Solace’s priorities to end violence against women and girls in London

Develop and implement a strategy to end violence against women and girls for 2024-28 with specific commitments to:

• Prioritise and significantly invest in work to prevent VAWG across London including funding for specialist VAWG training and resources for children and young people in schools and other key settings. This should include provision for advocacy support for those young people already affected by peer-to-peer violence across London.
• Make London a safe city for migrant survivors including commissioning specialist support for survivors with no recourse to public funds, immediately halting data sharing between the Metropolitan Police Service and the Home Office and working with the VAWG sector in lobbying for a national firewall; and
• Increase the number of safe and effective perpetrator interventions across London which prioritise behaviour

• Work with the Metropolitan Police to tackle the systematic levels of police perpetrated abuse including properly resourcing their professional standards team, ensuring independent methods of reporting and commissioning an independent advocacy support for survivors of police perpetrated abuse.
• Ensure that there are specific targets and accountability measures within the Metropolitan Police’s VAWG Action Plan and build mechanisms for the VAWG sector to meaningfully scrutinize their progress and ensure it is being treated as a priority.
• Work with the Metropolitan Police to rebuild survivors’ trust, focusing on significant investment in officer training, and addressing wider discriminatory cultures including misogyny, racism, homophobia and ableism that lead to victims not reporting or not taking cases forward.

• Provide more affordable move on housing options for women seeking to flee abuse and violence with a particular focus on increasing support for Black and minoritised women, LGBT+ survivors, disabled women, older women and migrant women.
• Work with councils to ring-fence a minimum of 5% of housing under new or existing affordable housing programmes to survivors of VAWG; and
• Support the continuation of the Women’s Rough Sleeping Census in London and commit to improve pathways and increase accommodation for women experiencing multiple disadvantage, including homelessness, in London.

• Move from competitive tendering to a grant funding model for VAWG services, commission services for three to five years where possible and lobby Government for more sustainable funding settlement for London;
• Provide cost of living funds for survivors across London to help them meet their basic needs such as food, utilities and furniture as they flee abuse and seek safety.
• Tackle the gendered nature of VAWG by commissioning services that specialize in supporting women; and
• Meet the needs of Black and minoritised women, Deaf and disabled women, LGBT+ survivors by providing ring-fenced funding for services run by and for these communities

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