The Government has launched the VAWG Strategy 2025 with an ambition to halve violence against women and girls within a decade. A national strategy matters. However, women and girls do not experience “strategy”. They experience the first response.
I have sat with women and girls at the point where fear meets the system. In that moment, outcomes are decided not by strategy documents, but by whether the response is fast, clear, and firm. Everything that follows flows from that first decision.
This piece focuses on the two parts of the Strategy that decide outcomes in real life:
I also set out what Freedom Charity has already delivered, because the country does not need to reinvent solutions that have been tested nationally over many years.
The government often uses the phrase “honour-based abuse”. Freedom Charity does not. We use Dishonour Abuse because “honour” is the perpetrator’s cover story. Language shapes action. It affects urgency, recording, escalation, and accountability.
If the VAWG Strategy is serious about pursuing perpetrators, it must improve outcomes across the entire chain: reporting, investigation, charging, prosecution, court process, and enforcement. Many cases fail not because the law is missing, but because the response is inconsistent, delayed, or hesitant.
The most common failure point is a weak first contact. The Strategy will only work if the first response is consistent everywhere. That means:
Without national first response standards, women and girls face postcode justice.
Specialist policing for rape and sexual offences is important, but it is not sufficient on its own. Domestic abuse and stalking investigations often fail due to delay, weak evidence handling, and a lack of offender focus.
Effective policing requires:
A serious strategy reduces perpetrators’ options. That requires active offender management, not slogans. In practice this means:
Orders protect only when breaches carry immediate consequences.
Even when police act correctly, cases often collapse later. Survivors disengage when the process becomes slow, intimidating, or re-traumatising. This is why support is not separate from prosecution. Support is what allows victims to remain safe and able to stay in the process.
Family-enforced abuse does not always present like partner domestic abuse. It may involve multiple perpetrators, community pressure, surveillance, and rapid escalation, particularly around travel.
In these cases, delay can mean disappearance. Hesitation can mean harm. The Strategy must ensure professionals recognise this risk early and act decisively.
The Strategy signals a stronger focus on victim support and public service pathways. This matters. However, support fails when it is treated as optional or secondary. In reality, support is a safety intervention.
Many victims cannot safely make a phone call, send an email, or keep written information. Some are monitored at home. Some are children.
This is why Freedom Charity has always focused on practical, discreet access to help, not just public awareness.
Freedom’s delivery history includes:
This is what survivor-centred support looks like when it is designed for real risk.
Trauma affects whether a survivor can give an account, withstand intimidation, attend court, cope with delay, and rebuild life after leaving. Mental health support is not a luxury. It is fundamental to safety and justice.
A strategy that focuses only on crisis response will fail to prevent repeat harm.
Health settings are often where abuse is first disclosed. Training alone is not enough. Referral pathways must lead to timely specialist support. Disclosure without action increases risk rather than reducing it.
Healthy relationships education matters. However, in forced marriage and FGM contexts, safeguarding in schools must also include:
Freedom Charity’s master timeline shows long-term national delivery that aligns with, and in places predates, what the Strategy now describes.
Key milestones include:
This is not about credit. It is about delivery. The government should scale what already works and fund it properly.
If the Strategy is to be judged on outcomes rather than headlines, these five standards must be enforced nationally:
The VAWG Strategy 2025 is a statement of intent. The question is whether intent becomes protection.
The future of this Strategy will not be decided in Westminster. It will be decided at the first call, the first log, the first risk assessment, and the first consequence for the perpetrator.
When risk is raised, you do not wait, you do not negotiate, you act. https://freedomcharity.org.uk/vawg-strategy-2025/
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