Domestic Violence Offender Register

Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 24 January 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:32, 24 January 2018

Well, we're doing an enormous amount of work in this area, with Welsh Women's Aid, and I've had a very helpful meeting very recently with Eleri Butler to go through a large number of issues around this agenda. It's very important, of course, as the Member highlights, that we work across the piece in Welsh Government, and we have a number of cross-Government initiatives in this area. We are working very closely with both health and with housing, and with local authorities, to make sure that we have a regional and seamless approach to these services. In the process of reviewing some of those regional arrangements, we have regional co-ordinators in place, for example, across local authorities, who are doing really good work on the ground in co-ordinating services. I have a number of meetings—I've either just had, or have arranged meetings—with a number of the sectors, to make sure that we do have better co-ordination across the piece in this regard.

What we really need to do is make sure that we build on some of the excellent services and processes we have, but we continue to work really hard to raise standards for both victims and survivors, and in concentrating on those two issues, we don't lose sight of the fact that we need to work right at the beginning of life, with the whole issue around gender and gender stereotyping, and some of the issues that arise very early on in our lives. Because there is an undoubted connection between sexual violence, domestic violence and gender stereotyping, and all of the problems that we have culturally in that regard. But the Member's highlighted a number of issues across Government, and I can assure him that we are working very hard; the Cabinet Secretary and I will be meeting very shortly to discuss this, and a number of other issues in this area.