2022-03-31-accounts

REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2022

Company limited by guarantee No. 04283131 Registered Charity No. 1088844

REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS For the year ended 31 March 2022

CONTENTS

	Page
Legal and administrative information	3
Foreword	4
Board of Trustees’ report	5
Independent Auditor's report	63
Statement of Financial Activities	66
Balance Sheet	67
Cash Flow Statement	68
Notes to the financial statements	69

STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS OF THE CHARITY TRUSTEES AND ADVISERS For the year ended 31 March 2022

Board of Trustees	K Patel	Chair
	E Elkington (resigned 23/02/22)
	F Endersby (resigned 20/10/21)
	C. Griffin	Vice Chair
	M Hill (appointed 29/07/21)
	T Miller (nee Joseph) (appointed 29/07/21)
	M Latif (appointed 29/07/21)
	A Patel (appointed 27/07/21)
	L. Payne
	P Price	Treasurer
	A Smith (appointed 29/07/21)
	K Vernau (appointed 29/07/21)
Company Registration No:	04283131
Charity Registration No:	1088844
Registered Office:	The Polish Centre
	Room 44D, 4thFloor
	238 – 246 King Street
	London
	W6 0RF
Auditors:	Knox Cropper LLP
	65 Leadenhall Street
	London
	EC3A 2AD
Bankers:	CAF Bank Limited
	25 Kings Hill Avenue
	Kings Hill
	West Malling
	Kent
	ME19 4JQ

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

FOREWORD For the year ended 31 March 2022

Dear Reader,

Thank you for your interest in Standing Together (ST). Our Trustees and staff team are proud of the pioneering work of our organisation does to embed a coordinated community response (CCR) to domestic abuse in the UK. We remain inspired by the ambition of our founders over twenty years ago. Establishing ST as an independent charity makes us unique in the whole of the country. We are proud of the broad, multi level range of work that we do to address and eradicate domestic abuse across so many different specialist areas. We are working in community-based settings, the criminal justice system and in a range of housing and health settings. We are also integral to the strategic and operational response to domestic abuse in five London boroughs, in particular the LB of Hammersmith & Bi-borough of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. We are increasingly sharing our approach to the coordinated community response in a number of national programmes such as the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA), Whole Housing, Health, Faith and Communities, MARACs and in our Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) work. We are very proud of the partnerships in these areas and are privileged to work alongside so many ambitious and talented charities, services and community groups enabling meaningful impact and outcomes.

The organisation continues to face the challenges that so many charities have encountered in reestablishing face-to-face communication and services towards the end of the pandemic. The lockdowns created the perfect storm for those experiencing domestic abuse and services in this sector have worked hard to meet the exponential growth in demand. Standing Together have managed to continue operations to ensure services remain effective and robust enough to maintain provision, which is a reflection on the dedication, commitment and array of skills demonstrated by our staff teams, as well as the support and resilience of our many partners and communities.

We are pleased that our annual audit highlights our sound management of Standing Together. We would very much like to thank the Standing Together trustees, the staff team, our partners and all of those who have supported our work this year.

Sincerely,

Kruti Patel Signed on 16/12/22 @ 09:03

A J Kilvington Signed on 16/12/22 @ 09:30

Kruti Patel Andrea Kilvington Chair of Board of Trustees Chief Executive

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

The Trustees, who are also directors of the Company for the purposes of the Companies Act, and trustees for charity law purposes, present their combined directors' and trustees' annual report with the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31st March 2022.

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in Note 1 to the accounts and comply with the Charity's trust deed, the Charities Act 2011 and Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102). The Company has taken advantage of the exemptions available to smaller entities.

1. Structure, Governance and Management

Governing Document

The organisation is a charitable company limited by guarantee, incorporated on 6[th ] September 2001 and registered as a charity in October 2001. The company was established under a Memorandum of Association which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association. In the event of the company being wound up trustees are required to contribute an amount not exceeding £10.

Recruitment and Appointment of Trustees

The directors of the company are also charity trustees for the purposes of charity law and under the company's articles are known as members of the management committee. Under the requirements of the Memorandum and Articles of Association the members of the Management Committee are elected to serve for a period of three years after which they must be re-elected at the next Annual General Meeting. On 21[st] November 2021 Kruti Patel, Cynthia Griffin, Lorna Payne and Pat Price were reappointed to remain as Trustees.

The Chair along with selected members of the Board and CEO are responsible for recruiting members of the Board of Trustees. Membership of the Board is reviewed annually to ensure that the broadest interests served by Standing Together are represented. Members are sought who have experience and influence in their field and are most appropriate to promote the success of the Charity. They bring great abilities to bear on their role and in the various offices they hold on the Board. Their roles as Trustees include human resources; implementation of equal opportunities; financial management, education and equalities, criminal justice, legal expertise, a strategic overview of fundraising and strategic planning.

Each year a planning and review day is held with trustees. It was recommended that to exercise best practice and in line with Charity Governance Code Commission guidelines, that Trustees with 9 years or more service would be replaced

At the Annual General Meeting held on 2[nd] November 2021, Fiona Endersby and Elaine Elkington resigned respectively on 20[th] October 2021 and 23[rd] February 2022. During the year Michelle Hill, Mohammed Latif, Tracey Miller, Anisha Patel, Anne Smith and Kim Vernau were recruited to the Board of Trustees on 29[th] July 2021.

All trustees receive letters and contracts confirming appointment, including a pack of key documents containing governing documents and information on the organisation, their role and responsibilities. As part of their induction, Trustees are briefed on their duties and meet with line managers who outlined their specific projects. To support them in their roles each Trustee are offered a “Buddy”, an existing board member who can mentor them through the first few months. Information on training for management committee members and trustees of charities is also offered to new trustees.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

All Trustees have signed (a) a Declaration of Eligibility (b) Conflicts of Interest and Register of Interests and (c) a contract between Trustees and Standing Together and this is reviewed at each Trustee meeting. Trustees do not receive remuneration or derive any other personal benefit from the activities of the charity.

Management of the Charity

Standing Together is managed by this highly committed Board of Trustees which meets every quarter. The Board retains a core of founder members and has maintained membership at nine to twelve elected members since registration in 2001. The principle remains that this structure safeguards that there is the appropriate expertise and skills on board to ensure that the charity is run in accordance with standard organisation practice, that ensure that activities undertaken are in line with the charitable objectives and aims of Standing Together.

The Board has fulfilled its role this year in being responsible for the strategic direction and the sound financial health of the company and for ensuring that the activities of the company meet its charitable objectives. The Trustees have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission's general guidance on public benefit when reviewing the aims and objectives and in planning future activities.

The Chief Executive of Standing Together has overall responsibility for the running of the organisation and delivery of Standing Together's strategy, its development and achievements reporting directly to the Board, supported in financial matters by the Finance & Governance Manager and in operational matters by the Partnership Manager and the wider management team. The salary for key management is decided by the Trustees taking into account the skills and experience required, the management responsibilities, the overall budget constraints and a view of what is appropriate as compared to similar roles in the sector in which we work. The level of salary bands was reviewed in the year by an independent human resource consultant, which was presented in a pay policy to the Board and approved on 28[th] April 2022.

Financial Management

Standing Together has policies and procedures in place to carry out good financial management and clear audit trails to ensure that there is sufficient funds to maintain core services in the short and long term.

The Board of Trustees set up a Finance Committee which consist of Trustees Pat Price and Cynthia Griffin; plus Gudrun Helevuo-Burnet, CEO and Caron Bailey the Finance & Governance Manager. The Committee carries out detailed work on financial matters in connection with the budget, financial performance and funding of the organisation relating its findings at the Board of Trustees meeting. The Committee formally meets four times during the year.

Other policies and procedures include Finance Regulations; quarterly Finance Reports to Trustees; regular review of systems for supporting financial procedures; designated staff with clear roles & responsibilities and an Annual Audit.

In the up-and-coming financial year, the Finance Committee continues to focus on ways to increase the general reserves and monitoring the organisation's performance against contingency plans. There is ongoing dialogue as we progress through and conclude the level of adequate general reserve.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

It has been recommended that by promoting Standing Together’s bespoke training and consultancy work, looking at alternative ways of fundraising and engaging in the support of philanthropist and champions these are key opportunities in adding to general reserve. The emphasis is on how the Charity is funded, the development of the overarching organizational strategy, fundraising strategy and business plan to meet challenges, demands and opportunities, a robust management structure to support our ambitions.

Risk Management

Trustees have assessed the major risks to which the Charity is exposed, in particular those related to the operations and finances of the Charity. Risks are considered in light of their likelihood and potential impact and the necessary steps to mitigate them. The risks are outlined in a risk register, which is updated at each Trustee meeting. It sets out the process that we use to identify and manage risks in all our activities.

Throughout the year the Trustees completed an overall review of the risk register whereby the Board considered:

• the high and significant risks to which Standing Together is exposed,

• the potential impact and probability associated with each risks,

• existing internal controls and accountability for them, and

• mitigating actions to reduce each risk to a level that is considered to be acceptable.

Securing future funding is the biggest risk for the charity and this challenge has been addressed in the Business Continuity Plan (2018-22). These are monitored by the Chief Executive and the Finance & Governance Manager, with the Finance Committee, and assessed annually by the full Board. Standing Together has succeeded in diversifying its sources of funding by obtaining additional income raised from social enterprise and fundraising events. This undesignated income has assisted the process of forward planning; the management of cash flow and enabled the organisation to maintain and develop its activities to advance its charitable objectives.

Standing Together is satisfied that systems and procedures are in place to mitigate our exposure to possible major risks.

Health and Safety

Standing Together maintains a Health & Safety policy committed to reducing the risks of hazards in the organisation workplace, making sure that premises, resources and working practices meet recognized standards for quality, security and safety. The Finance & Governance Manager is a trained First Aid Officer and our designated Fire Marshals ensure compliance with the company's policy and the landlord's responsibilities towards the organisation, especially regarding fire, safety and security precautions.

To maintain staff well being we continue to offer in addition to monthly supervisions, regular clinical supervisions, which are delivered in a confidential manner to protect individuals’ privacy. We have an independent qualified counsellor who acts as a point of contact for both staff and volunteers who are experiencing emotional distress.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Premises

Standing Together has leased its offices from the Polish Centre since its formation and held a succession of leases with Polish Social and Cultural Association Ltd who run the Centre. The lease agreement expires on 31st March 2022 and has been renewed on an annual rolling basis. After reviewing the rent and looking at alternative premises it was decided to end the lease agreement on one of the offices due to staff working from home because of the COVID19 pandemic.

Data

All data protection processes and IT security systems are reviewed regularly for compliance with Standing Together’s clear policies on privacy, confidentiality, protocols and procedures. We ensure that our agents, representatives, subcontractors and employees comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), (The Data Protection Act 2018) on processing and protecting personal data.

As a result of the COVID19 pandemic Standing Together has switched to an IT cloud database system. The security of the system is regularly managed by our expert IT provider through the implementation of encryption, password management and daily backups for the system and all devices. Protecting against data theft, leakage, corruption and deletion.

All new employees receive General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) online training as part of their onboarding with Standing Together. Existing employees complete GDPR refresher training at appropriate intervals..

Related Parties

Standing Together is an independent charity. In so far as it is complementary to the charity's objectives, the charity works closely with other organisations and develops partnerships with voluntary and statutory bodies in support of local and national policies.

Standing Together supports the government's strategy to address 'Violence Against Women and Girls' and sits on the Home Office VAWG Stakeholder Group. ST also sits on the London Domestic Violence Coordinators Network at MOPAC and the MOPAC VAWG Expert Group, the ACPO Domestic Abuse Stakeholder meeting, the CPS External Consultation Group and the London Criminal Justice Board subgroup for Domestic Abuse. Standing Together coordinates the Domestic Violence Coordinators Network (DVCN) on behalf of their members.

The charity is a member of Women's Aid (England), a member of NCVO (National Council of Voluntary Organisations) and of EVAW (End Violence Against Women Coalition) and benefits from the information and services they provide.

2. Statement of Intent and Charitable Purposes

Standing Together's ambition is to promote a Coordinated Community Response (CCR) to domestic abuse. To that end, Standing Together has created a Theory of Change. (see Appendix 1 on page 44), to show how ST works to achieve its intermediate and longer-term outcomes. ST did this to:

Generate a shared understanding of aims and plans to achieve them.

Provide a simple and graphical description that will help to communicate about the aims of Standing Together.

Provide clarity about what data and evidence will be most important to collect as the organisation

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

looks towards setting up its measurement framework.

It serves as a basis for a more persuasive argument that Standing Together impacts the lives of survivors, statutory agencies and local communities and it will help prepare Standing Together for further income, resource management and investment modelling.

ST places these objectives at the heart of it’s work and continues to embed the Coordinated Community Response model within every area of work that the organisation is engaged in, using outcome measurement as clear evidence of its effectiveness.

Coordinated Community Response Defined

The Coordinated Community Response to domestic abuse is a local, whole system approach to the issue.

Standing Together's Core Principles underpinning the CCR approach

• The only way to respond to the issue of domestic abuse is to work collaboratively through the CCR.

• Domestic abuse is caused by, and generates, gender inequality.

• Individual experiences of domestic abuse are influenced by gender, age, sexual orientation, ability, race, religion, marital status, immigration, socio-economic position and many other factors: responses must understand the differing needs and potential barriers of the local population and be flexible enough to account for this.

• The CCR enables a whole system response to a whole person, recognising the wellbeing and safety needs of victims and survivors, with communities and organisations working alongside them.

• Responsibility for safety should not rest solely with individual victims but also with the community and services.

• Perpetrators must be held to account for the harm they inflict and offered routes to change their abusive behaviors.

• A CCR supports organisational responses, it does not replace them: organisations remain responsible and accountable (to their own agencies and to the partnership) for their own responses to domestic abuse, within a context of multi-agency working.

• A CCR requires leadership, a shared understanding of domestic abuse and risk, and coordination.

Standing Together's CCR Approach

• We put the safety and needs of survivors (adults and children) at the heart of every CCR.

• We ensure that the voices of survivors and their advocates are integral to every CCR.

• • We require CCRs cover the spectrum from primary prevention, to early intervention, to crisis responses, and the long-term recovery of survivors and behavior change of perpetrators.

• Our CCR acknowledges the gendered nature of domestic abuse.

• Our CCR addresses the diverse and intersecting backgrounds, identities and experiences and situations of survivors and perpetrators.

• Our CCR addresses adults, children and young people; survivors and perpetrators.

• Our CCR encompasses all organisations operating in an area (statutory, voluntary, community) plus individuals who live / work in the area, and informal groups / networks located there.

• We require that all local organisations have an equal place and voice in the CCR.

• Our CCR requires coordination, monitoring and accountability mechanisms and leadership.

• Our CCR is flexible and will evolve.

• We ensure that local organisations recognise that they are best placed to identify, and

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

develop, improvements to practice in developing a CCR - and we provide help to them to do this.

• We are committed to providing a consultative, learning and empowering approach to areas developing CCRs.

Standing Together' s CCR Core Components

What every CCR will have, regardless of area or local structures; all components adhere to the principles listed above.

• All organisations have developed and agreed a common purpose and approach to domestic abuse including a stated commitment to the CCR.

• Definitions of domestic abuse and risk are agreed and shared by all statutory, voluntary and community organisations.

• A defined structure/mechanism(s) is in place for the coordination, governance and monitoring the CCR to ensure accountability and to enable a flexible and evolving approach.

• An action plan is in place.

• Written policies and procedures are in place within every organisation covering their response to domestic abuse. Regular compulsory training at every level of the organisation supports these.

• Written policies and procedures are agreed covering multi-agency systems and working (including the MARAC and SDVC). Regular compulsory training supports these.

• An agreed dataset is in place and monitored on a regular basis.

• Survivors' voices (and the views of their advocates) are regularly sought, listened to and responded to.

• Adequately resourced specialist services are in place to respond to adults, children and young people: survivors and perpetrators.

In 2021-2022 we particularly set out to continue:

• Develop our work in relation to impact measurement.

• Demonstrate breadth of work required in health based setting to achieve a coordinated community response which has resulted in the end of Pathfinder, a national programme of work in partnership with AVA, IMKAAN, IRISi and Safelives. The toolkit and evaluation of this project is due in year 2022 – 2023..

• Develop the first national accredited training (CCR Leaders) for those with strategic responsibilities for VAWG. Fundamental to this training curriculum was the concepts of the coordinated community response. This was done in partnership with Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and EU partners.

• We have maintained a focus on the CCR in our work in relation of Domestic Homicide Reviews, criminal justice work in courts, housing, health, MARAC and faith and community based settings.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

3. Achievements and Performance

We report below on our achievements in meeting the aims of our charitable company.

A. Promoting the development of services to meet the needs of survivors of domestic violence

The Coordinated Response in the Three Boroughs

In order to develop our local CCR, ST worked closely with the VAWG Strategic Partnership for the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF), and in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) and the City of Westminster (WCC) to develop and implement a strategy for violence against women and girls (VAWG). The Strategy was written after considerable consultation with survivors, service users, stakeholders from a range of statutory and voluntary organisations as well as elected members across the three councils. The Strategy details how the Partnership will deliver a Coordinated Community Response (CCR) to VAWG; it keeps survivors and children at the centre of its aims and objectives, whilst also holding perpetrators accountable for their actions. This year as the Boards split into a Hammersmith and Fulham Board and a Bi Borough Board working in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea the development of the strategy was developed together with some specific elements for each board included.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Our vision is to end violence against women and girls through our coordinated community response approach. Our theory of change shows how we expect to meet this goal through the four outcomes highlighted above. Our theory of change also shows the problem and barriers we want to address in achieving our goal.

