7. Will the Leader of the House outline how the Welsh Government plans to improve support for victims of domestic abuse? OAQ51794

Yes, we continue to implement our national strategy that sets out our action to protect and support victims and survivors of domestic abuse. We will publish draft commissioning guidance shortly that will support a more collaborative regional approach to providing services.  

Thank you for that answer, leader of the house. However, victims of domestic abuse in Wales are being turned away from some refuges due to lack of space, and funding changes imposed by the UK Government threaten the closure of many refuges across the country. What is your Government doing to protect refuges in Wales, and how will you increase the number of available spaces?

We're very aware that benefit changes are causing some difficulties in some of the refuges in Wales, and we've been working very closely with providers to make sure that we can understand exactly what the issues are. We have provided £5.4 million in 2017-18 in the violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence services grant to local authorities and to third sector organisations for implementation of the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015, and we've also given £376,000 in 2017-18 for Hafan Cymru's Spectrum project, which is teaching children about healthy relationships and about abuse, its consequences and where to seek help. 

I was very privileged to attend a session of that programme very recently to see for myself the effect that it has on the children and their ability to understand what constitutes a healthy relationship and what might constitute a not-so-healthy relationship. I was very impressed indeed by the quality of the programme and how it was raising awareness not only in the group of children receiving the tuition but right across the school and its teaching staff. So, I was very pleased with that.

As I said in answer to an earlier question, we're running the This is Me campaign, because we're very aware that gender stereotyping is, according to all the research, one of the main drivers of domestic violence and domestic abuse, as people try to live up to personalities and traits that simply aren't natural to them, and the stress that that engenders within the domestic setting. So, we're sponsoring that programme, which I'm very proud of, and the young people were very responsive to some of the messages in that programme also.  

I agree with what you just said in terms of promoting positive behaviour is absolutely key, and that we do that in schools—amongst other places, but schools are really important. But I think most public agencies are in a very good place to detect poor behaviour and attitudes, and then also signs of actual violence, because there's such under-reporting in this area. And that's got to be part of our strategy of absolutely no tolerance.    

I completely agree with that. Our strategy is based on three purposes: prevention, protection and support, and that's very much part of it. So, we've been rolling out our 'ask and act' guidance right across all of the responders and all of our partners on this agenda with a view to doing exactly that, actually—to make sure that people recognise the signs of behaviours and pick them up early and get people signposted to the right sort of support, but also, actually, to pick up the perpetrators early and pick up the signposts for that. So, all three bits of the strategy are equally important, and I completely concur that we must—well, we must make sure that as many people in Wales as possible are trained to recognise those signs.