensuring culturally responsive and representative support for minoritised victims-survivors in East England.
Prior to the April event, Mirna and Katherine researched the leadership needs of 19 overstretched frontline practitioners i.e. ‘emerging leaders’ from racialised communities working within White-majority and at times professionally isolating generalist services across Bedfordshire, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. East England is home to scattered racialised and diasporic communities where women’s leadership in local politics and policymaking is low. Based on this, three events on trauma-informed, culturally responsive and diverse styles of leadership have been co-produced with national DASV experts. Participants were invited to also join a regionally pioneering Community of Practice (CoP).
At the April event in London, 15 emerging leaders from racialised backgrounds gained insights into the strategies, opportunities and challenges of practising culturally and racially representative leadership through an inspiring keynote by Superintendent Jasvinder Kaur, Domestic Abuse Lead at Suffolk Constabulary and co-founder of the National Women of Colour in Policing network. Furthermore, nine Black and racialised women speakers associated with statutory institutions viz. Cambridge City Council and the National Police Chief’s Council.
Voluntary organisations also spoke including Apna Haq in Rotherham, Asian Women’s Resource Centre in London, and Karim Foundation in Cambridge. Others also shared their experiences of navigating rural and predominantly White spaces, and their strategies for claiming space, giving voice to community members and creating opportunities for other culturally and racially diverse women leaders. One notable theme was the pathbreaking role each panellist had assumed during her career, opening (or at times creating) doors for herself and those who followed. Discussions across the day dwelled on temporality and the changing political landscapes as well as place-based challenges linked to rurality.
Overall, the leadership model, including this event and others and the growing leadership CoP, with a current membership of 25 emerging women leaders, aims to address these contextual and temporal challenges by bolstering and diversifying racialised women’s leadership in public services to ensure equity for minoritised victims-survivors.
By laying the groundwork for a regional advisory board through the CoP, the model challenges the epistemic erasure of racially and culturally minoritised women within the design of DASV, and broadly, public services which exacerbate the postcode lottery of services across England and Wales. Inspired by Pawson and Tilley’s (1997)[1] approach to realist evaluation (which seeks to understand what works for whom and in which circumstances) Mirna and Katherine aim to evaluate the impact of the leadership programme and CoP on how emerging leaders navigate specific challenges rooted in specific professional, relational and spatial contexts.
[1] Pawson, R. and Tilley, N., 1997. Realistic evaluation.
We are pleased to announce our next webinar for the VISION and Violence & Society Centre (VASC) Webinar Series on Tuesday, 17 June, 11.00 – 11.50.
Mary-Ann Stephenson is the Director of Women’s Budget Group (WBG), a feminist think tank that works in research, advocacy and training to realise a gender equal economy in the UK. As an influential link between academia, the community and voluntary sector, and through their activities of government building and exchanging evidence, data, knowledge, and capacity, WBG’s work often interlinks with violence-prevention research and policy.
A commitment to long-term grant funding for specialist women’s services, including ringfenced funding for services led ‘by and for’ Black and minoritised women, Deaf and disabled women and LGBT+ survivors.
More specialist training for police dealing with VAWG cases.
Reform social security (including uprating benefits and scrapping the benefits cap and two-child limit) to ensure women’s economic independence and their ability to leave abusive relationships.
In this webinar, Mary-Ann will highlight WBG’s programme of work demonstrating that a gender equal economy and the embedding of gender equality policymaking are necessary in the reduction of violence against women.
Please join the VISION research consortium and the Violence and Society Centre at City St George’s University of London for what will be a fascinating exploration of economic inequality through a gendered lens.
The purpose of the VISION/VASC webinar series is to provide a platform for academia, government and the voluntary and community sector that work to reduce and prevent violence to present their work / research to a wider audience. This is a multidisciplinary platform and we welcome speakers from across a variety of fields such as health, crime, policing, ethnicity, migration, sociology, social work, primary care, front line services, etc. If interested in presenting at a future Series webinar, please contact: VISION_Management_Team@city.ac.uk
