The York & North Yorkshire Office for Policing, Fire, Crime and Commissioning (OPFCC) launched our Joint Strategy to Address Violence Against Women & Girls together with our partners on 30th June 2022 - this is available on the OPFCC website, along with the supporting appendices. The Strategy sets out our collective commitment to address violence against women and girls across different settings, communities and locations throughout North Yorkshire and City of York.
When developing our Strategy we launched an anonymous online survey in order to ensure everyone was given the opportunity to have their views represented – every gender, every age and every situation - for approximately 4 weeks in March 2022. The responses to this survey were considered alongside feedback from focus groups with women and girls to ensure their voices remain central to the development and delivery of our Strategy.
Violence Against Women and Girls refers to any act of violence or abuse that disproportionately affects women or girls and is usually perpetrated by men, including but not limited to domestic abuse, stalking, sexual violence, abuse or exploitation. However we recognise that men and boys, transgender and non-binary people can also be victims of these crimes, and that women can also be perpetrators. Although we will use the term ‘Violence Against Women and Girls’ throughout this survey, we welcome responses from everyone regardless of their gender identity, age, sexuality, ethnicity or background.
This survey will ask for specific information about you to help us to better understand different individual experiences - we need to understand if there is any difference in these experiences based on your gender identity or sex alongside other protected characteristics such as ethnicity, age and disability to help inform our Strategy to ensure that everyone is able to access the support they need, promote inclusion and to further gender equality locally. If you would prefer not to answer these questions, please select the 'prefer not to say’ option.
This survey seeks to understand what difference we have made to date and if there is there anything else specific you think should be done locally to tackle Violence Against Women and Girls. We would also like to hear about your specific experiences of violence or abuse, and in particular, the type of response and support you received if you have reported what happened to you to ensure your views and personal experiences remain central to everything we do and continue to shape and drive our local projects and activities.
Please note results from this survey will also be used to inform our work under the Serious Violence Duty.