Workshops

As part of the EMPOWER project a number of workshops will be organised in the coming months. Our first collaborative workshop will take place on Thursday 10 November 2022 at the University of Leicester.

Project launch report: 10 November 2022

Attended by 34 people across 24 organisations, representing agencies across Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, and Nottinghamshire including: police forces, Offices for Police and Crime Commissioners, Councils, and third sector, the project launch workshop for EMPOWER had three key objectives:

1. Revisiting the key objectives of the bid, introducing the partners, and setting the scene for the work of EMPOWER.
2. Identifying and clustering VAWG issues into five core areas that will be focussed on during the project.
3. Establishing expected values for collaboration and anticipating potential challenges.

To ensure that the work of EMPOWER reflects the challenges that our partners are experiencing in their regions, we are focussing on co-design and co-production in determining the areas of focus that we explore over the next 9 months. Developing and identifying these five core areas by all partners working together was an important outcome for this workshop, as it will shape the research that we undertake across the project. By working through a set of activities, we achieved this, and the five areas that we will focus on are:

1. Accessing and engaging in the CJS (Theme workshop 1: Accessing and engaging in the CJS – 9 December 2022, 10.00am – 13.00pm)
2. Multi-agency/Multi-systems (Theme workshop 2: Multi-agency/Multi-system – 26 January 2023, 10.00am – 1.00pm)
3. Education (Theme workshop 3: Education – 23 February 2023, 10.00am  - 1.00pm)
4. What works (Theme workshop 4: What works – 30 March 2023, 10.00am – 1.00pm)
5. Culture in the CJS (Theme workshop 5: Culture in the CJS – 4 May 2023, 10.00am – 1.00pm)

These themes span a range of issues across prevention, support, collaboration, and trauma-informed practice. We also developed a values statement that will guide the way in which we will work together. This was an incredibly positive start to the project, where attendees welcomed the opportunity to network and meet new people working under the umbrella of VAWG.

Project synthesis: The next steps for EMPOWER - 13th July 2023

This workshop, running from 10:00 – 3:00pm has three key objectives:

1. Revisiting the key objectives of the project and reflecting on what we have learned.
2. Exploring how EMPOWER wants to function as a group after the end of this funding cycle.
3. Co-developing funding bids focusing on the learning established during the project.