David Melding AM: Cabinet Secretary, between November 2016 and
October 2017, South Wales Police dealt with nearly 36,000 incidents
of domestic abuse, and those are the ones they've dealt with. So,
this is an enormous problem, and in many ways, it's only now that
it's getting full recognition. Will you join with me in commending
the work of the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales?
Indeed, the leadership shown...Request free trial
AM: Cabinet Secretary, between
November 2016 and October 2017, South Wales Police dealt
with nearly 36,000 incidents of domestic abuse, and those
are the ones they've dealt with. So, this is an enormous
problem, and in many ways, it's only now that it's getting
full recognition. Will you join with me in commending the
work of the Police and Crime Commissioner for South Wales?
Indeed, the leadership shown by Police Commissioners, I think, is key in
this area, but the south Wales police commissioner received
a grant last year from the Home Office of £1.4 million to
help address violence against women and girls,
concentrating on protection and prevention, and I
understand this was the largest of any grant given to a
police commissioner. I do think there's some great practice
out there now, but it's a huge task, and a lot of it
does relate to educating people, stopping behaviour
before it accelerates, and just having a no-tolerance
approach to abuse.
: Yes, I couldn't agree
more. I had the great pleasure of going with the police
and crime commissioner around the multi-agency service
hub, over in Cardiff central police station. I don't
know if the Member's had the chance to do that, but I'd
recommend it to all Members, if you haven't had the
chance. That shows the real leadership that the police
service, in particular, has given to that collaborative
approach. I was able to see for myself how they were
able to make sure that they responded much more quickly
and appropriately to all of the incidents that they
were dealing with, and make a lot better use of the
wealth of data, and different professionals all working
side by side to make sure that they had the best
possible outcome in the circumstances that were
presenting to them.
We collaborated with them, and with—as I said—a large
number of our other statutory public sector and third
sector partners, in rolling out our 'ask and act'
training and our e-learning, which we launched just
earlier last year, and that's been very successful
as well. The idea is to make sure that all of our first
responders and the people who deal with people on a
day-to-day basis pick up the early signs of this sort of
domestic abuse. So, our teaching staff, our teaching
assistants, our fire and rescue services, our police
services, our ambulance and other responders, are all
going through the 'ask and act' training. There are
several layers of the training, so the front-line
responders get a particular set of training, and then
there are co-ordinated training packs for the people
dealing with the results—with actual live incidents in,
for example, the multi-agency safeguarding hub.
We also have a number of other campaigns because we're
trying to tackle the cause of much of this as well. So,
we launched our This is Me campaign back in January. I
was very pleased to be able to launch it down in Gower
College, with an incredibly enthusiastic set of
middle-range teenagers who engaged very enthusiastically
with it. That's been one of the best received campaigns
we've ever run, I think, as a Government. The response to
it has been amazing. Because this is a big society issue
as well, and the purpose of that—. We know that gender
stereotyping is a large part of what drives domestic
violence, as people try to live up to stereotypes, which
are not realistic or live-uppable to—if that's even a
word. You see the point I'm making. It's extremely
important that men don't feel that they have to be strong
and whatever, and women don't feel that they have to be
submissive in circumstances in which domestic violence
occurs. That's just to give one example. There is a large
range of others. So, that's been a very successful
campaign.
I hope that Members have all had the chance to see it. It
runs on lots of social media platforms. We've had more
response to it than we've had, I think, to any other
campaign. It's been extraordinary. Because we do see this
as a need to change. Societal change is required in order
to change some of the stuff, and in the meantime, of
course, we continue to provide services for those
incidentally affected by it.
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