Violence Against Women and Girls - helplines (360G-cabinetoffice-G2-GA-202202804394-22-23)

The Home Office (HO) published a Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy on 8 March 2016 setting out an ambitious programme to make tackling VAWG everybodys business, ensure victims and survivors get the support they need and inspire confidence in the Criminal Justice System to bring more perpetrators to justice as well as doing more to rehabilitate offenders. We have made real progress towards improving our support to victims, including by introducing a new offence of domestic abuse and one for failing to protect a girl from Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); created two new stalking offences; criminalised forced marriage; introduced lifelong anonymity for victims of forced marriage and FGM; and introduced a new mandatory reporting duty on FGM. However, there is more we need to do to truly tackle this crime and combat more emerging and less well understood variant of it. The scale of Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) is vast: approximately 700,000 people aged 16 to 59 were victims of a sexual assault in the year ending March 2018. In the UK, 1 in 4 women will experience domestic abuse and 1 in 5 sexual assault during their lifetime That is why this government has publicly committed to publishing a new Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy this Summer that will align our response to the 21st century threats we now face. To inform this strategy, the Home Office launched a high-profile VAWG Call for Evidence which received over 180,000 responses from victims, survivors, members of the public, the sector and academics. These responses will ensure we can put victims at the heart of our response, and we have set aside funding for delivery of VAWG commitments that will be published in our new VAWG strategy for later this year. We will also be publishing a new Domestic Abuse strategy later this year that will sit alongside the VAWG strategy and help deliver a truly comprehensive response to crimes that disproportionately affect women and girls. As part of our commitment to combat VAWG, the HO currently funds seven helplines to provide advice and support to female, male, and LGBT victims of domestic abuse, victims of stalking, victims of so called honour-based abuse and perpetrators of domestic abuse. The purpose of the project is to fund accessible advice/support services for victims of domestic violence and abuse, and specialist support for other victims. These services are essential to help reduce the harm caused and provide victims with life-lines for support and guidance.