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Victims Commissioning Performance

The PCC receives an annual grant from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to commission services for victims and witnesses of crime.

During 2020/21, the PCC spent the full amount of his initial grant allocation of £2.814 million to deliver the following services and benefits:

  • Thames Valley Partnership received £844,998 to provide the Victims First Specialist Service for adult victims. This service helps victims with longer term, multiple or more complex needs to cope and recover from the effects of crime and includes Independent Sexual Violence Advisors, Exploitation Specialists and VictimLed Restorative Justice Specialists. Delivery of this service is through a ‘Strategic Partner model’ led by Thames Valley Partnership and two Delivery Partners (Trust House Reading and OSSARC). The service provided support to 715 referrals and supported 706 people to cope and recover from the effects of crime.
  • SAFE! received £513,616 to provide a service to support young victims of crime aged from 5-18yrs across Thames Valley. The service prioritises young victims of sexual abuse and domestic abuse. During the last year, they have received 878 referrals into the service and supported 769 young victims.
  • Thames Valley Partnership received £222,746 to provide emotional support and advocacy service to 862 victims of crime. This service provides up to 12 weeks of ongoing emotional and practical support for all victims of crime.
  • Our in-house Victims First Hub acts as a single point of contact for initial contact, assessment, and subsequent immediate and ongoing support to self-referrals, referrals from the police, Action Fraud, and partner agencies for all victims across Thames Valley. This service cost £342,867 and received 3,434 valid referrals where successful contact was made with victims.
  • Our new network of specialist counsellors cost £147,665 who supported 395 adults and young people referred into counselling.
  • Our domestic violence medium risk safety planning service was commissioned through local authorities. Oxfordshire County Council received £15,600 and managed 1,023 referrals, Buckinghamshire received £11,700 and managed 1,108 occurrences, MK Act received £7,800 and managed 1,155 occurrences, Slough Borough Council received £15,600 and managed 1,818 occurrences and West Berkshire Council received £11,700 and managed 627 occurrences.
  • We commissioned a Domestic Violence complex need service from a range of providers across the Thames Valley. Oxfordshire County Council received £139,359 to provide a complex needs service to Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire and received 34 referrals; Slough Borough Council received £48,668 and received 140 referrals; West Berkshire Council received £48,811 and received 61 referrals, and MK received £22,328 and received 103 referrals.
  • We funded a Domestic Violence perpetrators programme at a cost of £10,000.
  • FLAG DV received £10,521 to provide free legal advice to victims of domestic violence. Their fully qualified family law solicitors provided advice to 388 clients.
  • Following the terrorist incident in Forbury Gardens, Reading, we established the Reading Trauma Service at a cost of £15,000 which provided specialist clinical assessment and active monitoring to 15 people affected. We also provided £9,885 to Support U to provide telephone support to victims and witnesses from the LGBTQ (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer) community.
  • We made a contribution of £3,000 to Brake for their national road victim service.
  • £252,700 of local authority community safety spend was included within and funded from the MoJ budget. This provided additional domestic violence services across the Thames Valley area.

The balance (£0.119 million) has been spent on other services for victims, including commissioning costs.

In May, we received an additional in-year Covid-19 related grant of £943,522 from the MoJ to provide financial support to providers of Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence services to help them support an increase in demand for their services. From this, 21 local Domestic Abuse services spent £708,162 supporting clients and 5 specialist Rape Support providers spent £210,580 providing specialist support for those affected by Sexual Violence. However, some providers could not spend their full allocation and £13,780 is being returned to the MoJ.

In July, the MoJ provided an additional £84,685 to recruit 3 additional Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs). This money was provided to Thames Valley Partnership but they were unable to recruit all 3 ISVAs by 31st March 2021. As such, only £30,000 was spent, with the remaining £54,685 being returned to the MoJ in accordance with the grant agreement.