Funding to tackle gender-based violence: FOI release

Information requested

The date(s) when the £5 million in funding to tackle gender-based violence will be paid out to the organisations announced in this Scottish Government press release: 

https://www.gov.scot/news/tacklinggender-based-violence/

Whether there are any limitations on what the charities can spend the money on.

Response

The funding is being allocated to Scottish Women's Aid (SWA), Rape Crisis Scotland(RCS) and 12 other organisations. The payment and reporting period for the smaller payments to the 12 organisations will run from 1 August 2021 to 31 July 2022. The payments to SWA and RCS are significantly higher so it is likely their payment schedule, which is still to be finally confirmed, will continue for a longer time period, potentially until 2023.

The funding has been allocated for organisations to target waiting lists that have built up over the pandemic, for example for staffing costs or to invest in additional systems and infrastructure. The conditions attached to these grants are as follows:

• Fund additional staff to respond to an increase in demand from victims of abuse for support services, 
• Improvements to organisations’ IT and digital resources,
• Additional training to allow services to be augmented so that more people can quickly and easily access help

Any activity must therefore be aligned to these outcomes and organisations will also provide progress reports to the Scottish Government as a condition of their funding.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.