Part of 2. Questions to the Leader of the House and Chief Whip (in respect of her policy responsibilities) – in the Senedd at 3:02 pm on 18 April 2018.
Yes, indeed. I mean, we have made huge progress despite the challenges, and organisations across Wales have shown a real commitment to the Act and to the services that they provide. This is not a surprise to us; we know that people are very committed in this area.
We are, as Jane Hutt knows, in the process of moving to a co-ordinated, needs-led, regional commissioning base for services for violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence. This is to provide for better planning and join-up of services, as I just said in previous answers, as well as some economies of scale. But we've got specialist third sector services being a vital part of that regional, collaborative approach, and just to elaborate a little bit, I did attend the launch of the the Seren Môr western bay consortium, which is a consortium of five organisations down there who have come together collaboratively. I think there is a real need for us to make sure that the way that we commission services doesn't have unintended consequences in lessening collaboration, and this regional approach will, we hope, be very instrumental in drawing those services together and getting them to work in a co-ordinated fashion together and share all of their data, rather than if we procure individual services and they compete with each other and naturally pull their data back together. So, we're very committed to doing that.
Our national training framework ensures that VAWDASV is a core part of the service that our health, fire and rescue, and local authority colleagues offer. As I said earlier, public services have shown their commitment to the training and, to date, over 70,000 people have been trained. Local authorities and local health boards are under a duty to publish their local VAWDASV strategies by early next month. It's a key commitment of the Act, and places it on a new strategic footing, which we think will ensure the stronger leadership and direction that the sector needs. We're very pleased to have got our own guidance out, as the third anniversary approaches.