Recommendation 4

The Home Office has a limited awareness of initiatives proving effective so cannot use this information to improve its understanding of what works to prevent and reduce violence against women and girls. The Home Office acknowledges that departments do not have a strong understanding of what works to tackle violence against women and girls. Written evidence submitted to the Committee highlighted many examples of successful locally run initiatives and the Home Office may be missing opportunities to learn from good practice. While the Committee accepts that what works in some local areas may not be appropriate to be rolled out more broadly, if the Home Office is to improve its understanding of what works within the context of constrained resources, it must ensure it is benefitting from all the evidence that already exists. The Home Office has sought to improve its understanding of what works by conducting a review of the available evidence, with the aim of using this to inform its new strategy. The Committee is encouraged to hear that this work has provided some valuable insights, and it is vital that the Home Office does all it can to identify and share lessons learnt from local initiatives. recommendation Prior to the launch of the new VAWG Strategy, the Home Office should set out how, over and above what it has done in the past, it will capture and share evidence of successful initiatives at the local level, to continually inform its understanding of what works to prevent and reduce violence against women and girls. 5