This is the second year of VAV involvement in the Violence Reduction Unit Conference and all we can say it was bigger,better and a huge step closer to amassing a driven force to tackle the dark stain of domestic abuse. Jack and I were honored to be invited to deliver a keynote speech where we presented the VAV Legacy Film, One Voice At A Time.
Many of our allies were there plus a few organisations VAV haven’t heard of rising up and joining the fight 🙂
We are all happy to know and very excited to tell others that our close friends and allies the Cedar project has been given funding by the Big Lottery for 14 projects around Scotland plus 2 National Co-ordinators for Scottish Women’s Aid to help the roll-out. It’s part of over £6 million ‘Becoming a Survivor’ Lottery money for three years wahey!
So all we can say is keep making the recovering of mothers and children brighter and better.
Find out more about this amazing project here: Cedar Network
Voices Unheard is an amazing group of young Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people that has strived across Scotland to raise awareness of young LGBT people’s perspectives of domestic abuse and what services can do to improve the way they offer them help. It is run by LGBT Youth Scotland.
Voices Unheard logo
Voices Unheard has done local fact finding and consultations with young LGBT people in four areas – Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Scottish Borders. They launched this fact finding at local events which helped information sharing with lots of other organisations like Women’s Aid, youth workers, schools and the police forces of those areas.
Some members of VAV attended two of these local events – one in Dundee on the 2nd February and one in Glasgow on the 16th February. We found out many things like the fact that domestic abuse experienced by transgender people is more common than we thought. Also that the lack of representation of LGBT young people in advertising campaigns as well as lack of police awareness on the subject can create barriers to young LGBT people seeking help.
Delegates at the national launch
The launch of Voices Unheard’s national research which pulled together findings from all four areas was done spectacularly in Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth. VAV got to go on a tour of the place then sat down to hear Voices Unheard talk about their fact finding and recommendations. The day ended with a panel of which we asked questions of Scottish Women’s Aid, the Government, the Police, LGBT Youth and others about how to raise awareness of the needs of young LGBT people and how to improve services and multi agency approaches.
Voice Against Violence will speak to Ministers and CoSLA in Parliament on the 1st of February. All eight of us VAV people will be there together with Alex Neil the Minister for Housing and Communities, Adam Ingram who is Minister for Children and Early Years and Cllr Harry McGuigan who is the CoSLA Spokesperson for Community Wellbeing & Safety.
We will share our views on what needs to improve for children affected by domestic abuse. Some of the things we will talk about are:
1. Funding for the CEDAR Groupwork Programme as funding for it is likely to be stopped after March 2011.
2. Funding for Children’s Workers which is going to continue for at least another year – Great News!
