The UK government is allocating £14 million to local services, community organisations and research programmes aimed at preventing violence and abuse against women and girls before
it occurs.
The new funding package will support initiatives designed to make communities safer, tackle harmful behaviour at an early stage and improve responses to violence both online and in public spaces.
A central part of the programme is a £10 million Prevention Accelerator Fund, administered by UK Research and Innovation. It will identify promising local projects and provide them with the resources and expertise needed to expand their work to other parts of the country.
The initiative is intended to help successful grassroots programmes move beyond individual communities and develop approaches that can be adopted on a national scale. Government bodies will work with philanthropic organisations and social-impact investors to help projects grow and reach more people.
First Secretary of State Louise Haigh said the government wants to reduce violence against women and girls by tackling its causes rather than relying solely on responses after incidents have occurred.
She said the programme would give communities greater resources to test new approaches and help create safer environments for women and girls at home, in public and online.
A separate £4 million Evaluation Accelerator Fund will finance research and independent evaluation of prevention programmes. Its purpose is to establish stronger evidence about which interventions are effective in stopping violence and abuse before they happen, allowing successful approaches to be adopted more widely.
The projects receiving support cover several areas of prevention. Among them are programmes working with schools to address harmful behaviour in teenage relationships, initiatives helping police respond to technology-enabled abuse, and community schemes aimed at reducing violence in public places.
Funding will also be used to examine how emerging technologies can be deployed safely when victims disclose abuse. Researchers will assess both the potential benefits and risks of such tools, helping policymakers determine how they can be used without creating additional vulnerabilities.
Another strand of the programme will focus on preventing harmful relationship behaviour among children under 16. The aim is to identify warning signs at an early stage and develop interventions capable of preventing abusive patterns from becoming established.
The government said the combination of direct investment, research and evaluation is intended to create a stronger evidence base for violence-prevention policies. Rather than supporting isolated local projects, the programme seeks to identify approaches that can be tested, improved and eventually introduced in communities across the UK.
