SafeLives’ response to Home Office’s £8.3 million fund for VAWG services

Though we welcome the recent £8.3m Home Office fund for supporting smaller specialist ‘by and for’ DA organisations to build capacity and capability, we think there’s an opportunity missed to create funding processes which think creatively about how to transfer power to those organisations in a more effective way.

It’s especially important to make sure those who are most marginalised by society get the support they need. Sometimes small specialist organisations are best placed to do that, but they need the time and space to genuinely develop their capacity and they need funding programmes and commissioning models which recognise that.  If programme design mitigates against the small-scale CIC or the hyper-local community based specialist service which does amazing work then everyone loses.

We are disappointed that the intention behind the new scheme hasn’t resulted in a lot more direct support to specialist organisations and want to see new funding programmes for the future which can do exactly that, with minimum grant levels and processes suitable for small services, alongside ensuring larger services are culturally competent to support the widest range of people.