Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Accepted
Require Home Office to capture and share evidence of successful local VAWG initiatives.
Recommendation
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
Government Response Summary
The government states the recommendation is implemented through ongoing work supporting the VAWG Strategy, including conducting in-depth evidence reviews and stakeholder workshops. It highlights the Safer Streets Mission as the existing infrastructure for collating and sharing evidence and commits to continually growing the evidence base and evaluating initiatives.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Recommendation implemented The recommendation is being implemented through work undertaken to support the VAWG Strategy and any ongoing analytical work on tackling VAWG. The Home Office regularly reviews emerging evidence at both national and local levels to ensure its approach to tackling VAWG is based on the best available evidence. To provide a comprehensive assessment of the existing evidence base and support the development of the VAWG Strategy, the government conducted in-depth reviews on the evidence of what works to reduce VAWG. Four evidence reviews, focused on evaluation evidence, were undertaken to align as closely as possible to the themes of the VAWG Strategy. In addition, information on promising national and local initiatives was shared by a range of stakeholders, including 8 government departments, 23 VAWG sector organisations and 10 international countries and devolved administrations. As part of the evidence review work, 2 workshops on the evidence base and interventions were also held with 12 leading UK academics on VAWG. This work has been used to inform the government response to VAWG outlined in the Strategy; the output will be published alongside the VAWG Strategy. The Safer Streets Mission provides the infrastructure needed to ensure all departments are collating and sharing evidence on successful initiatives. The government will continue to grow the evidence base, recognising that there are evidence gaps, to feed into the mission approach, and where feasible will evaluate new and existing initiatives and approaches over the course of their lifecycle. The government will also seize ‘test-and-learn’ opportunities to design and trial small, innovative local solutions, exploring the potential for national implementation. The overall progress of the Strategy will be measured through a suite of metrics that form the Performance Framework.