The Three Borough VAWG Strategic Partnerships

STADA takes the operational lead in delivering the Strategy and is an integral part of the governance structure of the boards. This year the board split into a Bi Borough board (Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea) and Hammersmith and Fulham became a sovereign board. As many of the services work across the three boroughs and services are still commissioned to work across the three boroughs; the boards while recognizing specific needs of their area work together to end VAWG. The board structure remained broadly similar with operational groups feeding to the Strategic boards but the Specialist Services group now becomes a consultative group and is joined by additional consultative groups (one for each board) with Experts through experience. ST Coordinates the Housing, Harmful Practice and Children and Young People Operational groups and the Specialist Services Consultative group.ST sits on both the Risk and Review and the Whole Health Operational group.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

The VAWG Strategic Boards are tasked to:

• To ensure the voices and experiences of survivors of VAWG are reflected throughout the Strategy and Action Plan via regular consultation and feedback;

• To monitor progress of targets and objectives against the Shared VAWG Action Plan and assess whether actions and activities, including of the 6 VAWG Operational Groups, are achieving the required outcomes;

• To establish the overall impact of the strategy via quality assurance and performance monitoring frameworks;

• To promote effective links with the work other Strategic Partnerships including the Adult and Children's Safeguarding Boards and Health and Well-Being Boards;

• To incorporate new legislation, policy and guidance alongside ongoing understanding and assessment of local need and recommendations from Domestic Homicide Reviews and serious case reviews; and

• To report regularly on the progress of the Strategy to each of the three-sovereign borough Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, for which VAWG is a priority area of business.

Angelou partnership:

Received 2,936 referrals in total during 21/22.

Headline Outcomes	Performance Indicator	Baseline 2012/13	Achieved 2019/20	Achieved 2020/21	Achieved 2021/22	Rag Status Green Amber Red
Improved safety of victims of VAWG and their children Work as part of a Co- ordinated Community Response to tackling VAWG in the Tri-B Area	Women report increased safety and feelings of safety as measured by exit surveys Women report a reduction in abuse due to support and advice received from service as measured by closingassessments.	65% 67%	85% 94%	85% 93%	85% 97%	Green Green

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Angelou partnership:

Headline Outcomes	Performance Indicator	Baseline 2012/13	Achieved 2019/20	Achieved 2020/21	Achieved 2021/22	Rag Status Green Amber Red
Repeat victimisation is reduced and service users are supported to live free of violence Greater access to justice (both civil and criminal systems) for all service users	Women are at reduced risk at case closure following the support of the service as measured by professional judgement, risk and needs assessment and closing assessments.	62%	92%	89%	86%	Green
Improved long-term outcomes and well being for service users and their families; Empower women and girls who have experienced violence to recover and thrive in a future without violence. Increased number of victims of VAWG engaging in services and improved access for BME groups and young people;	Women and girls report their quality of life has improved as measured by exit surveys. Increased number of women and girls engaged in services as measured by the number/ percentage of service users that have been contacted and engaged in services as well as monitoring of demographic data.	55% 70%	80% 84%	79% 80.5%	86% 83% (engaged)	Green Green

Angelou partnership:

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Headline Outcomes	Performance Indicator	Baseline 2012/13	Achieved 2019/20	Achieved 2020/21	Achieved 2021/22	Rag Status Green Amber Red
Support for victims is provided at the earliest stage and is for as long as they need to access support
Young people have the opportunity to explore healthy and unhealthy relationships and deepen understandings of VAWG; Community has greater awareness of VAWG, reduced tolerance for VAWG and increased awareness of avenues for support.	Women and girls report improved confidence in reporting abuse and/or where to access help and support as measured by exit interviews and evaluations. Young people report improved confidence in reporting abuse and/or where to access help and support as measured by exit interviews and evaluations.	72%	97% 100%	97% 96%	97% 95%	Green Green

2021/22 has seen us still recovering and adapting our work as a result of Covid 19 pandemic, meetings have remained mainly virtual. We have benefited from the positive working relationships with our Statutory and Voluntary sector partners and continued to provide a robust response and developed our networks despite the restrictions

Specialist Services Operational Group

The Specialist Services group met quarterly during 21/22. It has been a busy year as the VAWG Strategic group across the three boroughs, not only splitting into Bi-Borough and Sovereign (Hammersmith & Fulham) Strategic groups both also re-wrote their strategies. The SSG was involved in the consultation for the strategies and complied a SWOT analysis of current work and funding priorities. The group was also consulted in the writing of the new commissioning plan for substance use services in Hammersmith and Fulham and collaborated with mental health service providers to improve the accessibility and provision of services locally. One of the group members MEWSo was instrumental in changing the law to ban both virginity testing and hymenoplasty and another (Sigh Health) in ensuring BSL interpreters were available

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

when emergency 999 calls are made. We had a presentation from the Resilience Service which provides sexual health and substance use services to young people and were able to improve the interface between them and VAWG Services, and the groups were very busy during the 16 Days of Activism. The group continues to share information among members (and to the Board) on what services were available in each borough. It is also adapting to its new role in the governance structure as a consultative expert advisory body.

Children and Health Operational Group

The Children and Young People’s Operational Group encourages the implementation of the CCR model by improving responses to domestic abuse from statutory, voluntary and health services who come into contact with children and young people. This is achieved through institutional advocacy, coordinating evidence-based interventions, promoting the voice of survivors and their children within meetings and forums and policy development and implementation.

The children and health coordinator engages with a variety of stakeholders including health services, substance misuse services, health visitors, Children’s Social Care, Early Years and front-line domestic abuse service providers in the Boroughs of Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.

The Children and young people meetings take place on quarterly basis, with four being held in 2021-22. The following themes were explored:

Iris programme for GPs, a whole school approach to domestic abuse; the Domestic Abuse Act, Everyone’s Invited; the new VAWG strategies for the Bi Borough and Hammersmith and Fulham and the Check with me first campaign.

The children and health coordinator coordinates the Hammersmith and Fulham co-location project, in partnership with Advance. The steering group met four times in 2021-22, hearing case studies and positive impacts of the project at each meeting. Funding has been secured for this project to continue in 2022-23.

The children and health coordinator has contributed to a range of training sessions and workshops across the Bi Borough and Hammersmith and Fulham to: housing services; GPs, community champions, Social Care staff, MARAC leads and school nurses.

Feedback from training included:

‘Thank you for these fantastic sessions, I have learnt so much.’

‘Thank you for a very well-presented course on a very serious and important subject.’

‘Very good training, as already mentioned this is down to the trainers’

‘Extremely well presented and considering it was on- line the presenters managed to keep it interactive and engaging.’

Key achievements 2020/21:

• § Developed a dedicated training package for the H&F Law Enforcement Team under the Safety of Women at Night project.

• § Distributed Safe and Together modules to all of the Bi Borough School health team and delivered three debrief sessions to 27 practitioners

• § Engaged with consultants leading the National Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel review into multi-agency child safeguarding and domestic abuse to discuss the work of the group

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Acute Trust Project with Chelsea and Westminster HNS Foundation Trust (CWFT)

The Acute Trust Project aims to develop and sustain a Trust-wide response to domestic abuse within CWFT; increasing Trusts’ and professionals’ capacity to identify, respond and appropriately refer domestic abuse cases through training, development of policy and referral pathways, creation of a network of DA champions and improved multi-agency engagement.

Key Achievements 2021-2022:

• Training has continued in the Trust and numbers are gradually increasing to pre-lockdown levels. There has been a total of 3008 staff attendances at DA training (Levels 1-4) in 2021/22 and 52 staff members have completed Domestic Abuse Link (DAL) training. This is a 24% increase in Levels 1-4 training overall, with a 44% increase in DAL training, compared with 2020/21.

• The number of MARAC and IDVA referrals made by Trust staff have increased. A total of 236 MARAC referrals were made in 2021/22 compared to 185 in 2020/21. This is a 28% increase from 2020/21. A total of 510 IDVA referrals were made in 2021/22, compared to 428 in 2020/21. This is a 19% increase from 2020/21.

• The Trust was successful in gaining funding for a specialist LGBTQ+ Galop IDVA who started in April 2022. He is now working Trust-wide, providing support to both patients and staff who identify as LGBTQ+ and are experiencing domestic abuse.

• The pioneering work of our Domestic Abuse team was the focus of a visit from national leadership on 24th March 2022. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner's Office and an Independent Advisor to the Health Secretary on Violence Against Women and Children from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) attended an event at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to learn more about the model adopted at the Trust. The event was attended by staff from the Domestic Abuse team, Safeguarding Children and Adults, Sexual Health, Burns, Adult and Paediatric A&E, Therapies and Victim Support. The event also showcased the 16 Days of Activism campaign; our team shared the testimonies of 16 survivor voices, their experiences of domestic abuse and the support they received from CWFT staff and IDVA team.

The main aims of the visit were to gain some insight into:

• The history of domestic abuse and sexual violence work at Chelsea & Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

• How the DA/SV work is led and how partnerships were/are established.

• Information around evaluation and monitoring.

• Barriers that CWFT have encountered and how those barriers have been overcome.

• What leadership/change CWFT staff would like to see from central Government/NHS England/The DA Commissioner.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Whole Health Project

Building on the learning from our national Pathfinder project, we have worked closely with our digital partner to finalise the health accreditation framework and online portal, the first accreditation for healthcare services responding to domestic abuse and violence against women and girls in England. This work was funded through the Comic Relief “Tech for Good” programme.

Our aim is that it will bring about sustainable systems change in response to DA and VAWG in health services nationally, something the Senior Whole Health Coordinator has been supporting NHS trusts to do in the South East. In addition, the team’s health coordination and training delivery continues to have a broad impact locally and nationally.

Key successes from the year include:

• Delivery of a pilot project funded through NHS South East Looking After Our People Team across three NHS Trusts. The work involved conducting robust assessments of the current domestic abuse response, with a focus on the approach to staff affected by domestic abuse. We then supported Trust domestic abuse leads to mobilise steering groups, enabling key stakeholders, including Experts by Experience, to drive the work. To inform this process we conducted staff surveys and focus groups, gathering powerful data on staff views and experiences.

• We have worked in collaboration with a specialist employment lawyer and Respect to develop a staff domestic abuse policy template and training package for Human Resources and Occupational Health. The draft policy has been shared as part of the NHS SE pilot with one Trust hoping to ratify it later this year. We were also able to deliver the new training package to relevant staff at one of our pilot sites, increasing their skills and confidence when responding to staff affected by domestic abuse.

• Building on the success of the NHS South East Pilot, we have partnered with Southampton CCG, University Hospital Southampton and the newly established Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care System (ICS). These separate but related projects enable us to share learning and best practice across the ICS.

• As part of the health accreditation development process, we conducted multiple user research and test sessions which informed the next steps of the project, also demonstrating the value health care professionals think accreditation can bring.

• Our participation in Tech for Good programme highlighted the need to engage with the momentum of digital approaches to service provision in order to be competitive and responsible in the sector.

• We continue to co-ordinate the Inter Collegiate and Agency Domestic Violence and Abuse (INCADVA) forum, submitting a briefing which was raised in the House of Lords committee stage of the Health and

Social Care Bill. INCADVA has provided a vital forum for members to express safety concerns over proposed

• changes to electronic patient records. We are also in the process of setting up a sub-group which will prioritise the health response to perpetrators of domestic abuse.

• Our work co-chairing the London Clinical Reference Group has enabled us to facilitate discussions around the Domestic Abuse Act, supporting survivors of sexual abuse in health and the impact of domestic abuse on staff.

• We developed training for nursing and midwifery students at King’s College London, delivered specialist training commissioned by South East London Clinical Commissioning Group, and four bitesize sessions for North West London Clinical Commissioning Group.

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Feedback from partners and participants in our consultancy and training work this year include:

“I am grateful that the Trust is showing an interest in how this issue may be affecting staff” – Staff Survey respondent

“The training was very detailed, sensitive with a great array of examples. This has been incredibly helpful, thank you so much!” – Training participant

“Overall, very enlightening and useful. I thought both trainers were fantastic, knowledgeable and passionate”. – Specialist Human Resources Training Participant

“I have found Standing Together's involvement helpful, positive and collaborative. I don't think we would have achieved nearly as much as we have without their support ” – NHS South East Pilot Site DA Project Lead

“They are such a brilliant asset to have onside, with a wealth of knowledge and experience but never come across as “we are the experts”. I have really enjoyed working with Standing Together” – NHS South East Pilot Site Employee Relations Manager

“The online health accreditation sums up everything every health service in the country should do to achieve best practice response to DA”- Health Accreditation user research participant

Macmillan cancer and domestic abuse project:

Our Macmillan cancer and domestic project is funded by Macmillan and is coordinated by STADA. The core project group includes STADA, Macmillan and Bristol University representatives, as well as an Expert by Experience.

The overarching aim of our joint work with Macmillan is to: ensure that the cancer setting offers a safe space and time for victim-survivors of domestic abuse to get the support they need, from skilled and confident healthcare workers and other professionals who work in cancer.

Phase 1 of this project ran from October 2021 – April 2022. This was a research phase. Interviews and surveys were conducted with the cancer workforce and victim-survivors of domestic abuse who had a cancer or were abused by someone with cancer.

Twenty victim-survivors of domestic abuse, nineteen of whom had cancer and one of whom experienced domestic abuse from a partner with cancer, responded to our consultation. Over 300 professionals responded, mostly from acute or community healthcare.

Findings included:

• Domestic abuse did not stop and often worsened after a cancer diagnosis.

• Abuse affected cancer treatment, surgery, and recovery in ways that led to pain and suffering.

• Professionals and victim-survivors felt that the cancer setting provided a unique opportunity for domestic abuse to be identified and responded to due to the frequency of contact, length of appointments, continuity of care, and discussion of holistic needs.

• But lack of confidence and knowledge was a barrier to a good response.

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

• To improve the cancer workforce response to domestic abuse, victim-survivors wanted professionals to make the setting a clear safe space for disclosure, to recognise the signs, enquire safely, provide first-line support, and to refer them to specialist support options.

• Professionals were eager to improve their response to domestic abuse. They wanted specialist training, education, awareness, and a culture shift wherein all cancer professionals, from surgeons to nurses, see identifying and responding to domestic abuse as their role.

The findings report was launched at a webinar on the 12[th] of April, speakers included Lynda Thomas (Macmillan CEO), Nicola Jacobs, Dr Sandi Dheensa (Academic Partner) and the projects Expert by Experience. The full report and extracts from the webinar can be found here: - https://www.standingtogether.org.uk/macmillan project

Phase 2 will run from May 2022 – July 2023. It will involve the placement of Domestic Abuse Coordinators within two hospital trusts. The role of these Coordinators will be to work with the trusts in a ‘test and learn’ exercise to develop and embed safe and effective processes to support people affected by both cancer and domestic abuse. Learning from Phase 1 will form the basis of the work of the Coordinators, who will focus on promoting existing good practice within trusts, as well as supporting training, awareness-raising, network building, and the development and promotion of policies and processes.

With the support of a national project group comprising experts-by-experience and professionals in cancer and domestic abuse, a toolkit will be developed to outline a best practice response to domestic abuse in cancer settings. This work will be evaluated by Bristol University.

Domestic Abuse Courts

Standing Together continue to coordinate the Specialist Domestic Abuse Courts (SDACs) at Westminster Magistrates Court to provide a specialist criminal justice response to the boroughs of Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Kensington & Chelsea. The SDAC for Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea and the DDAC for Westminster have been running for nineteen and nine years respectively and continue to evolve good practice and improve the service to victims/survivors. The SDAC model ensures that the focus on victim and witness safety is maintained throughout the entire specialist court process which has become more important in this current financial climate where agency resources have been cut.

The Criminal Justice team were successful in securing £1.2 million Tampon Tax funds via the Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) last year for a 2-year Mentor Court project, which aims to reinvigorate the

SDAC model nationally and in turn, improve the criminal justice response to domestic abuse. The project aims to enhance the existing SDACs at Westminster, including providing onward funds to ADVANCE IDVA service for 2 dedicated Criminal Justice IDVAs to support the project. The Criminal Justice team are offering stakeholders the opportunity to observe the SDAC in session and partake in learning sessions, so that they can take the SDAC model back to their local area. The Criminal Justice team are also undertaking a mapping activity to create a database of existing SDACs and to explore whether these SDACs are delivering the core principles of an SDAC. The Centre for Justice Innovation are undertaking an independent evaluation for the project and the interim report is due to be published in the coming months.

The Criminal Justice team are half-way through the delivery of the Mentor Court project and have so far engaged stakeholders from across England and Wales, to gather information and offer a capacity building package. This information has been transferred onto a visible map format and the database continues to grow as more stakeholders engage with the project.

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Domestic Abuse Courts

The SDAC at Westminster has continued to benefit from the uplift that the Tampon Tax funding has provided, particularly in relation to the Criminal Justice IDVA provision. Since commencing the specialist Criminal Justice IDVA provision in London, ADVANCE have received a total of 125 referrals into their service, of which 85% were successfully contacted. Of these successfully contacted survivors, 94% of women engaged with ADVANCE’s Criminal Justice IDVA provision. Direct referrals from the police have continued to increase throughout the project, further supporting the importance of the Criminal Justice IDVA provision. ADVANCE’s Criminal Justice IDVAs are co-located within the police station and deliver regular training to the police, which has led to an increase in referrals as the CJ IDVA provision has become more established.

