The National Lottery Community Fund engaged the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, DMSS and CWASU (the partners) to support the Women and Girls Initiative (WGI). The partners supported the WGI grant holders to capture and share learning, and to develop a community of networked services that is stronger and has greater influence.

Context

Over the last decade, the women and girls sector has grown in strength, size and capability. Issues that were once marginalised have emerged as mainstream concerns and women’s sector agencies are at the centre of best practice and creative initiatives. However, for a variety of reasons, the women’s sector has been significantly affected by recent cuts in public sector spending at a time when the issues the sector deals with, such as domestic and sexual violence, sexual exploitation, forced marriage and female genital mutilation, have never been so prominent.

£44.7 million of National Lottery money has been invested in 62 projects across England to support and empower women and girls facing violence, abuse, exploitation and mental health issues. This funding enabled national organisations and grassroots projects to provide dedicated support for women and girls in local communities through outreach, advice and advocacy, refuge and prevention projects.

The overall ambition of the WGI was to support the development of a stronger women and girls sector through increasing: the provision of holistic, person-centred approaches for women and girls; the role and voice for women and girls in co-producing services; the number of women and girls supported through improved specialist support; and improving the quality of evidence for what works in empowering women and girls.

The National Lottery Community Fund contributed to raising awareness of this work locally and nationally so that more people could understand the issues facing women and girls and find out how to access support. The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, DMSS and CWASU were commissioned to support WGI grant holders to capture and share their learning and develop a community of services that is stronger and has greater influence.

Objectives

Together with the 62 WGI grant-holders and the women and girls they worked with, TIHR, DMSS and CWASU explored how the sector can better demonstrate its impact, raise its voice and increase its influence for the long-term benefit of women and girls. The purpose of our work was to:

1. Identify how a more holistic/person-centred approach to women and girls looks like.
2. Describe how this approach can increase and improve specialist support.
3. Understand what enables women and girls to be co-producers of services.
4. Support projects to generate and use their own local evidence.

Methodology

Support for WGI grant-holders was provided in a variety of ways including one-to-one support, online learning hubs, Action Learning Sets, masterclasses and workshops, as well as publications and a national conference. These activities have all been developed following an initial progress review with grant-holders, so that we could build on what has worked well for projects in the past and from their ongoing learning.

Thematic briefings

Promotional briefings

Blogs

Audio-visual resources