Accessing and engaging in the CJS

The first of our themed workshops was attended by 20 practitioners across 19 organisations.  The aim of this workshop was to explore the challenges of ‘Accessing and Engaging in the CJS’.

We began the workshop by exploring and clustering issues that related to access and engagement (example of this work in the picture).

This identified six clustered themes:

1. Funding: how commissioning relates to VAWG strategy
2. Criminal justice process: managing expectations and communication
3. Use of language
4. Victims/survivors knowing their rights and/or options for support
5. First response to victims/survivors
6. Trauma informed working.

We needed to filter this work down to three key areas that we needed to focus on in the themed research phase. Through voting, this resulted in the following three areas being chosen to further progress: (i) Funding: how commissioning relates to VAWG strategy, (ii) First response to victims/survivors, (iii) Trauma informed working.

Participants then worked in one of three groups to break these topic areas down into key questions to address:

1. Trauma-informed practice – what does this look like and do we have evidence of good practice? (led by Dr Matt Tonkin and Sian Jenkins)

This project will explore:

• How do you define trauma-informed practice within your organisation?  Is this linked to a specific organisational policy?
• What data do you collect that helps to assess whether you are working in a trauma-informed way?

The findings from this project is within the 'Project summary: trauma informed practice' (PDF, 235kb).

2. Service-mapping and funding arena – what services exist and how are they funded?

This question explores whether there are gap/overlaps in services, how VAWG funding is devolved down to organisations, and whether there are opportunities for greater collaboration.

The findings from this project can be found in the Project summary: Service mapping and funding (PDF, 283kb).

3. Understanding early disengagement with police investigations – is this linked to the nature of the first response?

This question is going to use multiple sources to identify common themes around this issue. We are likely to use police data to explore any interactions between the nature of the first response and how this may relate to disengagement with police investigations.

The findings from this project can be found in the Responding to DA Project Summary (PDF, 207kb).