The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean on 2014-06-12.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what projects other than refuges for women who are the victims of sexual violence will be set up by the Home Office with the £28 million for the spending review period allocated by the Home Office for specialist domestic and sexual violence services.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Over the spending review period the Home Office funding of £28million provides for:
144 Independent Domestic Violence Advisers and 75 funded IDVA training places; 87 dedicated Independent Sexual Violence Advisers; 54
Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference co-ordinators and funding to Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse to provide support and advice to MARACs, as well as running a programme of quality assurance; and £1.2 million for 3 years from 2012 to improve services for young people suffering sexual violence in major urban areas.
The Home Office also provides over £900,000 per year to support the following free phone national helplines: the National Stalking Helpline which offers information and advice to stalking victims; the National Domestic Violence Helpline which offers support for victims of domestic violence and is run jointly by Women’s Aid and Respect; Broken Rainbow which offers help to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender victims; the Male Advice (and Enquiry) Line which offers help to male victims of domestic violence and advice to perpetrators; and RESPECT which offers information and advice to people who are abusive towards their partners and want help to stop.
Decisions about the provision of refuge accommodation for victims of domestic abuse are a local matter and it is the responsibility of the individual local authority to identify any gaps in service provision and put in place appropriate solutions to address this. We would expect local authorities to build services based on the needs of their communities, taking account of locally available data sources.
