VAWG progress report published
The NPCC has today, Thursday 8 September, released their Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) progress report which outlines the progress made to tackle VAWG across England and Wales over the last year.
The progress report covers work underway across policing nationally, regionally and locally, as well as some of the future activity planned.
APCC Joint Victims Leads Donna Jones and Sophie Linden, said:
“We are pleased to see the progress that policing has made since October 2021. They are stepping up to the challenge and have started to implement some positive changes to improve the experiences of women and girls across the country and increase confidence in policing.
“We are particularly pleased by the important work of Operation Soteria Bluestone and the expansion to further forces. However, more still needs to be done to ensure VAWG is prioritised across every police force, ensuring victims are effectively supported and offenders apprehended.
“As police and crime commissioners (PCCs), we are working closely with our chief constables in the delivery of local VAWG action plans and our ourselves leading multi-agency VAWG partnerships to drive forward improvements across local partners.
“We are pleased to see policing adopting more of a data-driven, evidence-based approach to this work and will be holding our chief constables to account for delivery against VAWG action plans using the data tools made available. There is still a considerable way to go in gaining public confidence and trust and challenging some embedded working practices. However, positive steps are being made and the commitment made across policing to engaging in multi-agency work to tackle VAWG is a real strength."
In November we will launch our first joint VAWG partnership plan with the NPCC at our national summit.
The plan will focus on three priorities with an ambition to engage across a number of areas so we can collectively take action to prevent the harm caused by VAWG.
Donna and Sophie continued: “Our joint partnership plan will focus on key priority areas. A public health approach to VAWG, working across all partners is the only way we can truly tackle this issue and ensure societal change. We are grateful to DCC Maggie Blyth and her team for the continued engagement across their workplan. We look forward to our ongoing work together to end violence against women and girls.”