IRISi News #08: How health care settings can improve their response to VAWG?

Welcome to the 8th edition of “IRISi News”!

This is a special edition, since it brings everything that has happened during our IRISi’s “16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence” campaign, which was themed as “16 ways for the 16 days of action: how health care settings can improve their response to Violence Against Women and Girls”. Our aim was to reinforce how and why health care professionals have an undeniable and fundamental role in identifying victims and perpetrators so we can end violence against women and girls. In order to do that, healthcare interventions such as the IRIS and ADViSE programmes, which were developed by IRISi to enable these professionals to recognise Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse, can make a big and lasting difference.

The “Evaluation of the Identification and Referral to Improve Safety (IRIS) Intervention in the West Midlands”, led by the research team at the University of Birmingham, gives a really good overview of this. The study was conducted with 21 women affected by DVA and who had received IRIS support. It concluded that the programme had impacted positively on their health. The main findings of this study were presented to the local IRIS teams and stakeholders in the West Midlands on the 25th November and are now available in our newsletter.

The importance of the support given by IRIS Advocate Educators to service users is one of the main points of this research, so naturally, IRISi’s “16 ways for 16 days” campaign continued by giving voice to some of our AEs, followed by some of our Clinical Leads, who presented their personal and professional experiences of how programmes such as IRIS and ADViSE can directly help women affected by DVA, a matter that can no longer be neglected by the decision-makers in our health system.

For this reason, our 16 days campaign continued by providing details showing how and why the IRIS Programme is cost-effective, a strong argument to support its commissioning across the UK. On the 6th December, the IRISi team introduced our Cost Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) Tool, a platform developed by IRISi’s Data Scientist that allows each site to easily calculate and present the cost-effectiveness of their local programme. To finish our campaign, we invited IRISi’s Board Members to provide their views on “Why we do what we do”.

Click here to read it in full!

We hope you like it. Happy reading and please feel free to share it with your contacts.

With best wishes from all of us at IRISi and Happy Holidays!

Partners

AVA

AVA is an expert, groundbreaking and independent charity working across the UK.

Their vision is a world without gender based violence and abuse. They aim to inspire innovation and collaboration and encourage and enable direct service providers to help end gender based violence and abuse particularly against women and girls.AVA’s work is focused around those areas where they can make the best contribution to ending violence and abuse. They do this by making sure that survivors get the help and support they need in the here and now, through providing innovative training that has a proven direct impact on the professional practice of people supporting survivors of violence and abuse

developing a range of toolkits, e-learning and other material that supports professionals to provide effective and appropriate support to survivors of violence and abuse

using our influence and networks to ensure survivors voices are heard. We work closely with AVA in many areas including the Pathfinder project

https://avaproject.org.uk

SafeLives

SafeLives are a national charity dedicated to ending domestic abuse, for good. We combine insight from services, survivors and statistics to support people to become safe, well and rebuild their lives. Since 2005, SafeLives has worked with organisations across the country to transform the response to domestic abuse, with over 60,000 victims at highest risk of murder or serious harm now receiving co-ordinated support annually. SafeLives are members of the Pathfinder consortium.

http://www.safelives.org.uk/about-us

IMKAAN

Imkaan is a UK-based, Black feminist organisation. We are the only national second-tier women’s organisation dedicated to addressing violence against Black and minoritised women and girls i.e. women and girls which are defined in policy terms as Black and ‘Minority Ethnic’ (BME). The organisation holds nearly two decades of experience of working around issues such as domestic violence, forced marriage and ‘honour-based’ violence.

They work at local, national and international level, and in partnership with a range of organisations, to improve policy and practice responses to Black and minoritised women and girls. Imkaan works with it’s members to represent the expertise and perspectives of frontline, specialist and dedicated Black and minoritised women’s organisations that work to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. Imkaan delivers a unique package of support which includes: quality assurance; accredited training and peer education; sustainability support to frontline Black and minoritised organisations; and facilitation of space for community engagement and development. They are a part of the Pathfinder Consortium.

https://www.imkaan.org.uk

The University of Bristol CAPC

The Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC) is a leading centre for primary care research in the UK, one of nine forming the NIHR School for Primary Care Research. It is part of Bristol Medical School, an internationally recognised centre of excellence for population health research and teaching.

A dedicated team of researchers at the Centre work on domestic abuse projects and IRISi is a co-collaborator and partner on some of these projects including ReProvide, HERA and DRiDVA.

The Health Foundation

The Health Foundation is an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. The Health Foundation’s Exploring Social Franchising programme aims to generate a deeper understanding of the potential of social franchising models for scaling effective health and social care interventions within the NHS.

We are one of four project teams participating in the programme to develop a social franchise to enable the sustainable spread of our intervention, the IRIS Programme. We receive funding and support from the Health Foundation, including technical expertise on social franchising, and attend programme learning events. The Health Foundation has also commissioned a programme-wide evaluation to support understanding of the use of social franchising in the UK health and care system. We and our franchisees will support the evaluation through co-designing data collection requirements, providing access to data as requested, hosting site visits and attending learning events.

https://www.health.org.uk

STADV

Standing Together Against Domestic Violence is a UK charity bringing communities together to end domestic abuse. They bring local services together to keep people safe

Most public services weren’t designed with domestic abuse in mind, and they often struggle to keep people safe. Poor communication and gaps between services put survivors at risk.

STADV aim to end domestic abuse by changing the way that local services respond to it. They do this through an approach that they pioneered, called the Coordinated Community Response. The Coordinated Community Response brings services together to ensure local systems truly keep survivors safe, hold abusers to account, and prevent domestic abuse.

Their model of a coordinated local partnership to tackle and ultimately prevent domestic violence is now widely accepted as best practice. They are also a part of the Pathfinder consortium.

http://www.standingtogether.org.uk

Spring Impact

Spring Impact is a not-for-profit social enterprise born out of the frustration of seeing social organisations constantly reinventing the wheel and wasting scarce resources. Spring Impact uses a combination of tested commercial and social principles and extensive practical expertise to support organisations to identify, design and implement the right social replication model to scale their social impact.