BIADVF, first established in 1996, has recently been strengthened to bring together, at a city wide and constituency level, key public agencies and representatives of the community and voluntary sectors to achieve a co-ordinated response to domestic violence through Birmingham’s first Pan-Birmingham Domestic Violence Strategy.
www.biadvf.org is a central reference and resource point, co-ordinating local and national information to support Birmingham’s organisations and individuals working with domestic violence.
This Resource Directory provides useful contacts and some background information for all agencies working in Birmingham. There are over 40,000 women and similar numbers of children exposed to domestic violence each year in the city. Together we can make sure that there is no wrong door for domestic violence survivors and their children when they need our protection and support.
This publication is available to download here. Hard copies are also available: to order your copy, send your details to info@biadvf.org.
Awareness of Domestic Violence through Birmingham’s Domestic Violence Standards is a one day training programme to explore domestic violence and the impact it has on women’s lives.
Domestic Violence, Risk Assessment and Safety Planning is a one day training programme to explore how we can improve women’s safety in a multi-agency context.
Domestic Violence & Direct Questioning Workshop is a half day workshop to explore and develop techniques in direct questioning.
Domestic Violence & Working With Families is a one day training programme to explore how we can support mothers and their children.
Further details of these courses can be found in the Events & Training section,
or you can download
the latest brochure here
Kings Norton Domestic Violence Outreach Project
Birmingham & Solihull Women’s Aid is currently providing domestic
violence outreach
support on the 3 Estates of Kings Norton.
The Domestic Violence Outreach Project works with women - through the Home
Options
initiative - to assess their immediate and longer-term housing needs and
works towards
achieving greater safety and security in their homes.
The Outreach Workers will arrange a safe and confidential place to meet,
offer a non-judgemental service and assess the woman’s immediate housing
and safety needs to draw up a safety plan, which may include:
If you would like our support, or for more information, please contact the Outreach Team on 0121 685 8687 extension 249 or 250.
Birmingham Sanctuary Scheme receives Police Making a Difference
Award 2009
After running a pilot on the E2 Police OCU, Birmingham's Sanctuary Scheme
was officially launched city wide in December. The scheme provides a range of
home security and alarms to domestic violence victims as well as, crucially, ongoing
specialist support from Women’s Aid and a guaranteed rapid response from the police.
The scheme is already receiving national and regional attention and being
praised as best practice. What makes this scheme special is the amount of investment
that the Housing Department has put into funding the support work and the success
of partnership work in action. Sanctuary is supported by a partnership group
consisting of Housing, the Police, the Fire Service, Women’s Aid and Safer Birmingham
Partnership.
Housing's Dawn Goodenough and Sue McCarthy, together with Sanctuary representatives accepted the silver Partnerships Award at the E2 awards ceremony
on 2nd April.
Sanctuary can be contacted via sanctuary@birmingham.gov.uk
Developing School and Community Alliances
At the conference held on Monday 23rd March at the Botanical Gardens participants heard presentations describing how the NSPCC campaign in East Birmingham
had brought together agencies to support the whole school family in raising awareness
of domestic violence.
The presentations went on to define the key learning outcomes from this approach: Schools have a dual responsibility with regard to domestic violence: firstly,
they have key responsibilities in supporting their children to develop positive relationships
based on equality and respect; secondly, they will be dealing with children who are
living with domestic violence, whose ability to engage with school life and performance
may be impaired and who may be at risk.
This campaign presented a model of working that builds a local network of
support to schools as they more overtly address domestic violence through
training of staff, particularly non-teaching staff, and programmes for children.
In doing so, schools can address domestic violence in the knowledge that
they can, in partnership, deal with any disclosures that might arise from
this pro-activity.
Children and young people tell us that they want to be listened to and believed.
Following the pilot, there was overwhelming feedback that that participants
were going to make sure that they did this.
The full campaign report will shortly be available on www.biadvf.org
LankellyChase Foundation Publishes New Grant Making Guidelines (UK)
Following a review of its grant making operations, the Lankelly Chase Foundation
has published new grant making guidelines for the next 5 years.
In strategic terms the Foundation will continue to seek applications from
voluntary and community groups within the UK (with the exception of London
and Northern Ireland) and concentrate its work on supporting projects that
seek to promote social justice, highlighting unpopular causes. The
Foundation intend to concentrate upon smaller charities, many of whom will
have only a local or regional remit. The Foundation may consider
applications from large national charities but support for those will be
rare and limited. The areas that the Foundation will concentrate on are
the:
The new guidelines will come into effect in April 2009. Applications can
be submitted at any time.
Further information is available from the website:
www.lankellychase.org.uk/index.htm
Northfield Young People's Forum
They have commissioned Creative Community Networks (through Youth Opportunities
Fund) to produce a series of 'on demand' radio podcasts and are due to
record a podcast around domestic abuse and young people. They are working
with The Lantern Project and recording took place on 27 March at the
recording studio at Deelands Community Hall.
To see the Forced Marriage section of our website, click here.
If you have information for this page, please email info@biadvf.org
today's date: 07/11/09
last modified: 1/11/09
