East Midlands Partnership On violence against WomEn and giRls (EMPOWER)

Specific crimes that occur in our society are experienced disproportionately by women and girls, including crimes such as rape, domestic violence and homicide. We need effective, specific, and targeted solutions to address this violence against women and girls (VAWG). Solutions should recognise that these crimes are complex and involve intersecting and overlapping issues that cannot be effectively addressed by a single agency e.g., the police. The University of Leicester recognises its responsibility as a civic university to support its local communities to aid in the development of these solutions. The East Midlands Partnership On violence against WomEn and giRls (EMPOWER) will achieve this by drawing together agencies spanning criminal justice, health/forensic, local authorities, third sector/voluntary and survivors of VAWG, to develop a research strategy that will identify and unpick the key pillars of work needed to address VAWG in the East Midlands region. A key ethos to the project is the emphasis on co-design and co-production by all involved partners. What this means in practice, is that partners work together to identify the main challenges, questions and issues that affect their practice, supported by the expertise of academics from the University of Leicester. This engenders a shared vision for the partnership in working together to develop strategies that address these challenges, rather than privileging a view from one source (e.g., academia). Therefore, the outcomes from this project will be grounded in real world issues and relevant to those agencies that work to tackle VAWG, both regionally and more nationally.

The work of the partnership will be delivered across a 9-month time period. Through a series of five themed workshops that will bring together key policing and multi-agency partners, core area(s) relevant to a range of topics (e.g., sexual violence, domestic violence, human trafficking) will be identified through discovery and co-creation methods. Following each workshop, a phase of Themed research activity, actioned through embedded researcher placements and postgraduate placements will provide preliminary answers to these core area(s) and unpack any issues that were identified from the workshop. Outputs from these phases will include short evidence briefings of findings drawn from this piloting/scoping work. At the conclusion of the thematic workshops and the subsequent Themed research activity phases, the project will move into a synthesis phase where the objective is to draw together and distil the learnings gained from these activities. A synthesis workshop with the partners will focus this work into developing two key outputs from the project: (i) a co-created research strategy that identifies the key priorities required to address VAWG in the East Midlands and (ii) a sustainability plan that outlines a detailed set of activities and research application plans for achieving future funding to deliver this research strategy.

EMPOWER and the outputs it will produce are a critical opportunity to develop a structured and targeted plan for effectively intervening in VAWG in the East Midlands region, with opportunities to inform practice nationally. We know that experiencing violence has devastating impacts on women and girls, with ripple effects across their families, communities, and broader society. Domestic violence alone is estimated to have economic and social costs that exceed £66 billion each year (Oliver at al., 2019). EMPOWER represents a partnership of passionate and committed academics, practitioners, and survivors, who are ultimately dedicated to reducing the occurrence of VAWG in our society, and subsequently improving the lives of women and girls.