The Impact Project has continued over the last year and the new Performance & Review Coordinator who joined Standing Together in August 2021 has been focusing on repeat victimisation and those facing multiple disadvantage. The Performance & Review Coordinator, Programme Managers and SDAC Coordinator continue to co-locate at Charing Cross Police Station and foster vital relationships with the police. Inductions are provided to all new police joining the Safeguarding team and the police regularly seek the Criminal Justice team out at the police station for advice and guidance.

The team have delivered training to the police, as well as other criminal justice partners, including attending the CPS IDVA training day in November 2021 and briefing 130 national CPS and IDVA colleagues about SDACs and a CCR to domestic abuse. The Criminal Justice Programme Manager (Mapping and Capacity Building) is due to attend a DA conference in Liverpool in early June 2022 to deliver a similar presentation to DA stakeholders in the North-West of England. Standing Together’s Criminal Justice Programme Manager (London Mentor Court) and SDAC Coordinator also supported an SDAC visit from Greek delegates in late March, accompanied by the CPS, to showcase an example of DA best practice within the criminal justice system. The Criminal Justice team have also worked on responses to the DA statutory guidance and the Victims Bill, to ensure that the team’s expertise is shared, and recommendations are made in line with a CCR.

The CJ Team continue to be valued members of CPS VAWG Scrutiny Panel, Police NFA Scrutiny Panel, LCJB Delivery Board, CPS External Consultation Group, BTP Public Protection Panel and Regional Stakeholders Meeting. The DA Court Steering Group continues to meet on a quarterly basis where operational feedback is provided to members to ensure consistency between the courts but to also hold the partner agencies to account regarding their commitment to the specialist courts. The DA Focus group also meets every two months and there is also a quarterly meeting where the scrutiny of local data and outcomes is discussed.

The specialist courts at Westminster Magistrates Court continue to be acknowledged as best practice and the team continue to work to their goal of reinvigorating the Specialist DA Court model, improving practice and multi-agency working within the criminal justice system and ultimately, improving victim/survivor’s experiences of the criminal justice system.

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

In 1999 Standing Together (ST) played a pioneering role in the development and implementation of MARACs. ST founded the MARAC in Hammersmith & Fulham (September 2007) and Kensington & Chelsea (January 2008) then adding Haringey (March 2013), Ealing (June 2013) and Westminster (September 2013). Some of SafeLives MARAC documentation was modelled on paperwork created by ST. Our MARACs have been visited by the Home Office and recommended by SafeLives as among the best in the country and at the forefront of championing survivor safety.

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

Aligning with SafeLives best practice guidance and the principles of an effective MARAC, all ST MARACs have run effectively and in line with SafeLives recommended practice in 2021-22. Our work includes close liaison with specialist agencies, bringing their expertise to MARAC meetings, helping

inform practitioners, reducing barriers to support experienced by some communities and individuals with intersectional characteristics and complex needs, ensuring equality of access and inclusive action planning that recognises diversity. Through this process ST is committed to actively increasing MARAC referrals from all sections of the community.

We have a well-developed MARAC training package providing team briefings, representative inductions, and quarterly workshops to frontline staff on domestic abuse awareness, risk identification, SafeLives DASH RIC Checklist, MARAC processes and protocols, referral thresholds, and specialist services.

We pride ourselves on our uniquely robust team capacity consisting of a Team manager, two FT support officers, PT Data officer and four Coordinators meaning we have built in resilience and are able to remain compliant with all contractual obligations in terms of service delivery. At each MARAC meeting we provide two staff; a MARAC Coordinator and a minute-taker which enhances quality and allows for more effective action planning and support for reps and chairs.

ST coordinates and administrates the London MARAC Coordinators Forum bringing together Coordinators to share best practice, learn from each other, discuss challenges and explore innovation in the MARAC field.

Underpinning our MARAC work is the Coordinated Community Response (CCR) model. This provides us unrivalled expertise in developing partnerships and multi-agency working. Our Coordinators benefit from organisational learning and best practice knowledge enriching each MARAC we coordinate and ensuring that

our MARAC team has considerable influence and in roads amongst a wide variety of practitioners in the DA field sharing good practice and encouraging appropriate interventions. All MARAC Coordinators at ST bring a background of frontline or other relevant experience.

The following data breakdowns indicate high performance when compared to SafeLives recommended target figures in all areas of provision across April 2021-March 2022.

Hammersmith & Fulham

	SafeLives Recommends	2021-22
Number of meetings (N)	N/A	13
Cases heard (N)	320	427
Average no. cases per meeting	N/A	32.8

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

----- Start of picture text -----
SafeLives
2021-22
Recommends
% Repeat 28% - 40% 26.5%
% LGBT Referrals 2.5% - 5.8% 4.0%
% Male Referrals 5% - 10% 8.7%
% BAME Referrals 55% 48.5%
% Disability Referrals 19%+ 19.2%
Number of children N/A 338
----- End of picture text -----

Hammersmith & Fulham MARAC has heard 427 cases during April 2021 to March 2022, 8 cases more than 2020-2021. SafeLives recommends that 320 cases are heard per 12-months period, Hammersmith & Fulham MARAC has heard 133.4% of the recommended volume. The average number of cases per meeting for 2020-2021 it had been 32.2 , with an average fluctuation of 3.7 cases whereas in 20212022, it was 32.8 , with an average fluctuation of 4.96 . There was a broad range of 12 referring agencies to the MARAC cases including the top five referring agencies as Police ( 28.2% ), IDVA service ( 25.5%) Secondary Care Acute Trust ( 13.4% ), Housing ( 8.9% ), % ), and Children Social Care ( 7.5% ).

Kensington & Chelsea

SafeLives Recommends	SafeLives Recommends	2021-22
Number of meetings (N)	N/A	12
Cases heard (N)	270	331
Average no. cases per meeting	N/A	27,6
% Repeat Cases	28% - 40%	24.8%
% LGBT Referrals	2.5% - 5.8%	3.3%
% Male Referrals	5% - 10%	9.7%
% BAME Referrals	55%	52.6%
% Disability Referrals	19%+	26.3%
Number of children in household	N/A	198

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

Kensington & Chelsea MARAC has heard 331 cases during April 2021 to March 2022, 2 cases more than 2020-2021 and has met 12 times this year. SafeLives recommends that 270 cases are heard per 12-months period, Kensington & Chelsea MARAC has heard 122.6% of the recommended volume. The average number of cases per meeting during 2020-2021 was 27.4 , while during 2021-2022 it has been 27.6 , with an average fluctuation of 6 cases . There was a broad range of 12 referring agencies to the MARAC cases. The top five referring agencies were Police ( 28.1% ), IDVA service ( 19.2% ), Secondary Care Acute Trust ( 13.1 %), Housing ( 7.7% ) and Children’s Social Care (7.6%) .

Westminster

	SafeLives	2021-22
	Recommends
Number of meetings (N)	N/A	13
Cases heard (N)	370	524
Average no. cases per meeting	N/A	40.3
% Repeat Cases	28% - 40%	25.6%
% LGBT Referrals	2.5% - 5.8%	5.0%
Male Referrals	5% - 10%	10.3%
% BAME Referrals	55%	58.4%
% Disability Referrals	19%+	18.5%
Number of children in household	N/A	384

Westminster MARAC has heard 524 cases during April 2021 to March 2022, 32 cases less than 20202021. Westminster MARAC met 13 times this year. SafeLives recommends that 370 cases are heard per 12- months period, Westminster MARAC has heard 141.6% of the recommended volume. The average number of cases per meeting for 2020-2021 was 42.8 , while during 2021-2022 it has been 40.3 , with an average fluctuation of 4.9 cases . Westminster MARAC has held 13 meetings this year, 8 of them heard over 40 cases, which has had a significant impact on the workload of the coordinator and partner agencies. Meetings with cases over 40 were held across two days. There was a broad range of 12 referring agencies to the MARAC cases. The top four referring agencies were Police ( 29.2% ), IDVA service ( 18.9% ), Housing ( 12% ), and Secondary Care Acute Trust ( 10.8 %).

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

Ealing

	SafeLives Recommends	2021-22
Number of meetings (N)	N/A	18
Cases heard (N)	540	710
Average no. cases per meeting	N/A	39.4
% Repeat Cases	28% - 40%	14.4%
% LGBT Referrals	2.5% - 5.8%	1.8%
% Male Referrals	5% - 10%	5.6%
% BAME Referrals	55%	60.4%
% Disability Referrals	19%+	15.8%
Number of children in household	N/A	643

Ealing MARAC heard 710 cases during April 2021 to March 2022, 126 more cases than the previous year with 584 cases heard. Ealing MARAC met 18 times this year SafeLives recommends that 540 cases are heard per 12-month period, Ealing MARAC has heard 131.5% of the expected volume The average number of cases per meeting was 39.4 between April 2021- March 2022, and 34.4 between April 2020March 2021.

The average fluctuation of cases between April 2021 – March 2022 was 6.94 cases . On eight occasions the caseload exceeded 40. There was a broad range of 12 referring agencies to the MARAC cases. The top four referring agencies were Police ( 24.6% ), IDVA service ( 21.2% ), Children Social Care (17.7%) and Mental Health Services ( 8.1% ).

----- Start of picture text -----
Haringey
SafeLives
2021-22
Recommends
Number of meetings (N) N/A 17
Cases heard (N) 410 480
Average no. cases per meeting N/A 28.2
% Repeat Cases 28% - 40% 25.4%
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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

	Haringey
	SafeLives 2021-22
	Recommends
	BT Referrals 2.5% - 5.8% 4.0%
% Male Referrals 5% - 10% 7.5%
% BAME Referrals 55% 54.0%
% Disability Referrals 19%+ 19.2%
Number of children in household N/A 387

Haringey MARAC heard 480 cases during 2021-2022, 54 less cases than the previous year with 534 cases heard. Haringey MARAC met 17 times this year. SafeLives recommends that 410 cases are heard per 12-month period, Haringey MARAC has heard 117.1% of the expected volume. The average number of cases per meeting was 28.2 between April 2021- March 2022, and 31.4 between April 2020-March 2021. We have observed an average fluctuation of 3.7 cases per meeting in April 2021- March 2022. There was a broad range of 12 referring agencies to the MARAC cases. The top four referring agencies were Police (38.1%), IDVA service ( 16.6%), Children Social Care (10.3%) and Voluntary Sector (8.9%).

All MARACs performing above SafeLives recommended volume

This indicator of good quality MARAC provision is measured by the volume of referrals (best practice is meeting 80-100% of SafeLives recommended volume.) From the table below, volume in 2021-22 across all five MARACs were above best practice. This is a very positive year on year achievement accomplished

Performance Highlights for the MARAC Team in 2021-22

through our work in raising awareness with MARAC agencies ensuring high risk victim/survivors are not being missed. However, it is important to note that high volumes impact on the resourcing of both the coordinator and the partner agencies. High volume in Ealing and Westminster MARACs have been raised at Steering Groups and with VAWG commissioners directly requesting further resource.

From 1st April 2021 to 31[st ] March 2022 the following volumes have been seen in the Five MARAC Boroughs:

YEAR	LBHF	RBKC	WCC	Ealing	Haringey
SafeLives	320	270	370	540	410
Recommendation
Volume 2021-22	427	331	524	710	480
(12 months)

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) (continued)

(MARACs should only see the top 10% of highest risk Victim/Survivors.)

London Borough Hammersmith and Fulham

Royal Borough Kensington and Chelsea

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) (continued)

WESTMINSTER

EALING

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) (continued)

HARINGEY

MARAC Health ChelWest & ICHT Referral distribution point

Standing Together has continued to be the centralised referral point for all MARAC referrals originating from Imperial College Health Trust and Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation NHS Trust. ICHT and ChelWest have their own MARAC referral form and all staff send this to the secure Health MARAC inbox at Standing Together for distribution onwards to the appropriate MARAC (if not Tri-Borough).

This saves busy medical staff time providing a simplified system increasing the likelihood of professionals referring to MARAC. In 2021-22, the team have processed 193 referrals (ICHT = 128 ; ChelWest = 65 ) on behalf of these NHS trusts.

MARAC Awareness Raising

Standing Together works closely with partner agencies to ensure that all relevant members of staff are familiar with the MARAC process, and their role and responsibilities within it by providing MARAC briefings, inductions, and workshops. In 2021-22, MARAC Coordinators in the service area completed 97 sessions with partner agencies across all boroughs reaching 554 partners . As a result of Standing Together’s MARAC workshops, professionals have improved knowledge and confidence in referring to MARAC as measured by evaluations.

April 2021 -March	Number of	Total
2022	sessions	attendees
Briefings	13	183
Inductions	68	90
Workshops	16	281
Total	97	554

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Multi Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC) (continued)

MARAC Operating and Information Sharing Protocol (MOISP)

MOISPs across all MARAC were refreshed during this financial year. The MOISPs were updated to include security of MARAC information in a virtual setting and clarifying the processes around subject access and data requests.

MOPAC Pan-London Marac Review

The MARAC Team manager successfully bid to carry out a Pan-London Review of MARACs. The review of was commissioned to Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse (ST) in collaboration with the Centre for Abuse Research (CARe) at the University of Suffolk (UOS). The project started in July 2021, and research concluded in September 2021 and was led by our MARAC Team Manager. The review sought to consider the SafeLives 10 principles of an effective MARAC across London. The review adopted a mixed-method approach, combining surveys, interviews, observations and desktop reviews of data, information sharing protocols and referral forms. All MARACs we coordinate participated in this review via surveys and interviews, with Haringey having a more in-depth review as part of the project. Twelve recommendations were made in the report that seek to improve the response to survivors of domestic abuse across London. These included consistency around governance and structure; agency participation and training needs; recommendations for commissioning of ‘By and For’ services and perpetrator options; and survivor feedback. A launch event was held in December 2021 and the report was well received. The final report and executive summary can be found here.

MARAC Team Forward Plan Priorities 2021-2022

MARAC & COVID-19

The impact of the pandemic on the MARAC process continues into the next financial year. Coordinators continue to work remotely as do most of our partner agencies. Due to current guidelines and restrictions, it is not possible to resume to meetings in person currently. Standing Together will continue to ensure a coordinated community response to domestic abuse by internal monitoring and consultation with partners and front-line services working directly with victim/survivors. Our data analysts will provide insight into the process across the previous year and how this will inform out practices moving forward.

Service Continuity

During the next financial year, Haringey and Ealing MARACs contract require renewal. The Team manager will be prioritising these tenders to ensure continuity of service.

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Domestic Homicide Reviews

Standing Together has been involved in the Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) process from its inception in 2011 and has built a body of knowledge and skills that is invaluable. We offer a complete and inclusive approach that delivers high quality overview reports and independent chairing. Our team consists of a DHR Manager, two dedicated DHR Support Officers as well as our pool of Associates who act as Chairs for the DHR's. Our team of Associates are highly skilled and experienced and are experts in the field of domestic abuse. Our experience of a coordinated community response and domestic abuse partnerships ensures we balance the needs of the Community Safety Partnership (CSP), panel agencies with the sensitivities of the victim's and perpetrator's families. We believe in DHRs and feel they can deliver change in an area where change is needed.

Key achievements during the year were:

Recruitment :

• We successfully recruited 2 new DHR Chair associates.

• The new chairs are in the 1[st] stage of their inductions and will be assigned mentors in the coming financial year.

Active DHRs :

• Standing Together is now chairing/has successfully chaired 122 Domestic Homicide Reviews. 78 of these reviews are now published.

• 3 newly commissioned DHRs: Lambeth x 2, and Vale of Glamorgan,

• 23 DHRs ongoing: Bexley x 3, Buckinghamshire x 3, Central Bedfordshire, Cornwall x 2, Hackney x 2, Hertfordshire, Gloucester x 3, Kingston, Lambeth, Lewisham, Leicester x 2, Stroud x 2, North Wales x 2

• 13 awaiting publication: Bath x 2, Bexley, Bromley, Croydon, East Surrey, East Sussex x3, Hackney, Leicester, Wales, Wiltshire

Training & Learning Dissemination

• LearningTheLessons: Have delivered an additional DHR webinar on Local DHR processes. Previous webinars included: International Perspectives, Intersectionality in DHRs, Fatal AFV, and Mental Health Analysis. Each webinar has been attended by 200-350 people with extremely positive feedback

• Leading on the research proposal and contracts with CSPs to produce a report in partnership with Southall Black Sister analysing BME DHRs.

National Work

• Contribute as a panel member for the monthly Home Office OHR Quality Assurance Panel as their specialist DA service.

• Sitting as a panel member for non-Standing Together DHRs as their expert DA service.

• Involved in a range of national projects including sitting on the ESRC Domestic Homicide Advisory

• • Group and the academic roundtable for NPCC Domestic Homicides Project.

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Domestic Homicide Reviews (continued)

• Undertook a research project that will consider the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on DHRs and processes.

Internal Developments

• Increased DHR Chair meetings, which is alternated to be a space for case reflection and problem solving and reviewing templates and DHR processes.

