The National Lottery Community Fund engaged the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, DMSS and CWASU (the partners) to support the Women and Girls Initiative (WGI). The partners will support the Fund’s WGI grant holders to capture and share learning, develop a community of networked services that is stronger and has greater influence.

Context

Over the last decade, the women and girls sector has grown in strength, size and capability. Issues that were once marginalised have emerged as mainstream concerns and women’s sector agencies are at the centre of best practice and creative initiatives. However for a variety of reasons the women’s sector has been significantly affected by recent cuts in public sector spending at a time when the issues the sector deals with – domestic and sexual violence, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and female genital mutilation – have never been so prominent.£44.7 million of National Lottery money has been invested in 62 projects across England to support and empower women and girls facing violence, abuse, exploitation and mental health issues. This funding is enabling national organisations and grassroots projects to provide dedicated support for women and girls in local communities through outreach, advice and advocacy, refuge and prevention projects. The overall ambition of the WGI is to support the development of a stronger women and girls’ sector through:

• Increasing the provision of holistic, person-centred approaches for women and girls
• Increasing the role and voice for women and girls in co-producing services
• Increasing the number of women and girls supported through improved specialist support
• Improving the quality of evidence for what works in empowering women and girls

The National Lottery Community Fund wishes to raise awareness of this work locally and nationally so more people understand the issues facing women and girls and know how to access support.TIHR, DMSS and CWASU have been commissioned to support WGI grant holders to capture and share their learning and develop a community of services that is stronger and has greater influence.

Objectives

Together with the 62 WGI grant-holders and the women and girls they work with, TIHR, DMSS and CWASU are exploring how the sector can better demonstrate its impact, raise its voice and increase its influence for the long-term benefit of women and girls.  Specifically, the purpose of our work is to:

1. Identify what more holistic/person-centred approaches for women and girls looks like.
2. Describe how these approaches can increase and improve specialist support.
3. Understand what enables women and girls to be co-producers of services.
4. Support projects to generate and use their own local evidence

Methodology

Support for WGI grant-holders is being provided in a variety of ways including:

• One-to-one support for grant-holders
• An online learning hub to enable collective conversations
• Action Learning Sets
• Msterclasses and workshops
• Publication of regular reports/briefings
• A national conference, to showcase and share project achievements and learning

Support and learning activity has been developed, following an initial progress review with grant-holders, so that we can build on what is working well for projects and from learning so far. Activity is reviewed annually so that support responds to grant-holder needs and changing contexts, but so far have included the beginning of one-to-one support, action learning sets and Masterclasses. The first report was published in early 2019.

Audio-visual Resources:

A new animation film celebrating The Women and Girls Initiative (WGI) is now available. You can watch the film here.Recordings from our WGI Seminars can now also be found online via the links below.

• Webinar 1: Economic Abuse, its policy and practice implications with Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs
• Webinar 2: Lived Experience in the sector: How do we better enable a ‘We’? with Lisa Ward

Resources (PDFs):

• Sanctuary and freedom: the transformational power of spaces for women and girls
• Preventing another serial killer? Learning from projects supporting women and girls who are sexually exploited or selling sex
• WGI Synthesis Report #2: Learning from a turbulent time
• Increasing the voice and influence of girls and young women
• Residential services for women survivors of abuse and multiple disadvantage Implications of the Covid-19 pandemic: Where are we now?
• “It’s been a game changer” The impact of National Lottery funding on women and girls’ projects
• Women’s Mental Health - The Essential Contribution of Feminist Services: briefing paper
• Partnership Working for Women and Girls: Briefing Paper
• WGI Synthesis Report #1 (2016-19)
• Safer Pair of Hands: Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) specialist violence against women work
• Why Work with Young Women and Girls Matters: An Insights Briefing
• Influencing Commissioners
• Why Women’s Centres Work: Evidence Briefing
• Descriptor Report

Blogs:

• Responding to and learning from changes during Covid-19
• A woman’s place is in the (on-line) world?
• Supporting staff in the women and girls’ sector
• Virtual support and vulnerability in the women and girls sector
• Covid-19 and the Women and Girls Initiative
• Have we lost the ‘we’?

Project Team:

Camilla Child (Project Director); Heather Stradling (Project Manager), Anna Sophie Hahne, Georgie Parry-Crooke, Megan Davies, Kerstin Junge, Juliet Scott, working with partners DMSS Research and CWASU.Further information about the WGI and the 62 grant-holders can be found on the The National Lottery Community Fund website.