VAWG Strategy Watch: Six-Month Accountability Report

Six Months On: Has the VAWG Strategy Improved Safety for Migrant Women?

Six months after the publication of the Government’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) Strategy, Freedom From Violence and Abuse, the gap between political ambition and lived reality remains stark for many Black, minoritised and migrant (BMM) women. The Government has introduced a substantial body of legislative, policing and prevention measures. Yet, the structural barriers that determine whether a migrant woman can actually reach safety, immigration insecurity, No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) and unequal access to specialist support, remain largely unaddressed.

This report is the first accountability moment in the Real Impact Series, Southall Black Sisters’ (SBS) year-long programme monitoring the Strategy’s impact on migrant victim-survivors. It compiles the analysis set out in our commentary series, updates the SBS Migrant Women’s Safety Scorecard, and for the first time, sets that national picture against what our own frontline staff and service managers are witnessing on the ground.

Our headline assessment is simple: ambition is not the same as protection:

• Momentum is real but narrowly focused: activity has been concentrated in policing, perpetrator management and criminal justice, mirroring serious-crime and counter-terror frameworks and carrying real risks of surveillance and racialised policing.
• A consent-based safeguard is not a full, unconditional firewall: the new requirement for police to obtain consent before sharing data with Immigration Enforcement is genuine progress, but it transfers risk onto the victim-survivor and offers no material protection from enforcement, destitution or NRPF after disclosure.
• NRPF remains the missing piece: the Strategy is silent on the single most significant barrier preventing migrant women from escaping abuse.
• ‘By and for’ services remain in precarity: there is still no ring-fenced, long-term funding for the specialist organisations that 67% of victim-survivors prefer[1] and that are six times less likely to receive statutory funding[2].
• The frontline picture is worsening: our service managers and frontline staff describe a commissioning shift towards generic ‘whole-system’ models, a hardening of Section 7 and NRPF practice, and a move from ‘funding services’ to ‘purchasing services’ that squeezes specialist provision.
• The current political climate is hostile: VAWG is increasingly co-opted and weaponised to justify punitive immigration and policing measures, with serious implications for racialised and migrant communities.

Without structural reform, immigration security, access to public funds and sustained investment in specialist ‘by and for’ services, the Strategy risks improving outcomes for some victim-survivors while leaving thousands of others trapped in abuse and perpetual precarity.

Read the full report

[1] https://domesticabusecommissioner.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/DAC_Mapping-Abuse-Suvivors_Summary-Report_Nov-2022_FA.pdf

[2] See also https://domesticabusecommissioner.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/DAC_Mapping-Abuse-Suvivors_Long-Policy-Report_Nov2022_FA.pdf