The Faith and VAWG Coalition

The Faith and VAWG Coalition has been growing from strength to strength, we were successful in our funding with Oak Foundation and were able to recruit a full time Project Officer, a Membership Coordinator, and a Programme Manager. The Coalition created a space to bring together organisations and activists working at the intersections of faith, race, ethnicity and violence against women and girls. We seek to build on existing work to address VAWG by providing a more strategic, regular, and structural approach to centring the experiences of survivors of faith. Although the present work to end domestic abuse at a grassroots level is rich and diverse, however, many survivors with a faith feel that across society in general, including some specialist ending VAWG services, there is a lack of understanding of their experiences of abuse. There is also a significant knowledge gap around the barriers that many survivors of faith face when seeking support, due to their religious identity, their faith community, and experiences of spiritual abuse. As a team we are learning, building, and strengthening the Faith and VAWG Coalition and aiming to keep the voices of survivors at the core of our strategy and in our work.

We have a website for the Faith and VAWG Coalition which gives information about our work, our founders, and the different strands of work we have been focusing on.

Our Project Officer wrote a policy briefing on Raising the Legal Age of Marriage. In this policy brief the Faith and VAWG Coalition ran an online survey and held one-to-one meetings with some of our members and those who work with faith-based, Black and Minoritized communities to highlight their views about raising the age of marriage from 16 to 18 years old. We also gave recommendations highlighting criminalisation alone will not help and emphasised the need for collaborative work, the engagement of religious and community leaders and the need to be involved as they play a vital role in safeguarding women and girls.

Our “Building Bridges” Online Conference in November 2021 focused on sharing experiences of diverse VAWG and faith communities. The participants shared their experiences and expertise in how they are building bridges and endeavouring to have a positive impact on survivors. We were honoured to have some trailblazing activists from Sikh Women’s Aid, Forward, Jewish Women’s Aid and Restored. The speakers shared their experiences of activism, expertise, and knowledge, shared their cultural and religious knowledge whilst supporting survivors. We had an interactive question and answer session in the end which also detailed accounts of victim survivors, issue and challenges of pernicious nature that operates within various religious institutions.

With focus on nourishing and strengthening partnerships, the Coalition membership has increased from 5 to 18 organisations and individuals. The categories for our member organisations include Faith & VAWG, VAWG Specialist/by & for, faith based and community specialist organisations. We also have individuals consisting of academics, public and VAWG charity sector workers. Our members are genuinely driven to using the role faith plays to prevent VAWG. We are establishing the membership strategy that enables us to reach out to organisations across the UK with a focus on non-Abrahamic religions. We set out a service delivery strategy for our members to interact, learn as well as share best practices, a good example of this is the creation of ‘sister space’ monthly coffee meeting. So far, we have delivered four monthly coffee meetings creating a

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The Faith and VAWG Coalition (continued)

safe space for members to share best practices. The Membership Coordinator also shares partnership and capacity building information through our fortnightly “News Digest”.

The Faith and VAWG Coalition coordinated a consultation meeting with MOPAC contributing to the role of faith to prevent VAWG. We also delivered a training session around raising awareness about VAWG to volunteers at Muslim Youth Helpline. The session was interactive and many volunteers mentioned it was useful and helped them in their knowledge, understanding and responses regarding the public health issue of domestic abuse.

Harmful Practices:

The project began in January 2020 as a part-time six-month contract for a Data Co-ordinator to support the work of the local Harmful Practices Operational Group (HPOG). In 2021 – 2022 this role has gone from strength to strength, taking over the co-ordination of the HPOG in April 2021. Data collection and analysis remains a core part of the role, with the Co-ordinator having now collated four years of data from the local MARAC’s and two years of agency data. This data is presented to the group in themes to support the work of agencies as well as in presentations outside of the group to promote the centring of harmful practices in agency responses. In the last year this has included multi agency webinars for professionals, presentations to the local VAWG Board and Adult Safeguarding teams and a joint webinar with the DHR team on Faithbased abuse for Bedfordshire Police. The MARAC data was also utilised by the University of Suffolk who produced a briefing paper using our data entitled Responding to Harmful Practices against Women and Girls in London: the potential of a data-driven and intersectional approach. The paper rightly highlights the scarcity of research in this area, which we will be building on in a future project (information below).

A core part of the harmful practices work has been to support the local specialist by and for agencies to improve links with other professionals to support their work and improve the Co-ordinated Community Response. Space is given within the HPOG meetings to identify issues these by and fors are experiencing and to then address these outside of the meeting. For example, holding a meeting around housing issues with our HOG co-ordinator and local VAWG lead who supported the agencies to address specific issues with housing. We have also supported agencies to access spaces such as Children’s Services meetings, an Operational meeting and our MARAC webinar to promote their services.

Over the past year the harmful practices lead has been working closely with VAWG leads, Co-ordinators of other harmful practices groups and by and fors to set up the Harmful Practices Strategic Partnership (HPSP), a pan London group aiming to reduce silos and improve co-ordinated working around harmful practices. This was launched in March 2022, and themes for the year have been agreed.

Coaction Hub: AWRC in Partnership with STADA

In order to build on the work already taking place, in partnership with Asian Women’s Resource Centre (AWRC) we successfully fundraised for two 3 year roles (one in each agency) to work on expanding the CCR for Black and minoritized survivors and survivors of harmful practices. This will start in late April 2022. It will include producing a toolkit for MARACs on harmful practices, and mentoring Black and minoritized professional women to become DHR chairs. It will also fund us to support and expand the work of the HPSP. We are very excited about this partnership and have commenced significant groundwork, particularly around working to make sure that this is an equitable partnership between ourselves and AWRC, a by and for agency.

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Housing Team

Our aim

The aim of the Housing Team is to support all survivors to achieve safety and housing security and hold perpetrators to account through a CCR that embeds a housing response to DA and considers the roles of all housing professionals across all tenure types.

We provide a combination of front-line support to survivors and housing providers, while also providing second tier support to housing and domestic abuse organisations to develop their response to domestic abuse through training, accreditation, awareness raising and guidance resources. We also influence national policy and practice through the National Housing and Domestic Abuse Policy and Practice Group.

We have three main projects through which we achieve the above aim:

• Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA)

• Housing First and Homelessness Programme

• Whole Housing Approach Programme (WHA )

Senior Housing Manager

In September 2021, the Housing Team took on a Senior Housing Manager to oversee the housing team due to its significant growth, with 15 members of staff across three large programmes.

The role of the SHM is to support the whole housing team to work together to deliver a collaborative and coordinated housing response together with the wider STADA team. The SHM oversees the development, delivery, and funding/sustainability of the team, and offers line management supervision to the team’s programme managers.

The SHM reports to the interim-CEO, Andrea Kilvington, and directly line manages the Housing First and Homelessness Programme Manager, the Whole Housing Approach Programme Manager, the DAHA Programme Manager, and the Restart Strategic Housing Lead (a part of the WHA Programme).

Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) Project

Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) was formed in 2014, in partnership with two of the U.K.s leading Housing Associations, Gentoo, based in Sunderland and Peabody based in London. DAHA offers a comprehensive accreditation process for housing providers to improve individual organisation responses and promote engagement in a coordinated community response. A team of DAHA Regional Leads drives this work forward and is comprised of the following team:

DAHA’s mission is to improve the Housing Sector’s response to domestic abuse and one of the ways it achieves this is through an accreditation process that includes 8 priority areas to ensure that housing providers and services offer a consistent, effective, and appropriate response to anyone experiencing domestic abuse in their homes.

The 8 priority standards provide a framework for housing providers to:

• Ensure staff are well placed and confident to identify signs of domestic abuse.

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Housing Team (continued)

• Standardise the process so residents / service users can access and receive the right response every time.

• Reduce costs to public purse and housing providers by implementing early interventions.

• Increase staff skills and engagement with local community partners such as specialist domestic abuse services and multi-agency arrangements.

Team Structure & Growth

This year we brought on a DAHA Programme Manager to oversee the DAHA team, which grew to include 3.5 Regional Leads across England, a Training Lead, DAHA Development Lead for VIVID, and a DAHA Membership and Training Coordinator

• DAHA Programme Manager: the DAHA team is led by a full-time DAHA Programme Manager who oversees the effective delivery of the DAHA project and provides support and supervision to the DAHA team. She is supported by the Senior Housing Manager.

• DAHA Training & Membership Coordinator : the DAHA team is also supported by a full-time Coordinator, who coordinates or training and membership delivery, as well as administrating the National Group, and supporting with the wider marketing and communications for the wider Housing Team.

• Regional Leads: The DAHA team has 3.5 Regional Leads, who cover the areas of London (FT), East Anglia (PT), the Midlands and the North (FT), and the South of England (FT). All Regional Leads are supported and supervised by the DAHA Programme Manager. These roles are currently funded through a combination of membership, assessment and some training fees, and an underspend of GLA funding from the previous year.

• Training Lead: DAHA also employs a full-time Training Lead who oversees the development and the delivery of the DAHA training offer to housing providers and professionals. The funding for her role comes through training income including funding received from Birmingham City Council in early 2022 of £37,440 to support, originally, the creation of a new training course for housing professionals. (see below)

• DAHA Lead for Vivid Homes : DAHA also has received £43,000 funding for 1 year employment of a DAHA Project Lead, who is overseeing the project management and delivery of Vivid Home’s DAHA accreditation and assessment process. For one day per week, she also supports the Training Lead to develop our training packages and learning materials for DAHA members

DAHA Outcomes for 2021/2022 by workstream

DAHA Membership Model Launch, Growth and Funding Sustainability

On 1[st] April 2021, DAHA launched our Membership Model Through our DAHA membership programme, HPs and LAs are provided with ongoing support through the Regional Leads and online resources to achieve accreditation. HPs and LAs must be members to achieve accreditation and go through the assessment

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Housing Team (continued)

process and must maintain membership to maintain accreditation and seek re-accreditation within 3 years. Regional Leads provide the bulk of support through membership, the DAHA Programme Manager oversees the membership model, and the Training & Membership Coordinator provides the organisational and administrative support. We offer the following three levels of membership:

• Affiliated: for any provider or service that wants to support our work but for whom the accreditation framework would not be suitable.

• Accreditation: for providers and services that are working towards becoming DAHA accredited

• Accredited: for provider and services that have been accredited and are intending to reaccredit when the 3-year renewal comes up

The membership was launched to generate a steady and forecastable funding stream that will make the team less reliant on short term, inconsistent grant funding. This will help sustain the core team and its activities while expanding it to meet growth in demand.

Year 1 of Membership (21-22) focused on building the membership through promotion and increasing visibility, seizing opportunities to raise our profile and encourage commitment to accreditation whenever possible.

By the end of Year one we had 90 Members, which exceeded our expectations (we hoped for 50 in year one ). Year 2 will focus on continued growth in membership take up and increasing the benefits for members to include regular workshops, free learning events and additional resources.

DAHA Accreditation & Assessment

The main role of DAHA is to develop, deliver and assess by an accreditation framework which sets out the 8 priority areas, and 43 standards that local authority housing teams and social housing providers must achieve to have a safe, consistent, and effective response to domestic abuse. We provide support for local authorities (LAs) and social housing providers (HPs)to achieve accreditation through the support of our Regional Leads and Membership resources, and we conduct an in-depth assessment which is taken to an assessment panel to determine if HPs and LAs have met the accreditation standards.

As a part of our accreditation work, York University conducted an independent academic evaluation of DAHA. The final York Evaluation of DAHA Accreditation report was published in September 2021 which built on the interim report published last year and further reiterates that DAHA works, but highlighted some areas for improvement, including increase visibility for survivors.

2021 saw the passing of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 with it bringing increased publicity around domestic abuse and more specifically the role of housing in the coordinated community response to domestic abuse. Part 4 of the DA Act puts a new duty on local authorities to provider safe accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse. DAHA and Whole Housing Approach are recognized as good practice in the Statutory Guidance that accompanies the Act and this has led to an increased interest in our work – particularly from Local Authorities.

The new duties on local authorities were supported by Government funding allocated to undertake the work on local needs assessments and the Strategies that local authorities were required to submit by 6 January 2022. The DAHA Program Manager and Senior Housing Manager both worked to promote DAHA (and WHA) with commissioners and strategic leads to ensure that recommendations were made to adopt and embed standards of good practice and achieve accreditation in strategies. This has been successful in many areas who are now either committed and have become Members or have expressed an interest to do so.

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Housing Team (continued)

The changes in the domestic abuse landscape nationally prompted us to undertake the largest review of the project since its inception in 2014. We have undertaken a full review of the eight priority areas and all standards to ensure the framework of good practice reflects, amongst other things, the changes in legislation. We have introduced values and principles of practice which members must commit to before committing to accreditation and, significantly, we have made the framework more flexible and achievable by local authorities without compromising standards and our integrity as a project with an ever-increasing profile and reputation in the sector. This work took several months and involved a huge amount of collaboration with members and critical friends. We are extremely proud of the new framework which has been very well received by our members. We held a launch in early March 2022 attended by nearly 300 people and the new framework has been endorsed by the DA Commissioner, Nicole Jacobs.

Accompanying the new framework, we have created and developed new resources aimed to further support housing providers and local authorities through the accreditation process. These resources include a full Membership Pack, an Accreditation Manual & a new Portfolio for the collation and submission of evidence.

We have begun work on improving and updating the assessment process, previously designed for smaller organizations and for completion on a site visit. This is a big piece of work that remains ongoing as is the work to create an external accreditation panel. Resource development is ongoing and led by what our members tell us they need.

Accreditation for Contractors

DAHA worked in partnership with Morgan Sindall on a project to create new standards of good practice to be adopted by contractors. This was a large and challenging piece of work for the team supported by the CEO. We created an accreditation framework that enabled us to award Morgan Sindall the first accreditation for a contractor.

In 2022/2023, we plan to use this learning to promote a set of accreditation standards more widely for contractors, however first need to establish our Membership model and the resources that accompany our updated accreditation framework before moving forward with other areas of accreditation.

DAHA Regional Groups

DAHA led regional groups were developed to connect DA services, HPs and LAs together locally and to share practice and influence policy and practice nationally giving them a voice and feeding into them.

We currently run 9 regional groups, which includes 400 registered members. They meet every 8 weeks (2 months), chaired by a member or the Regional Lead . We continue to facilitate and host nine Regional Groups with a total membership of well over 400 across England. These Groups link with the DA Commissioner’s Office, the National Housing Policy & Practice Group and with the National Housing Federation.

DAHA-Led National Housing & Domestic Abuse Policy and Practice Group

In November 2017 the first National Housing and Domestic Abuse Policy and Practice Group was convened, led by the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA). This was the first-time representatives from major Homelessness, Housing and Domestic Abuse organisations formally met to discuss how to work together nationally to tackle domestic abuse and better connect these policy areas. The main aims of this group are to ensure that:

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Housing Team (continued)

• The experience of survivors of domestic abuse is more prominent in the housing sector and helps shape improved and enhanced service delivery.

• Women and children can access secure housing and good quality services when experiencing domestic abuse; and

• Co-ordination exists between the housing and Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) sectors with regards to domestic abuse.

The group seeks to find consensus, share best practice, and influence policy and practice on domestic abuse and housing in England and devolved authorities. We recognise that those who have experienced domestic abuse or violence and other forms of abuse, have insight and knowledge that service providers can learn from to improve joined up multiagency working. It is for this reason that we aim to ensure survivors’ perspectives are embedded in the effective planning, delivery, and monitoring of partnership initiatives.

The group has representatives from the domestic abuse, LGBT+, housing and homelessness sectors. It includes:

• Against Violence & Abuse (AVA)

• Agenda

• Birmingham & Solihull Women’s Aid

• Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH)

• Crisis

• Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England

• Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA)

• The DRIVE Partnership

• Galop

• Gentoo Housing Association

• Homes England

• Homeless Link

• National Housing Federation (NHF)

• National Federation of ALMO’s

• Peabody Housing Association

• Refuge

• Resolve ASB

• Respect

• SafeLives

• Shelter

• Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse

• St Mungo’s

• Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA)

• Women’s Aid Federation of England (Women’s Aid)

• Imkaan

National Group has meet monthly to influence national policy and practice and to draft join government consultations, briefings and discussion papers.

Our joint work this year

Over the last year, the

• Joint tenancies and domestic abuse : one of our main campaigns have been around influencing government to understand the housing barriers faced by women who share a joint tenancy with their perpetrator. We used the DA Act during its Bill stages to propose an amendment to the bill which would provide a simplified legal mechanism for survivors to remove a perpetrator from a secure or assured joint

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Housing Team (continued)

social tenancy. This campaign led to the Government publishing a consultation in February 2022, which the National Group jointly responded to, and can be found here, alongside our joint briefing and question & answer document.

• Local connections consultation : we’ve jointly worked with the national group to influence the removal of the local connection test for the allocations of social properties for survivors of domestic abuse. You can find our joint consultation response here.

• Exempt accommodation : we’ve also submitted a joint consultation response on the issue of exempt accommodation and the impact on safe domestic abuse emergency and temporary accommodation, which you can find here.

• Part 4 of the DA Act 2021 : we also jointly responded to the draft statutory guidance for local authority implementation of Part 4 of the DA Act, which you can find here: Since then, we’ve met regularly with a subgroup of partners that regularly discusses the implementation of Part 4 on local authorities.

• Perpetrators & housing subgroup : within this last year we also set up the perpetrator and housing subgroup, which brings housing providers, local authorities and specialist domestic abuse and perpetrator programmes together to consider the role of housing in holding perpetrators to account, and more widely,

• to provide accommodation alternatives for perpetrators . The group has meet around 8 times, and has jointly crated the Perpetrator Accommodation Discussion Paper, looking at the underlying principles of a perpetrator accommodation initiative. We’ve also met through two task and finishing groups, one focusing on the role of social housing providers working with perpetrators as tenants, and home group focusing on homelessness settings.

