Recommendation 4

HM Government Deferred

Through the Rape Review and the Victims Bill consultation we have heard about long waiting lists and how a victim’s location may determine the availability of support. Having the right support in place is crucial to ensuring that victims stay engaged in the criminal justice system and are able to make informed choices. Victims who are supported by an Independent Sexual Violence Adviser (ISVA) are significantly more likely to stay engaged with the criminal justice process, as the Rape Review showed. Understanding capacity and demand at a local level is important to ensure equal access to support services. Through its grant funding schemes, the Ministry of Justice works in partnership with PCCs and specialist sexual violence and abuse services to regularly gather, analyse and respond to themes emerging from monitoring data. This data supports us to maintain an understanding of need for and availability of support services. As part of our commitment to increase funding for victims’ services to £192 million by 2024/25, we are working with PCCs to establish an up-to-date picture of local need so that funding meets the needs of all victims. We are also setting up a new source of phone / online support for victims of rape and sexual violence which will be available 24/7 and recommissioning the Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Fund this year. The recommissioning process provides an opportunity to consider how we can address the challenges faced by victims waiting for counselling and therapeutic support services. The call for improved cross-Government working will be met through the Victims Funding Strategy: a cross-government strategy that will drive better outcomes for victims by tackling the barriers to sustainable funding and ensuring consistent commissioning. The Victims Funding Strategy was published by the Ministry of Justice on 26 May 2022 and provides a framework for how agencies should work together to best resource the victim support sector. Also, the Ministry of Justice has committed £154 million of this budget per annum on a multi-year basis, for the next three years (2022/23 to 2024/25 inclusive). Multi-year funding—a minimum of £460 million over three years—will allow victim support services, and those commissioning them, to invest in building capacity and strengthen the resilience of services, which will in turn provide consistency to victims receiving support. It will help to ensure that high-quality support is available to victims when needed. Through the Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, which we published in March, the Home Office is doubling its funding to support survivors of sexual violence in 2022/3 to £400,000 and will be making multi-year awards. This multi-year funding will offer more stability and consistency for victims. The Home Office will also be further increasing funding for all of the national helplines that it supports. To complement the Victims Funding Strategy and guide all commissioners of victims’ services, on 30 March the Home Office published a refreshed National Statement of Expectations and accompanying Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Commissioning Toolkit. The Statement and Toolkit provide guidance for local areas on how to commission effective support services for all victims of VAWG. These refreshed documents now place further emphasis on the importance of commissioning ‘by and for’ services and encouraging commissioners to work with specialist organisations to understand what services are required at a local level. They also highlight the importance of engaging with all groups, including those facing multiple disadvantages, to ensure that they have opportunities to participate in the commissioning process in a meaningful way and that services meet their needs effectively. We will continue to work with our partners to understand the provision of specialist sexual violence and abuse services and identify where improvements need to be made.