DAHA Training

We offer a suite of training programmes for housing professions to respond to domestic abuse effectively, safely, and consistently within their capacity as a housing professional. HPs and LAs pay for the training over, which is managed by the Training Lead, administrated by the Training & Membership Coordinator, and delivered by associate trainers.

In 2021-22 we delivered 74 training sessions virtually for many different housing providers and local authorities. This has been a significant increase from the previous year and has enabled us to develop and evolve our training offer building a reputation of high-quality training delivery and the sector lead training organization for DA in housing.

In early 2022 we secured funding from Birmingham City Council to work with them to create a new housing qualification – the first of its kind in the UK. This enabled us to recruit our Training Lead in the Housing Team who began in January and has been working on this project, creating new training and re developing existing offers. The new qualification has been a collaborative project involving our critical friends in the housing and DA sectors. The course is shaping well now and will be ready for its first delivery from September 2022. This is an important development in our work as we look to support the Government’s drive to professionalize the housing sector (Social Housing Bill).

Vivid Housing

We entered into a 12-month pilot partnership with Vivid Homes, a 35,000-property housing association on the south coast in September 2021 to recruit and second a DAHA Project Lead to them to lead on the work to adopt & embed the standards of good practice. The role sits with Vivid 4 days a week and with us one day a week but is fully funded by Vivid. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the importance of a dedicated DAHA Project Lead role and understanding what that role is and can achieve in 12 months. This project is due to end in September 2022 and much has been achieved by our lead to change the culture and drive change in a

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Housing Team (continued)

challenging environment where domestic abuse had not been a priority area for the housing provider.

Surrey County Councils

We have worked with Surrey County Council and it’s 11 boroughs and districts to undertake a fully funded project to do a “health check”. We worked across all areas to understand where they are at against the DAHA standards and supported the commissioners to encourage the Tier 2 authorities to adopt and embed standards of good practice. We have completed the project and working now with each authority individually to come on board as members and continue the work they have begun. This has been a great learning opportunity for us in terms of working with whole counties including Tier 1’s and Tier 2s and enabled us to develop and improve our approach with local authorities generally. We created several new tools to support members to do their own” health checks” and these are now available to members only so an additional benefit of membership.

Housing First & Homelessness Team

The Housing First and Homelessness project works with local authorities, homelessness support providers, specialist women’s services and a range of other agencies to ensure that survivors of domestic abuse and women experiencing homelessness and other forms of multiple disadvantage (whether they are sleeping rough, living in supported accommodation, or in any other unsafe and informal housing situation) have better access to safe accommodation, and support that meets their needs.

The project provides training and workshops and engages in partnership projects that work to change systems and attitudes around survivors and women experiencing homelessness and multiple disadvantage. We are also a key partner in an innovative Housing First service for women experiencing any form of violence against women and girls, as well as working to strengthen and build partnerships across the homelessness and VAWG sectors pan London and nationally.

Team Resourcing & Structure

• Housing First Programme Manager: The HFPM oversees the delivery of the HF & Homelessness Programme and supports the team.

• Housing First Coordinator: The HFC supports the HFPM by providing the coordination of the HF project, delivers training and capacity builds for the Changing Futures Project outlined below

• DAHA Development Lead for Homelessness Settings: this role was developed to lead the piloting of a DAHA accreditation framework for homelessness settings. The work is outlined below.

Housing Coordination and Evaluation for the Westminster VAWG Housing First project

“They said ‘we’ve got a house for you’. I couldn’t believe it.” – woman supported by the Westminster VAWG Housing First project.

The role of the Housing First and Homelessness Coordinator at Standing Together is to build and maintain relationships with support provider Solace Women’s Aid and housing associations Peabody, L&Q, Southern, Octavia and Women’s Pioneer Housing, who offer the housing for the Westminster VAWG Housing First project. Funding for the Housing First and Homelessness Coordinator post ended in August 2021 and we were successful in obtaining continuation funding from the GLA to fund this post until the end of March 2022.

The Housing First and Homelessness Manager line managed the Housing First and Homelessness Coordinator role and led on the evaluation of the service.

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Housing Team (continued)

Key outcomes/highlights of the year include:

• The coordinator led on the update of the original service level agreement and achieved sign off from all housing partners.

• The service received funding from Westminster Council to expand the support element of the project, enabling it to increase capacity to support 30 women. The Housing First and Homelessness Coordinator rose to the challenge and recruited Guinness Housing who joined the partnership in Oct 2021. Guinness have signed the SLA and have expanded the project capacity by three flats per year.

• The coordinator is in discussions with Salvation Army Housing Association and Sanctuary Housing about joining the partnership.

• The coordinator facilitated 4 monthly-partnership meetings attended by all project partners, as well as one to one meeting with housing providers, review meetings linking the Housing First team with relevant housing officers, and ‘What to Expect from Housing First briefings’ for housing provider staff involved with the project.

• The coordinator and project manager worked together to produce the Westminster VAWG Housing First Year 2 evaluation which evidenced the importance of the housing coordination role:

“I would not be doing this job, and I said this tonight as well, but will not be doing this job if it wasn't for

[Coordinator's name] and the coordination role.”

– Westminster VAWG Housing First team manager – Solace Women’s Aid.

• The Westminster VAWG Housing First project received a commendation at the London Homelessness Awards.

• ST publicized the project at a range of forums, speaking at the Housing First national conference and a FEANTSA Women and Housing First webinar, as well as contributing to their publication Housing First & Women – Case Studies from across Europe

Safety by Experience Project

The Housing First and Homelessness project worked in partnership with homelessness organization St Mungo’s to deliver the ‘Safety by Experience’ project from November 2019 to June 2021. The Safety by Experience project aimed to:

• Provide the homelessness sector and specialist women’s sector with guidance on VAWG risk assessment and safety planning in homelessness settings

• Ensure that survivors of VAWG accessing St Mungo's services are (and report feeling) safer and better supported.

• Make sure that St Mungo's staff are better equipped to recognise and respond to VAWG

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Housing Team (continued)

Key outcomes/highlights include:

• Produced Keeping Us Safer: An approach for supporting homeless women experiencing multiple disadvantage and evidence report ‘Safety by Experience: Women’s experiences’. Launched the approach at a virtual event held in June 2021.

• Staff fed back that they felt the guidance and accompanying training had increased their knowledge and understanding of women’s needs, enabling them to build better relationships with women, and ultimately helping them to stay safer.

Developing the DAHA standards for homelessness organizations

The Housing First and Homelessness Coordinator led on the development of DAHA accreditation for homelessness support organisations, which began in October 2020 and was funded by Homeless Link’s Ending

Women’s Homelessness Fund until the end of June 2021. We were then successful in obtaining GLA funding (as outlined above) which funded the Housing First and Homelessness Coordinator to work part time on the Housing First project and part time on developing the DAHA standards for homelessness organisations.

Key outcomes/highlights include:

• Organised and chaired 3 roundtables with partner agencies to focus on areas where the homelessness DAHA accreditation would be different from the original DAHA accreditation.

• Developed and drafted the final framework – this included expanding the framework from 8 priority areas to 10.

• Organised and chaired a sense check meeting to ensure partner agencies who fed into the roundtables knew their contributions were heard. This was done by the 30th June, in line with the end of the Ending Women’s Homelessness Fund.

• From July 2021, the Coordinator focused on creating the infrastructure needed to pilot the framework. This involved maintaining relationships with partner organisations who supported with the development of the draft framework.

• We successfully recruited 2 organisations, Society of St James and the Outside Project, to pilot the new framework and developed a partnership agreement.

• Reviewed existing DAHA resources including the current DAHA toolkit and documents, in preparation for the adaptation of these resources for homelessness organisations.

Perpetrator and housing/homelessness work

Fulfilling Lives Partnership

The Housing First and Homelessness Project manager worked with SHP service Fulfilling Lives Islington and Camden to pilot the practical guidance launched last year on ‘Working Effectively with Perpetrators and Survivors ’ of Domestic Abuse in Homelessness Settings .

The project manager and partners developed training to support professionals to use the guidance - this was piloted by five different services for homeless people, across a range of organizations including Connections at St Martins, St Mungo’s and SHP.

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Housing Team (continued)

Three online training sessions were held with 28 delegates between November 2021 and January 2022

• 100% of delegates would recommend the training to others.

• Evidence of positive impact was demonstrated across 100% of learning outcomes.

• Training participants valued the opportunity to increase their knowledge, skills, and confidence to respond to DA, and all delegates reported that the training would enable them to change their future practice.

Task & Finishing Group on Perpetrator Responses in Sheltered/Supported Accommodation

The Housing First and Homelessness Project Manager set up and chaired a task and finish group tasked with mapping out what a perpetrator response in sheltered/supported accommodation should look like. The group met on three occasions and was attended by representatives from across homelessness, women’s specialist, and perpetrator specialist organizations. This Task and Finish group is part of a piece of work being conducted by the Perpetrator subgroup of the National Domestic Abuse and policy group, which is chaired by STADA and administrated by Drive. The group have produced a mission statement which will be published in summer 2022.

VAWG and Multiple Disadvantage capacity building in Westminster

The Housing First and Homelessness Project Manager was funded by Westminster council from July 21 to March 21 to develop and implement a framework of support for homelessness professionals supporting women experiencing homelessness, VAWG and multiple disadvantage in the borough. The idea behind this work was to lay the foundations for a future project funded by the Changing Futures programme. Happily, Westminster council were successful in their Changing Futures bid, and included this work in their portfolio; The Housing First and Homelessness Project Manager will lead on this work, which is funded from April 22-April 24. Key outcomes/highlights from this initial capacity building work include:

Training courses and workshops were delivered on:

• Domestic abuse, VAWG and Multiple Disadvantage -

• o Women’s Experiences of Homelessness,

• Women and Trauma and

• An Introduction to MARAC for housing and homelessness providers

• The facilitation of Monthly VAWG and Multiple Disadvantage forums. The forums provided frontline professionals supporting women with a space to discuss complex cases, reflect on issues and move forward. The forum is chaired by Standing Together and a clinical psychologist from the South London and Maudsley’s Psychology in hostels team and attended by representatives from the police, adult social care, women’s specialist and homelessness services.

• Piloting new approaches to enable frontline workers to better support women experiencing VAWG and multiple disadvantage e.g. The Keeping Us Safer approach pilot.

• Oversight for the Westminster Multiple Disadvantage MARAC rep role : covering the role from September – December 2021 and working with external evaluators to coordinate evaluation activities.

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Whole Housing Approach Project

The Whole Housing Approach (WHA) was first conceptualised in 2018 by the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) in collaboration with the DAHA-led National Housing and Domestic Abuse Policy and Practice Group. The WHA endeavours to improve the housing options and outcomes for people experiencing domestic abuse so that they can achieve stable housing, live safely, and overcome their experiences of abuse. The Whole Housing Approach is a framework to meaningfully address the safety and housing needs of victim/survivors, ensuring they can maintain or access safe and stable housing as quickly as possible.

The Whole Housing projects key aims are to:

• Create earlier identification and intervention for domestic abuse through mobilising social and private landlords and key institutions involved in private ownership.

• Reduce the number of people who are made homeless due to domestic abuse.

• Increase tenancy sustainment options so that people experiencing domestic abuse can remain safely in their home or do not lose their tenancy status if they relocate. This includes social housing landlords taking action to remove perpetrators from properties through enforcement where appropriate and safe to do so.

• Bring together the housing and domestic abuse sectors through a Coordinated Community Response (CCR) to keep victim/survivors safe and hold abusers to account

A WHA currently includes 14 components that can be categorised into two parts as demonstrated in the following diagram:

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Housing Team (continued)

The purple circles represent the main tenure types: social housing, the private rented sector, privately owned, supported/sheltered accommodation. Refuge Services are included in this as they offer a form of emergency accommodation accompanied support from a dedicated or specialist domestic abuse service.

The beige circles represent the housing options, initiatives and domestic abuse support offered to victim/survivors across the main tenure types, including Co-Located Advocacy, Mobile Advocacy, Flexible Funding, WHA Coordination, Sanctuary Scheme, Managed Reciprocals, Move On Accommodation, Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) accreditation and Perpetrator Management.

Standing Together has been awarded funding by The National Lottery (TNL), which includes delivering the WHA model with one local authority pilot site. We will work alongside Cheshire East Council to develop all 14 components of the WHA over a three-year period.

Team Structure

• WHA Programme Manager: As part of The National Lottery (TNL) funded 30 month WHA pilot programme, the WHA Programme Manager oversees the various strands of work within the Whole Housing Approach Team which includes line managing the team (not including the Strategic Housing Lead for Perpetrator Early Intervention and Accommodation Pilot). The WHA Programme Manager leads on the development of the Whole Housing Approach as well as focusing on influencing local and national government on policy which encourages the adoption of a Whole Housing Approach. The WHA Programme Manager also coordinates and chairs our Part 4 and part 7 subgroup.

• WHA Coordinator: With funding from Hammersmith and Fulham, RBKC and the GLA, WHA Coordinator ensures the following initiatives are delivered in a safe, consistent, and coordinated way within the biborough and Hammersmith and Fulham:

• Flexible funding

• Sanctuary Scheme

• Housing Operational Group (HOG)

• Sanctuary Scheme Working Group

The WHA Coordinator is the main point of contact for our work in these area with the bi-borough and Hammersmith and Fulham, as well as overseeing sanctuary scheme and flexible funding referrals from partners. This includes associated activities including monitoring and report writing. They are responsible for developing partnerships with leads from the bi-borough and Hammersmith and Fulham housing services and other stakeholders involved in the local housing response to domestic abuse. From 2022/23 this role will be funded by the GLA and the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.

• Private Rented Sector (PRS) Lead: This role focuses on developing effective housing solutions for survivors living in the private rented sector, so that they can achieve safety and housing security. Through GLA funding The PRS Lead focuses on:

• Development of frameworks for how key PRS stakeholders can respond effectively to domestic abuse

• Creation of accompanying guidance, training, and other resources

• Developing accreditation standards for PRS stakeholders.

The PRS Lead works alongside domestic abuse and housing partners to influence policy that will impact survivors living in the PRS, particularly the new Domestic Abuse Act and the upcoming Renters Reform Bill. They work closely alongside the WHA Programme Manager and the WHA Team to support WHA pilot partners to develop WHA responses that meet the needs of survivors living in the PRS. Currently this role is funded through the GLA, but from January 2023 to December 2024 will be funded by the National Lottery.

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Housing Team (continued)

• WHA Capacity Builder: Funded by the Nation Lottery the WHA Capacity Builder will lead our work with the selected local authority pilot site to deliver all elements of the WHA. They will also support the WHA Programme Manager to continue our work with national partners to develop and evolve the WHA model and offer support local authorities implementing a WHA through their new Part 4 duty to provide support within safe accommodation under the new Domestic Abuse Act. Their role focuses on working with the WHA project team at Standing Together and the pilot site to project manage and coordinate the implementation and evaluation of the WHA. They also support the continued development of the WHA toolkit and supporting resources and facilitate engagement with all local authorities implementing a WHA. We hope to fill this post in Summer 2022.

• WHA Research & Evaluation Analyst: Funded by the National Lottery this post supports the WHA team as well as pilot partners to create an effective evaluation framework. This includes:

• Working with the WHA project team to create a theory of change for the Whole Housing Approach.

• • Establishing an evaluation framework, including the creation of monitoring tools. This will be added to the WHA toolkit.

• Engaging with WHA team and pilot partners to ensure data is collected in a timely manner. Ensure timeframes and deadlines for data are communicated to pilot partners.

• Collecting, collating, analysing, and cleaning monitoring data from pilot partners.

• Preparing and creating reports using findings from monitoring data and ensuring reports are distributed and communicated to relevant contacts

Workstreams

Our workstreams can be divided into our local work to deliver Sanctuary, Flexible Funding and the Housing Operational Group in the Three Boroughs, and our national work to promote implementation of a WHA across LA areas.

Local work in the Three Boroughs

The WHA Coordinator leads our WHA work in the three boroughs of Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham, and Kensington and Chelsea. This includes chairing and coordinating the Housing Operational Group, the Sanctuary Project, and Flexible Funding Project

Three Boroughs Housing Operational Group

The role of the Housing Operational Group is to ensure that victim/survivors (with or without children) receive consistent, appropriate, and professional support when approaching housing services and housing providers in Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea and Westminster. Effective interventions will include early identification and intervention and crisis and emergency assistance that increase safety and reduce risk as well as improved access to resettlement services, on-going or long-term and housing options that enable survivors to access safe and secure housing.

It also encourages housing providers to consider the delivering of their services within a Whole Housing Approach framework that brings together under one umbrella all of the main tenure types, housing options and initiatives and specialist domestic abuse services needed in a local area to help survivors of domestic abuse access safe and stable housing. The Whole Housing Approach currently includes 14 components, which applied concurrently will enhance collaborative working, that will in turn create earlier intervention, reduce homelessness, and enable tenancy sustainment.

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Housing Team (continued)

The HOG meetings take place on quarterly basis, with four being held in 2021-22. The following areas were explored:

• Domestic Homicide Reviews and taking on key learnings

• Part 4 of the domestic abuse act and how housing providers are implementing this

• The role of the Private Rented Sector (PRS) in the coordinated community response to domestic abuse

• • Implementing the VAWG/Housing Operational Group Action Plan across the three boroughs.

The group is now chaired by Standing Together to ensure consistency.

All meetings in 2021-22 were held via video conference with an average of 10 members attending each meeting. We have been working on expanding the housing operational group beyond the current membership and have been pleased to see attendance from more housing associations and by and for services.

The Whole Housing Coordinator facilitates the Housing Operational Group and offers coordination support for the Sanctuary Scheme for LBHF and Flexible Funding pot (part of Whole Housing) for the three boroughs.

Sanctuary Scheme

In 2021/22, we spent £16,261 to secure 34 homes in LBHF through the Sanctuary Scheme with Safe Partnership, at an average cost of £478.26 per household. We have worked closely with Safe Partnerships as well as Crawford to ensure survivors are able to have a range of sanctuary options available to them, which helps them feel safer to remain in their home.

In 2021/22, the Whole Housing Coordinator continued facilitating a working group with Sanctuary leads from the three boroughs to address operational issues with the scheme. This group was initially set up to create more consistency across the three schemes. The group provides a good opportunity to share data as well as best practice and challenges around sanctuary delivery.

At the beginning of the 2022/23 financial year our lead Sanctuary provider changed from Safe Partnerships to J H Crawford Security Ltd t/a. Our experience with Crawford has been extremely positive with works being completed within a timely manner, as well as Crawford’s offering a more extensive package of sanctuary works. Furthermore, Crawford’s consistently have provided a high quality service with effective communication. We look forward to continue working with Crawford’s.

Flexible Funding

The Whole Housing Coordinator continues to administer the Flexible Funding pot, which was introduced as part of the Whole Housing project. It is a designated pot that survivors can access easily and quickly to retain or secure safe and stable housing. There is no set list of what will be funded. It exists to fund whatever will help survivors access the best housing outcome possible for them in the short and long term.

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Housing Team (continued)

The following table shows the number of survivors supported by the scheme in the London boroughs of Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith over the last three years:

	Number of survivors	Number of dependent children
2019/2020	48	39
2020/2021	18	24
2021/2022	32	43
2019 – 2022: total of past three years	98	106

Flexible funding supports victim/survivors to achieve or maintain safe and secure housing. It is low-barrier and does not require victim/survivors to provide evidence of abuse. Unlike most other funding sources, there is no set list of what will be funded, and victim/survivors are encouraged to ask for whatever will make the most difference to their housing situation and their lives. The below highlights how the flexible funding grant was utilized by victim/survivors:

How flexible funding was used:	Total for 2021/22
Rental assistance	1
Utilityassistance	2
Debt assistance	1
Move in costs	0
Movingcosts	1
Documentation fees	0
Legal assistance	0
Employment assistance	0
Essential furnishings	23
Basic needs	1
Children’s needs	0
Physical/mental health needs	1
Safetyenhancement	2
Relocation services	0
Other	0
Total	32

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Housing Team (continued)

The following quotes are from survivors accessing the fund:

‘Client 1: “I am thankful and just being able to buy the bunk bed for the kids and other things they need to be comfortable makes a lot of different and the children are so happy and feeling safe in their new home. Thank you so much.”

Client 2: “If not for this grant, I would have stayed at my mum’s place with my new baby as I was not able to buy anything for the new flat. I have been able to get the basic for my new baby and get a bed for my daughter and that is a huge relieve. The additional funds just arrived this afternoon and I’m over the moon and that means that the white goods for the kitchen can bought. I am absolutely grateful and speechless”

Whole Housing Approach pilot funded by the National Lottery

We successfully put in a bid to the National Lottery to fund a three-year pilot project to implement all the components of the Whole Housing Approach in one local authority area. The funding for this commenced in January 2022 and will be until December 2024.

Local areas interested in the pilot were encouraged to submit an expression of interest which we used as part of our selection process.

Cheshire East have been selected as the pilot site for the Whole Housing Approach following this as they demonstrated a strong commitment to the pilot, as well as having the key foundations in place for the project to start smoothly. Cheshire East showed enthusiasm toward the pilot and have accepted our offer to be the pilot site.

We will be working with Cheshire East to scope out how we will deliver all fourteen components of the Whole Housing Approach over the course of the three-year pilot. This will consist of detailed project planning, meetings with various stakeholders, embedding the relevant governance structures for the project, including forming and meeting with the WHA partnership board. We look forward to working with Cheshire East.

In order to effectively support Cheshire East and show our commitment during this pilot, the National Lottery have funded the following roles:

• Whole Housing Approach Programme Manager : employed by Standing Together to oversee the delivery of the WHA project, including both the local pilot and the national WHA work. This position is already filled, and they are already managing the project.

• Whole Housing Approach Capacity Builder: a full-time role employed by Standing Together, to oversee the coordination and delivery of the WHA pilot, acting as the main point of contact, advice and support with all delivery partners and the pilot site. This individual will be in post from the middle of Quarter 2, after the pilot site has been selected and mobilised. We put out this post for advert in May 2022 and hope to have someone in post by July 2022.

• Whole Housing Approach Research and Evaluation Analyst: employed by Standing Together, they will be dedicated to evaluating the three-year pilot, including working with the pilot sites to collect data to evaluate the effectiveness of all aspects of the approach, and influence continual development and improvement of the project, while also feeding into the external evaluation of the pilot.

We envisaged this position being in post from May 2022 however following an unsuccessful recruitment period in late 2021 we went out for recruitment for this post again on numerous occasions. Due to this we ensured the expression of interest sent to interest local authority pilot sites captured baseline information that would be

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Housing Team (continued)

helpful when monitoring and evaluating.

We have changed this role to Research and Evaluation Analyst (initially Monitoring and Evaluation Officer) and kept the job description more concise. We have worked with a recruitment consultant who has enabled us to reach out to more candidates with a background in research and evaluation. We hope to have this position filled by the end of July 2022.

• Private Rented Sector Lead: Standing Together also employs a Private Rented Sector (PRS) Lead who will work closely with the pilot site to understand their local PRS context and the experiences of victims/survivors in their area who access the PRS. They will use this information to support the local area to improve access to safety and housing security for survivors in the PRS. This will include providing training, guidance, and strategic support. The PRS Lead came into post within the first quarter of the pilot to develop the necessary guidance and resources that will support the WHA pilot site to work within the PRS sectors as a part of their local approach. We successfully recruited for this post and the PRS lead started in January 2022. Please see further detail about their role and achievements below.

During this pilot we will work in partnership with Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) and Safer London. Using the funding from the National Lottery both organisations will be supporting Cheshire East to deliver the following components of the Whole Housing Approach:

• Private Ownership and Economic Abuse: Surviving Economic Abuse (SEA) will support Cheshire East Council to respond to the needs of victims/survivors who privately own their home. This includes create vital links between the needs of survivors in this tenure type to wider experiences of economic abuse and the role of local and national financial institutions in responding to economic abuse. They will develop and deliver training, guidance, and strategic level support.

• Managed Reciprocal Support: Standing Together will be partnering with Safer London, who founded the Pan London Domestic Abuse Housing Reciprocal, to offer the Cheshire East Council support to set up their own managed reciprocals arrangements. Crucially, this will take into consideration how to create sustainable resources that any local authority can pick up and use to develop their own Managed Reciprocals, particularly in the context of local authorities working outside of London.

Private Rented Sector Lead

We recruited for a new Private Rented Sector Lead who started in post at the beginning of January 2022. For this post, the first year of this role will be funded by other sources, and The National Lottery funding will be used for years two and three of the Whole Housing Approach pilot (see above).

The guidance aims to provide information on the private rented sector (PRS)for front-line domestic abuse practitioners so they can advise and support their clients who live in the PRS or are placed in the PRS after fleeing abuse. The guidance can be accessed here.

Key activities delivered in include:

PRS Guidance & Webinar launch

On March 10[th] , 2022, we launched our PRS Guidance for domestic abuse practitioners at an online webinar.

The webinar was chaired by the Whole Housing Programme Manager, and included a range of speakers:

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Housing Team (continued)

• An IDVA at Advance (women’s charity in West London) and the VAWG Manager at Hopscotch (‘by and for’ charity that supports minoritised ethnic women and their families), both presented a case study of a survivor they supported who lived in the PRS.

• The VAWG Manager at Hopscotch also presented on barriers that her clients face with the PRS.

• The Housing Barrister from Garden Court Chambers who helped us draft the guidance presented on the rights of private tenants, and how these impact domestic abuse survivors.

• The PRS Lead at Standing Together presented on how to access and use the guidance.

• The Chair facilitated a Q&A session at the end with all the speakers.

133 people booked onto the webinar, and 89 people joined the live event. The webinar was recorded and shared with everyone who booked for the event, along with the guidance.

PRS training for domestic abuse services

Following the PRS Guidance launch, we offered training to front-line domestic abuse services to help them implement the guidance in practice. The PRS Lead worked with the DA & Housing Training Lead at Standing Together to design a half-day interactive training session for front-line domestic abuse practitioners.

The aims of the training are for domestic abuse practitioners to understand the basic rights of private tenants, including how these impact survivors of domestic abuse, and how to support the housing needs of their clients who live in the PRS.

There is a first pilot session scheduled early April with IDVAs at the charity Advance to test the training and adjust the content to make it most relevant and useful for front-line practitioners.

There have also been three requests for training already once it is ready to roll-out, including domestic abuse services My CWA (Cheshire), Solace (London) and Berkshire Women’s Aid.

PRS Stakeholders

Outside these main activities, the PRS Lead started to contact key stakeholders including local authority PRS teams. The local authority PRS teams will enable us to further understand the current gaps in the PRS domestic abuse response, as well as inform the development of a domestic abuse accreditation for PRS professionals. We have also been contacting a range a domestic abuse services who want to do more influencing work on private renting nationally. This will better inform our policy work, such as future government consultations and enable us to create guidance and resources on domestic abuse and the PRS.

Training for Environmental Health

We have developed the training for Environmental Health Professionals to respond to domestic abuse, which we have piloted with Environment Health Professionals via the Greater London Authority (GLA). We will be using this training with Cheshire East to better inform professionals and implement new ways of working to better the survivor response. We will work with Cheshire East to develop a delivery plan to implement the PRS element of the WHA with the pilot site.

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Housing Team (continued)

Support to the Whole Housing Approach pilot site

Now the pilot site has been selected, the PRS Lead will be working closely with the WHA Coordinator to understand the PRS provision and stakeholders within Cheshire East and devising a delivery plan of our training, guidance, and consultation resources.

Part 4 Whole Housing Approach Needs Assessments and Strategy

With the passing of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, local authorities are required to fulfill a statutory duty to provide support within safe accommodation for survivors of domestic abuse. Through campaigning through the DAHA-led National Housing and Domestic Abuse Policy and Practice group, Government including DAHA accreditation and a Whole Housing Approach as a part of fulfilling this duty.

As a result, we’ve been approach by numerous local authority areas to conduct their Part 4 Needs Assessments and draft their Part 4 Strategies. This was a significant area of development for our team, to learn how to conduct local needs assessments and write strategies, and to work closely with STADA associates to complete this work. As a result, we conducted needs assessments and strategies for 9 local authority areas, and developed a Part 4 Needs Assessment Template for other LAs to follow who wish to fulfil their duty through a Whole Housing Approach. Our work with local authority areas led to the formation of the Part 4 Subgroup, that brings together local authority areas implementing a WHA to share best practice and address shared issues.

Restart: Early Intervention and Accommodation Pilot

As a result of the work of our National Group and our Perpetrator and Housing Subgroup, we were approached by the DRIVE partnership to jointly deliver a perpetrator early intervention and accommodation pilot with five London local authorities, and the support of MOPAC and funding by the Home Office. This is a 2-year funded project with the possibility of extension for an additional year.

The Restart Programme aims to improve responses to families experiencing domestic abuse that are being supported by Children’s Social Care (CSC) via a multi-agency response that holds perpetrator responsible for their behaviour and change. This is centred on increased safety and space for action for child and adult survivors of domestic abuse and enabling their short- and long-term housing security. The pilot is one of the first of its kind to develop and deliver a perpetrator accommodation intervention as a part of a wider Whole Housing Approach to ensuring survivor safety and housing security

In practice, the Restart Programme receives referrals from Children’s Social Care to offer early intervention support to perpetrators of domestic abuse to access behaviour change programmes alongside support to access alternative accommodation pathways in a way that enables survivors, including children, to stay in the family home, if it is safe and their choice to do so. Survivors of domestic abuse are offered one-to-one support, to ensure that all interventions are survivor-led and responsive to their expressed needs and wishes at every stage.

Through the Restart Pilot, the Strategic Housing Lead (Lead) will work closely with strategic housing partners across the five London local authority pilot areas to consider how they actively utilise current housing legislation and local pathways to provide accommodation interventions for perpetrators in a safe, sustainable and survivor centred way. The Lead plays a critical role in translating strategic level decision making into practical implementation delivered by the Cranstoun Restart practice team, who work with families supported through the pilot on a day-to-day basis.

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As the critical link between strategic level decision making and operational implementation, the Lead has a firm understanding of the day to day running of the pilot, the role of the Accommodation Support Worker, and monitor how the accommodation initiatives work to support families and address their housing needs. The Lead uses this learning to further influence strategic level decision making regarding the housing pathways and options used, and how to continually improve these options and interventions.

Through a combination of desk-based research, active involvement in the develop and the delivery of the pilot, and through building relationships with stakeholders across the country, the Lead will also influence wider policy in response to perpetrators of domestic abuse, and to develop what a ‘best practice approach’ to perpetrator accommodation initiatives looks like.

In February 2022, we successfully recruited a Restart Strategic Housing Lead, however the individual moved on from this position in April 2022, and we’ve had to re-recruit for this position. In the meantime, the Senior Housing Manager has been closely overseeing the work.

B. Educating agencies and the public in all aspects of domestic violence

Standing Together carries out a variety of activities to fulfil its educative role, all with the aim of improving practice amongst helping agencies. This in turn benefits survivors in terms of access to services, the improved skills and awareness of the professionals who deal with them, the consistency of the standards applied by agencies and the safe options available to them and to their children.

Events

The Blooming Strong Campaign was created by us in 2014, it is the way we engage with partners to mark November 25[th ] as the UN Day for the elimination of violence against women and as part of our 16 days of activism. At our event this year we invited the Artist Amja Unabashedly (Let Art Be Your Becoming) and Huda Jawad from Musawah as our inspiring women to chat with over coffee.

The event was very well attended. As we were still being affected by the pandemic and lockdown we didn’t give or send out individual flowers this year. We created an e-card that colleagues could send to those they wish to nominate as ‘Blooming Strong’ women

CCR Leaders Course

The Coordinated Community Response (CCR) Leaders Course aims to increase the skills and expertise of professionals, including statutory commissioners and policy makers, who are responsible for leading and coordinating responses to domestic abuse (DA) and other forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG).

The course was developed following a 24 month European project between Standing Together, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and European partners. The Domestic Violence: Coordinating the Intervention (DVCI) project developed, tested and implemented innovative, work-based Continuing Education and Training (CVET) to support the crucial role of DA Strategic Coordination.

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CCR Leaders Course (continued)

Currently, job descriptions and levels of skills and influence differ vastly, and there is no standard training that focuses on strengthening competencies and skills to support the role of DA Strategic Coordination. The CCR

Leaders course addresses this gap. Crucially this course provides a space for strategic leads, commissioners and policy officers with responsibility for DA/VAWG to connect, share best practice and learning.

Following the successful delivery of this pilot course in 2017/2018 and 2020/21 due to increasing demand from local authorities, Standing together decided to run it in February - April 2022. The course comprises of 6 days of training delivered over 3 months. The critical need for this course was highlighted by the fact that within a couple of weeks of promoting new rates for the course, all places were fully booked up.

At the time of writing, all participants have submitted their work with an expectation of a pass. We are awaiting confirmation from the OCN moderators. We have already received bookings for our next course

European Project: CQ4 DVCI

This year saw the final part of our involvement in this European project, sharing the CCR standards across Europe.

This second phase of the “Certificate and Qualification: Coordinators for Domestic Violence Strategic Intervention” project involves the following partners – Apostoli Katharsis (Romania), Dimitra (Greece), Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (UK), Aristoteleies Katartiseis (Greece) and Diakonija (Latvia) and Standing Together (UK).

This work commenced in January 2020 and although interrupted by the Pandemic, we were able to complete two learning visits, one to Riga Latvia, and one to Athens Greece. We also met virtually with partners throughout the year and finalised an e- learning course curriculum and materials, to be delivered completely online. We also developed the assessment criteria and exam questions. This consisted of over 200 different types of multiple-choice questions at varying levels of complexity that could randomly be selected with a balance of difficulty in an hour-long exam. Students were required to score over 70% to pass. Of the 13 UK students to take the exam 11 passed.

4. Strategic Influence

Standing Together serves on the following boards, panels, working groups and networks, sharing experience and expertise to our mutual benefit with:

• Chair the National Housing and Domestic Abuse Policy and Practice Group

• External Consultation Group of the Crown Prosecution Service

• Crown Prosecution Service Scrutiny and Involvement Panel, Crown Prosecution Service

• London Violence Against Women and Girls Scrutiny Panel, London Areas, Crown Prosecution Service

• The London Mayor's Expert Group on Violence Against Women and Girls

• The Department of Health group developing a domestic violence pathway for Health

• End Violence Against Women Coalition

• Home Office VAWG Stakeholders Group

• CBS Coalition Hub

• Victims’ Voice Forum

• Local Authroity VAWG Boards

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Strategic Influence

• London Councils

• Sector specific groups and forums

The ST CEO and staff speak at numerous international, national, regional and local conferences about our strategic and operational approach to the coordinated community response and often particular aspects of work.

5. Financial Review

Overview

The Charity’s work in Year 2021 - 2022 continued along the strategically planned paths of making a difference in raising awareness and making changes to the response to domestic violence.

Standing Together entered the financial year in a cautious position with a well-diversified funding stream from local authorities, central government, NHS, trust foundations, consultancy work and training.

Periodically the financial position of fundings is investigated based on assumptions set out in budgets to establish the amount of income required to pay for staff salaries, operational and overhead costs in delivering Standing Together’s objectives in eliminating domestic abuse.

The charity is successful in recruiting experienced staff against this background in maintaining skilled and qualified staff to new posts created this year. The Chief Executive concentrates on local and national opportunities along with the team via shared goals, policies to strengthen our position with existing contracts and future proposals to extend our work around domestic violence.

The work is supported by the finance and administration team ensuring that good financial management continues to be the key to achieving stability and ensuring the sound future for the organisation.

At the year ended 31[st] March 2022 total incoming resources increased by 36% from £2.1m to £2.9m. The increase was due to new funding for the following projects:

• £442k – DCMS, Domestic Abuse Mentor Courts

• £204k - GLA, Whole Housing Approach

• £154k – LBHF & Bi Borough, COVID 19 Emergency Funds

This was partially matched by an increase in charitable expenditure of 25% from £1.7m to £2.1m. At the year end the net increase in funds was £754k (2021: £411k). A prudent approach of management of reserves will continue to be taken in the next financial year with the aim of strengthening Standing Together’s financial position in obtaining our main objectives.

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Principal Funding Sources in Year 2021 – 2022

The Charity’s principal source of funds was £992k received from local authorities, which provided 44% of total income. Standing Together made good progress in growing income from a diversified group of funders primarily securing funding from charitable trusts and foundations, philanthropists and increasing contribution from Peabody and Gentoo, Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) Partners.

The growth in income reflects the growing recognition of the organisation’s work and its impact in alleviating the effect of domestic abuse. Standing Together;s response to the coronavirus pandemic was well received overall by attracting new resources from funders to support the charities objectives. Additional income secured by European Commission, training and consultancy work was crucial in the year. Standing Together is very grateful for the support of grant making bodies and individual donations from the public.

Income Resources: £2,900,395

----- Start of picture text -----
Other Income,
Housing,
Donations, £218,867 £569,666
£165,495
Whole Health,
Fee Earnings, £275,004
£673,633
Domestic
Faith & VAWG,
Violence Courts,
£200,682
£523,350
MARAC,
£273,697
----- End of picture text -----

Income from charitable activities include:

• Housing

£569k - Funding included £73k from London Councils for the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) to establish a set of housing standards through DAHA accreditation process; £284k to support the Whole Housing Approach project; £41k to tackle irrelated issues of homelessness and improve housing pathways for women with multiple needs, a total of £56k from LB of Hammersmith & Fulham (LBHF) and GLA to coordinate the sanctuary and flexi fund scheme to provide provision for improved home security and essential needs; £43k received from VIVID Homes to cover the cost of a Project Lead to manage Vivid Homes through the DAHA accreditation; £35k backing from MOPAC to support a pilot which aims to improve responses to perpetrators of domestic abuse in families that are being supported by Children’s Social Care and £37k from Birmingham City Council to recruit an expert trainer to develop training packages in housing settings.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

• Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conferences (MARAC)

£274k - Bi Borough (includes Westminster City Council and Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea) and LBHF collectively awarded £168k, LB of Haringey £50k and Ealing Council £55k to support the work around information sharing on the highest risk domestic abuse cases to ensure that all parties put in place a risk management plan for the safety of domestic violence survivors.

• Domestic Abuse Courts

£523k - In the first year of a 2-year project, DCMS (through the Tampon Tax) awarded £467k to develop the project of the existing Special Domestic Abuse Courts at Westminster Magistrates Court into Mentor Courts. Funding of £41k from Bi Borough and LBHF was used to fund the Senior CJ Manager to facilitate the delivery of the Mentor Court project. Contribution of £15k granted from Treebeard to assist in the court process of domestic abuse cases within the criminal system with the aim of increasing the proportion of successful outcomes.

LBHF via the MOPAC London Crime Prevention Fund allocated £25k to the role of the Performance & Review Coordinator who worked in partnership with the police, the Impact Project lead and the IDVAs to contribute to the delivery of the Project’s workstreams.

• Whole Health

£275k - Inclusive of £66k from Public Health to continue the support of the Children & Health Coordinator role reflecting the view we share of the essential role which health professionals have in identifying and supporting survivors of domestic violence. Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation awarded £50k to fund the significant Domestic Abuse Coordinator post in developing and embedding a Trust wide holistic domestic abuse training package. £62k from Comic Relief for funding a whole health response to domestic abuse. NHS England provided £64k along with Portsmouth Hospital University NHS Trust and University Hospital of Southampton NHS Trust to support an HNS approach to tackling domestic abuse. Macmillan extended funding of £33k to ddevelop and embed best practice for responding to domestic abuse within cancer support services, including the development and delivery of training, and the coordination of sustainable domestic abuse intervention.

• Safety Across Faith and Ethnic (SAFE) Communities

£200k -The SAFE Communities project brought together leaders, pooled expertise and people from Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and faith communities with the aim to tackle domestic abuse and violence against women. As part of a 3 year funding, Oak Foundation and City Bridge funded £115k and £60k respectively in the year. The Bi Borough and LB of Hammersmith & Fulham awarded £25k to extend the role of Harmful Practice role in ensuring that the response to harmful practices is coordinated effectively.

• Fee Earning Income

£674k - This included £173k from Domestic Homicide Reviews; £126k from educative consultancy and training courses; £276k consultancy work and £99k from Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA) and Coordinated Community Response (CCR) membership fees.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

• Other Income:

• £219k – consisted of the following:

i.Shared VAWG Operations Management

LBHF, Westminster City Council and Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea granted £40k for the role of Partnership Operational Manager to oversee and support the development of the Shared VAWG strategy services operational groups

ii.LB of Hammersmith & Fulham and Bi Borough

Rewarded £133k COVID 19 emergency funding to provide financial support during a period of market change because of the pandemic.

iii.DVCI (EU)

The aim of this project, in partnership with EU member states was to develop a Certification Scheme and Qualification Profile that focuses on certifying common competencies and skills to support for the role of Domestic Violence Coordinator, of which £13k was given to Standing Together.

iv.National Lottery Community Fund

Received £26k as part of funding to support core cost and strategic learning partnership between Aafda, Chayn, Galop, Imkaan, Respect, Rights of Women, SafeLives, Social Finance, Surviving Economic Abuse and Women’s Aid. The partnership aims to pool collective expertise and knowledge to find new and collaborative approaches to better support victims and survivors of domestic abuse

v.Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS)

£4k grant was claimed from the CJRS for staff on furlough because of the COVID19 pandemic.

vi.Other income

Bank interest of £2k earned from fixed term deposit accounts.

vii.Angelou

Advance pays Standing Together £1k to oversee the Angelou website, a partnership of 10 specialist organisations that provide free advice and support to women and girls experiencing domestic or sexual violence.

• Donations

£166k - We are incredibly grateful for the generous donations and support we receive from individuals and organisations. The donations totaling £22k this year are a valuable contribution to our objective to alleviate domestic abuse. Housing Associations Peabody and Gentoo, partners of the DAHA national partnership contributed £144k to support the mission to improve the housing sector’s response to domestic abuse through the introduction and adoption of an established set of standards and an accreditation process.

• In Kind

We have benefitted from volunteers who have assisted on the various projects depending on their area of interest. We are committed to offering an opportunity to individuals to boost their employability skills and enhance their personal development.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

Charitable Expenditure: £2,146,123

----- Start of picture text -----
Support costs,
£132,333
Other direct
costs, £566,826
Staff costs,
£1,446,964
----- End of picture text -----

Total charitable expenditure amounted to £2,146,123, which consisted of staff cost of £1,446,964 accounted for 67% of total costs. Support cost, £132,333 included costs for information technology (IT), other professional fees, office and premise costs. Other direct costs of £566,826 were for consultant fees, onward cost to partners and general overhead costs (insurance, telephone/video communications, membership fees, travel and depreciation).

Financial Results

The Income and Expenditure Accounts showed incoming resources for the year of £2.9m (2021: £2.1m) and expenditure of £2.1m (2021: £1.7m). The total reserves stand at £1,555k (2021: £802k) of which £566k (2021: 323K) is restricted and £989k (2021: £479k) is unrestricted. Of the unrestricted fund, £559k (2021: £352k) has been designated for contractual liabilities, leaving a balance of £430k (2021: £127k) as unrestricted free reserves.

Standing Together receives most of its funding in the form of grants directly in support for specific projects. We have increased our core funding by attracting flexible and diverse sources within our mission and expertise, ensuring that when submitting funding proposals full recovery cost is included in total costs. During the year our core funding was boosted by the increase in demand for consultancy services from local authorities utilising government money to prepare them to meet statutory standards of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, which was passed on 30[th] April 2021.

Investments

Apart from maintaining a prudent amount in reserves each year, most of the charity's funds are spent in the short term leaving less funds for long term investment. We maintain our good management of funds between the current and deposit accounts which has seen the rate of interest proportionately increase in this year. The opportunity of earning extra interest was achieved by prudently investing money in fixed term deposit accounts of various banks on the Flagstone Investment Platform online. Managing the level of risk by investing a maximum of £85k per deposit, protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) in the event that a financial institution goes out of business.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

The level of funds to invest on the Platform is monitored by the Finance Committee by reviewing cashflow statements reported by the Finance & Governance Manager.

Reserves Policy

The Board of Trustees has examined the charity's requirements for reserves in light of the main risks to the organisation, which has identified the need for a robust financial planning and a clearer understanding of the necessity for reserves and liquidity. The Trustees recognise that it must manage its affairs to ensure that the level of reserves and associated cash balances remain sufficient such that Standing Together will continue to operate on a sustainable basis. It is the Trustees objective that in the event that Standing together faces difficult financial circumstances, these reserves would allow us to both meet our responsibilities to grant holders and for operations to continue during a period of managed adjustment to these new circumstances.

Having assessed the current risks, the Trustees have established a policy to increase the unrestricted funds not committed or invested in tangible fixed assets held by the charity. Trustees have decided that, after an allowance for future income expectations, Standing Together should maintain cash and realisable assets sufficient to fund three months of unrestricted charitable expenditure.

Taking into consideration the overall current grant position, the reserve represents the minimum level of funds required to protect Standing Together from the potential financial impact of known business risks. In the event of Standing Together facing difficult financial circumstances these reserves would allow us to both meet our responsibilities to grant holders and for operations to continue during a period of managed adjustment to these new circumstances.

Based on the current position the reserve policy sets out that £559k in liquid and realisable assets will be held in designated reserves. The Trustees will monitor and review the level of reserves annually, in line with Charity Commission guidance. This allows £430k remaining for charity’s free reserve which can be spent on any plans of the organisation.

6. Plans for the Future

Each year, Standing Together Staff and Trustees meet to review our objectives and priorities for achieving our charitable aims and to refresh our Theory of Change.

In 2021-2022 Standing Together set out to:

• Develop our work in relation to impact measurement

• Develop our reach and impact via all forms of media and IT

• Develop our work in influencing and policy

• Demonstrate breadth of work required in health-based setting to achieve a coordinated community response and influence the DH.

• Roll out the CCR Leaders course along with a more robust training package

• Maintain a focus on the CCR in our work in relation of Domestic Homicide Reviews, criminal justice work, housing, health, faith and communities programme, harmful practices, MARAC and community based settings.

ST has achieved this and more by expanding the scope of our work in relation to community, housing and health based work. We are seeking to set clear benchmarks on the practices and services that should be core to the coordinated community response.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

7. Plans for the Future (continued)

We will further all of these aims developing, delivering and evaluating best practice models and toolkits to underpin our strategic aims and strengths within the sector.

8. Conclusion

Standing Together continue to promote the Coordinated Community Response as a framework by which we organise, plan and prioritise our work. Year on year, we build a more robust programme of work locally and nationally to both undertake and model the breadth of systemic work that is required to promote safety for survivors of domestic abuse and to hold perpetrators to account. Our challenge has always been to maintain the partnership work that we do in central London while promoting the best of what we are learning to our wider national networks. Our DVCN network has traditionally provided us with that opportunity however this year we have embraced other ways to do this through our national networks like the Domestic Abuse Housing Alliance (DAHA), Whole Housing, DHRs, Health and Criminal Justice based activities. The growth of the organisation is based on continual review and assessment of our internal resources and structures that underpin our work but also the strength of our partnerships and external relationships. We continue to build on a robust platform of experience and expertise firmly grounded and the principles and components of the coordinated community response which remains the foundation stone for all we do and how we develop.

9. Impact of Coronavirus

During the year despite the scale and spread of Covid 19 (Coronavirus) virus worldwide and the actions taken by governments affected, the pandemic did not have a significant impact on the financial position of the charity. We were able to secure additional COVID19 emergency funding and saw an increase in demand for our consultancy services. Through regular meetings the CEO and management team reporting back to the Trustee. Although the country appears to be emerging from the pandemic, the organisation continues to monitor the situation and adjust to the changing environment in an effective way so as to ensure resilient strategic and operational direction.

10. Statement of Trustees' Responsibilities

The Trustees, who are also directors of the Company for the purposes of the Companies Act, are responsible for preparing the Annual Report and financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice). Company law and the law applicable to charities in England and Wales requires the Charity Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the Charitable Company and of its incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure, for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the Trustees are required to:-

• Select suitable accounting policies and apply them consistently.

• Observe the methods and principles of the Charities SORP;

• Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent.

• State whether applicable accounting standards have been followed, subject to any material departures

• Disclosed and explained in the financial statements; and

• Prepare the financial statements on a going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the Company will continue to operate.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE (registered company no. 04283131)

BOARD OF TRUSTEES' REPORT For the year ended 31 March 2022

The Trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the Charity and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006, the Charity (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 and the provisions of the trust deed. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the Charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the

prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

• The Trustees confirm that, in the case of each of the persons who are Trustees at the date of this report, the following applies:

• So far as each Trustee is aware there is no relevant audit information (information needed by the Company's auditors in connection with preparing their report) of which the Charity's auditors are unaware; and

• Each Trustee has taken all the steps necessary to make herself/himself aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the Company's auditors are aware of that information.

Relationship with Funders

• No Trustee had any relationship with any of the main funders except as a Trustee of Standing Together

In so far as the Management Committee is aware:

• There is no relevant audit information of which the charity's auditors are unaware; and

• The Management Committee have taken all steps that they ought to have taken to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditors are aware of that information.

This Report is agreed and signed at the AGM by the Chair of Standing Together, on behalf of the Board of Trustees on 15 December 2022.

Kruti Patel Signed on 16/12/22 @ 09:03

Kruti Patel Trustee/Director

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INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2022 (registered company no. 04283131)

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Standing Together against Domestic Abuse (the 'charitable company') for the year ended 31 March 2022 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet, the Statement of Cash flows and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

• give a true and fair view of the state of the charitable company's affairs as at 31 March 2022 and of its income and expenditure for the year then ended;

• have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and

• have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006.

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditor's responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC's Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the Trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charity’s ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the Trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The other information comprises the information included in the annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor's report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information.

Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact. We have nothing to report in this regard.

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INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2022 (registered company no. 04283131)

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

• the information given in the trustees' report, which includes the directors' report prepared for the purposes of company law, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

• the directors' report included within the trustees' report has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the directors' report included within the trustees' report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

• adequate accounting records have not been kept, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

• the financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or

• certain disclosures of trustees' remuneration specified by law are not made; or

• we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit.

• the trustees were not entitled to prepare the financial statements in accordance with the small companies regime and take advantage of the small companies' exemptions in preparing the trustees' report and from the requirement to prepare a strategic report.

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees' responsibilities statement in the Trustees' Report, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the company's ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor's responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

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INDEPENDENT AUDITOR'S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2022 (registered company no. 04283131)

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed below:

• We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks that are applicable to the charitable company and determined that the most significant are the Statement of Recommended Practice 'Accounting and Reporting by Charities' (SORP 2019), in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK (FRS 102) applicable to smaller entities and the Companies Act 2006.

• We understood how the charitable company is complying with those frameworks via communication with those charged with governance, together with the review of the charity’s documented policies and procedures. The charitable company is required to comply with both company law and charity law and, based on our knowledge of its activities, we identified that the legal requirement to accurately account for restricted funds was of key significance.

• The audit team, which is experienced in the audit of charities, considered the charity’s susceptibility to material misstatement and how fraud may occur. Our considerations included the risk of management override and allocation of costs to charitable activities and restricted funds.

• Our approach was to check that the income from grants, donations and fee were properly identified and accurately disclosed, that expenditure complied with the control procedures and was appropriately charged. We also reviewed major journal adjustments along with unusual transactions and considered the identification and disclosure of related party transactions.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council's website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor's report

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken, so that we might state to the charitable company's members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor's report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report or for the opinions we have formed.

Shoaib Arshad (Senior Statutory Auditor)

For and on behalf of: Knox Cropper LLP Chartered Accountants & Statutory Auditors 65 Leadenhall Street London EC3A 2AD

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES

(incorporating the Income and Expenditure Account) For the year ended 31 March 2022

		Unrestricted	Unrestricted		Restricted		Total	Unrestricted	Unrestricted		Restricted		Total
			Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds
	Note		2022		2022		2022		2021		2021		2021
			£		£		£		£		£		£
INCOME AND ENDOWMENTS FROM:
Donations and legacies	2		165,495		-		165,495		131,727		-		131,727
Charitable activities	4		1,195,234		1,537,826		2,733,060		834,593		1,166,675		2,001,268
Investments	3		1,840		-		1,840		249		-		249
TOTAL INCOME		£	1,362,569	£	1,537,826	£	2,900,395	£	966,569	£	1,166,675	£	2,133,244
EXPENDITURE ON:
Charitable activities	5		(851,317)		(1,294,806)		(2,146,123)		(741,627)		(980,865)		(1,722,492)
TOTAL EXPENDITURE		£	**(851,317) **	£	**(1,294,806) **	£	(2,146,123)	£	(741,627)	£	(980,865)	£	(1,722,492)
NET MOVEMENTS IN FUNDS			511,252		243,020		754,272		224,942		185,810		410,752
TOTAL FUNDS AS AT 1 APRIL			478,292		322,910		801,202		253,350		137,100		390,450
TOTAL FUNDS AS AT 31 MARCH		£	989,544	£	565,930	£	1,555,474	£	478,292	£	322,910	£	801,202

All income and expenditure have arisen from continuing activities. None of the Charity's activities were acquired or discontinued during the above two financial years.

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE

BALANCE SHEET

As at 31 March 2022

(Registered Company No. 04283131)

Notes FIXED ASSETS Furniture & Equipment 10 CURRENT ASSETS Debtors 11 Cash at bank and in hand CREDITORS: amounts falling due within one year 12 NET CURRENT ASSETS TOTAL ASSETS LESS CURRENT LIABILITIES NET ASSETS FUNDS Unrestricted funds: Designated funds 14 General fund 14 Restricted Funds 14	2022 £ 2,244 565,839 1,491,307 2,057,146 (503,916) 1,553,230 1,555,474 1,555,474 £ 559,060 430,484 989,544 565,930 1,555,474	2021 £ 3,365 354,853 1,057,661
		1,412,514 (614,677)
		797,837
		801,202
		801,202
		£ 351,643 126,649
		478,292 322,910
		801,202

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions in Part 15 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies and the Financial Reporting Standard 102.

The financial statements were approved, and authorised for issue, by the Board of Trustees on 15 December 2022 and signed on their behalf by: -

Kruti Patel Signed on 16/12/22 @ 09:03

---

Kruti Patel Trustee/Director

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE

CASH FLOW STATEMENT

For the year ended 31 March 2022

Cash flows from operating activities (Deficit)/Surplus for the financial year Adjustments for: Depreciation (Decrease)/increase in Debtors Increase/(Decrease) in Creditors Investment income Cash flows from investing activities Returns on investment – interest receivable Purchase of tangible fixed assets Net increase in cash and cash equivalents Cash and cash equivalents as at 1st April Cash and cash equivalents as at 31st March Components of cash and cash equivalents April 2021 £ Cash at bank and in hand 1,057,661 £	2022 £ 754,272 1,121 (210,986) (110,761) (1,840) 431,806 1,840 - 433,646 1,057,661 1,491,307 Cashflow £ 433,646	2021 £ 410,752 1,121 (79,389) 108,713 (249)
		440,948 249 -
		441,197 616,464
		1,057,661
		April 2022 £ 1,491,307

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STANDING TOGETHER AGAINST DOMESTIC ABUSE

NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

1. ACCOUNTING POLICIES

Basis of preparation of financial statements

The financial statements of the charitable company, which is a public benefit entity under FRS 102 have been prepared under the historical cost convention, and in accordance with applicable United Kingdom accounting standards and the requirements of the Statement of Recommended Practice 'Accounting and Reporting by Charities' (FRS 102), and the Companies Act 2006.

The Trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties about the Trust's ability to continue as a going concern.

Company status

Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse is a company limited by guarantee. In the event of the Charity being wound up, the liability in respect of the guarantee is limited to £10 per member of the Charity.

Fund accounting

General funds are unrestricted funds which are available for use at the discretion of the Trustees in furtherance of the general objects of the Charity and which have not been designated for other purposes.

Designated funds comprise unrestricted funds that have been set aside by the Trustees for particular purposes. The aim and use of each designated fund is set out in the notes to the financial statements.

Restricted funds are funds which are to be used in accordance with specific restrictions imposed by donors which have been raised by the Charity for particular purposes. The cost of administering such funds are charged against the specific fund. The aim and use of each restricted fund is set out in the notes to the financial statements. Statutory grants which are given as contributions towards the Charity's core services are treated as unrestricted.

Further explanation of the nature and purpose of each fund is included in the note 14.

Incoming resources

All incoming resources are included in the Statement of Financial Activities (SOFA) which the charity is legally entitled to the income, it is probable that the amount will be received, and the amount can be quantified with reasonable accuracy.

Grants and donation received are deferred when conditions are attached, for example when they relate to a specific future period.

Resources Expended

All expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis and has been included under expense categories that aggregate all costs for allocation to activities. Support costs, which cannot be directly attributed to particular activities, have been apportioned proportionately to the direct staff costs allocated to the activities.

Irrecoverable VAT is charged against the category of resources expended for which it was incurred.

Tangible fixed assets

All tangible assets costing more than £5,000 are capitalised and stated at cost less depreciation.

Furniture and equipment 5 years on straight line

Operating leases

Rentals applicable to operating leases are charged to the Statement of Financial Activities over the period in which the cost is incurred.

Pensions

The company is part of a defined contribution pension scheme. Contributions are charged to the Statement of Financial Activities as they become payable in accordance with the rules of the scheme.

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

2. DONATIONS AND LEGACIES

2. DONATIONS AND LEGACIES
	Unrestricted			Restricted		Total		Unrestricted		Restricted		Total
		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds
		2022		2022		2022		2021		2021		2021
		£		£		£		£		£		£
Donations		165,495		-		165,495		131,727		-		131,727
	£	165,495	£	-	£	165,495	£	131,727	£	-	£	131,727
3. INVESTMENT INCOME	Unrestricted			Restricted		Total		Unrestricted		Restricted		Total
		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds
		2022		2022		2022		2021		2021		2021
		£		£		£		£		£		£
Interest receivable from
Bank interest		1,840		-		1,840		249		-		249
	£	1,840	£	-	£	1,840	£	249	£	-	£	249
4. INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES
	Unrestricted			Restricted		Total		Unrestricted		Restricted		Total
		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds
		2022		2022		2022		2021		2021		2021
		£		£		£		£		£		£
Grants & contracts for services:
Support & education to prevent domestic
violence		700,936		1,537,826		2,238,762		605,893		1,166,675		1,772,568
Membership fees		97,228		-		97,228		-		-		-
Fee income		397,070		-		397,070		228,700		-		228,700
	£	1,195,234	£	1,537,826	£	2,733,060	£	834,593	£	1,166,675	£	2,001,268

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

4. INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES (continued)

Analysis of grants & contracts for services

Birmingham City Council COVID Emergency Funding & Calypso Chelwest NHS City Bridge Trust City of Westminster Charitable Trust Comic Relief - Whole Housing Comic Relief - Recovery Fund Comic Releif - Whole Health DCMS - CJ Mentor Courts DOHSC – Pathfinder Health Project Domestic Homicide Reviews Ealing Council Erasmus (EU) Esmee Fairburn GLA Hammersmith & Fulham NHS Haringey Council Home Office - Drive Project Home Office - Emergency Fund Home Office - Harmful Practice Homeless Link Inner London Magistrates Courts Job Retention Scheme LB of Hammersmith & Fulham London Councils MacMillan Cancer Support Maidenhead Malachi Trust MHCLG – Whole Housing Approach MHCLG – Housing First & Homelessness MOJ/MOPAC - Emergency Fund National Lottery Community Fund NHS Trust Development Oak Foundation Southall Black Sisters Project Treebeard Trust Tri Borough Funding Vivid Homes Westminster City Council Winston Churchill Memorial

Unrestricted Restricted Total Unrestricted Restricted Total Funds Funds Funds Funds Funds Funds 2022 2022 2022 2021 2021 2021 £ £ £ £ £ £ - 37,440 37,440 - - - 132,571 - 132,571 - 5,000 5,000 - 50,250 50,250 - 49,000 49,000 - 60,000 60,000 - 68,490 68,490 - - - - 12,690 12,690 - 5,380 5,380 - 35,000 35,000 - - - - 38,200 38,200 - 62,265 62,265 - - - - 442,100 442,100 - - - - - - - 58,664 58,664 173,333 - 173,333 146,372 - 146,372 55,655 - 55,655 55,655 - 55,655 - 12,842 12,842 - - - - - - - 25,000 25,000 - 204,759 204,759 - - - - 66,000 66,000 - 66,000 66,000 49,855 - 49,855 49,855 - 49,855 34,840 - 34,840 - - - - - - 112,134 - 112,134 - 25,182 25,182 - - - - - - - 48,375 48,375 - - - - 5,000 5,000 4,245 - 4,245 33,600 - 33,600 - 61,000 61,000 - 51,000 51,000 - 73,497 73,497 - 80,565 80,565 - 32,490 32,490 - - - - - - - 30,000 30,000 - 20,000 20,000 - 245,000 245,000 - - - - 69,711 69,711 - - - - 51,418 51,418 - 99,871 99,871 - 120,329 120,329 - 64,000 64,000 - - - - 115,500 115,500 - 77,000 77,000 - 6,000 6,000 - - - - 15,000 15,000 - 15,000 15,000 250,437 - 250,437 208,277 2,160 210,437 - 43,000 43,000 - - - - 41,250 41,250 - 3,173 3,173 - - - - 9,900 9,900

700,936 £ 1,537,826 £ 2,238,762 £ 605,893 £ 1,166,675 £ 1,772,568 £

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

5. RESOURCES EXPENDED

5a. Cost of charitable activities (current year as at 31st March 2022)

Projects: Community Criminal Justice DHRs Health Housing & Homelessness MARAC Training Other charitable projects Total as at 31 March 2022 5b. Cost of charitable activities (prior year as at 31st March 2021) Projects: Community Criminal Justice DHRs Health Housing & Homelessness MARAC Training Other charitable projects Total as at 31 March 2021 Resources expended include: Auditors’ remuneration:	Staff Other direct Support Total costs costs costs 2022 £ £ £ £ 129,336 29,007 13,291 171,634 254,458 146,333 34,376 435,167 79,301 77,964 1,057 158,322 173,069 34,048 18,352 225,469 431,137 99,977 26,234 557,348 245,095 3,636 7,058 255,789 20,928 32,621 2,516 56,065 113,640 143,240 29,449 286,329
	1,446,964 £ 566,826 £ 132,333 £ 2,146,123 £
	Staff Other direct Support Total costs costs costs 2021 £ £ £ £ 62,493 3,114 6,208 71,815 104,439 760 2,076 107,275 107,462 56,809 4,694 168,965 236,860 5,381 22,033 264,274 348,418 175,850 35,028 559,296 261,957 1,063 19,668 282,688 1,507 11,156 1,854 14,517 168,492 50,677 34,493 253,662
	1,291,628 £ 304,810 £ 126,054 £ 1,722,492 £
	2022 2021 6,000 £ 5,000 £

Details of resources expended are given in notes 6, 7 and 8

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

6. OTHER DIRECT COSTS

6. OTHER DIRECT COSTS
Partner and stakeholder costs(see note 6a) Consultancy and Domestic Homicide Review Associate costs Training and learning services External evaluation Other direct costs	Total 2022 £ 177,133 207,575 82,253 10,000 89,864 566,825 £	Total 2021 £ 122,589 103,295 33,573 24,983 20,370
		304,810 £

Included in other direct costs is expenditure of £Nil (2020: £129,861) incurred on data collection, sharing learning and national good practice and dissemination relating to the Pathfinder Heath Project.

6a. Payments to Partners and Stakeholders:

6a. Payments to Partners and Stakeholders:
(i) Domestic Abuse Housing Association Partners: Peabody Gentoo (ii) Homeless Link (iii) Solace Women's Aid (iv) Tampon Tax Project Total partners and stakeholder costs	2022 2022 2021 £ £ £ - 37,500 - 37,500 - - 38,000 139,133 177,133 £			2021 £ 75,000 15,877 31,711 -
		177,133 £		122,588 £

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

7. SUPPORT COSTS

Premises and Office costs Communication & IT Legal & professional fees Auditor’s fee 8. STAFF COSTS AND NUMBERS Gross salaries Social security Pension costs Other staff costs	Total 2022 £ 102,164 16,154 8,015 6,000 132,333 £ Total 2022 £ 1,240,267 95,791 43,128 67,779 1,446,965 £	Total 2021 £ 91,063 17,726 12,267 5,000
		126,056 £
		Total 2021 £ 1,117,123 108,292 44,615 21,599
		1,291,629 £

The average weekly number of employees calculated as full time equivalents during the period was:

Key Management Team Faith & VAWG Communities Criminal Justice project Domestic Homicide Review (DHR) Health Housing MARAC Other Projects The average number of employees (head counts) during the period was:	Number 1 2.8 5.1 3.9 8.6 9.5 6.7 2.8 40.4 40	Number 2 1.5 2.6 2 5.1 8.4 8 2
		31.6
		34.6

One employee (2021: One) received remuneration of more than £60,000; between £60,001 to £70,000.

During the year, key management received an aggregate salary and benefits of £75,879 (2021: £125,674)

9. TRUSTEES REMUNERATION AND BENEFITS

During the year, no members of the Board of Trustees received any remuneration (2021 : £NIL) No members of the Board of Trustees received reimbursement of expenses (2021 : £NIL)

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

10. FIXED ASSETS Cost At 1 April 2021 At 31 March 2022 Depreciation At 1 April 2021 Charge for the year At 31 March 2022 Net book value At 31 March 2022 At 31 March 2021 11. DEBTORS Due within one year Trade debtors Prepayments Accrued income Other debtors 12. CREDITORS: AMOUNTS FALLING DUE WITHIN ONE YEAR Due within one year Deferred income VAT creditors Social security and other taxes Trade Creditors Accruals & creditors	Furniture and equipment £ 5,607 5,607 2,242 1,121 3,363 2,244 £ 3,365 £ Total 2022 £ 237,229 18,964 293,160 16,486 565,839 £ Total 2022 £ 174,035 57,339 7,191 90,376 174,975 503,916 £	Total £ 5,607
		5,607
		2,242 1,121
		3,363
		2,244 **£ **
		3,365 _£ _
		Total 2021 £ 246,653 4,088 90,531 13,581
		354,853 £
		Total 2021 £ 286,586 93,303 26,200 - 208,588
		614,677 £

13. TAXATION

The Charity is a registered charity, and therefore is not liable for income tax or corporation tax on income derived from its charitable activities, as it falls within the various exemptions available, to registered charities.

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

14. STATEMENT OF FUNDS

14a Statement of Funds (current year as at 31 March 2022)

DESIGNATED FUNDS Designated Fund DVCN Funds Total as at 31 March 2022 RESTRICTED FUNDS Birmingham City Council Calypso Browning Chelwest NHS City Bridge Trust Comic Relief - Whole Housing Comic Relief - Whole Health DCMS - CJ Mentor Courts Erasmus (EU) GLA Hammersmith & Fulham NHS Home Office - Drive Project Home Office - Harmful Practice Homeless Link Inner London Magistrates Courts LBof Hammersmith & Fulham London Councils MacMillan Cancer Support Maidenhead Malachi Trust MHCLG – Whole Housing Approach MHCLG – Housing First & Homelessness National Lottery Community Fund NHS Trust Development Oak Foundation RBKC - CSE Priorities Fund Southall Black Sisters Project Treebeard Trust Tri Borough Funding Vivid Homes Westminster City Council Winston Churchill Memorial Total as at 31 March 2022 SUMMARY OF FUNDS Designated Funds General Funds Restricted Funds Total as at 31 March 2022	Transfers and Brought Incoming Resources Investment Carried Forward Resources Expended Gains/(losses) Forward £ £ £ £ £ 350,215 - - 207,437 557,652 1,428 - (20) - 1,408
	351,643 £ - £ £(20) 207,437 £ 559,060 £
	£ £ £ £ £ - 37,440 (8,717) - 28,723 5,000 - (5,000) - - - 50,250 (48,771) - 1,479 7,436 60,000 (51,842) - 15,594 6,767 5,380 (12,147) - - - 62,265 (52,615) - 9,650 - 442,100 (397,689) - 44,411 47 12,842 (11,543) - 1,346 - 204,759 (97,776) - 106,983 4,580 66,000 (65,104) - 5,476 - - 25,922 - 25,922 - 25,182 (19,525) - 5,657 18,616 - (18,616) - - 4,928 - (664) - 4,264 13,799 61,000 (47,370) - 27,429 3,977 73,497 (69,137) - 8,337 - 32,490 (32,490) - - 28,078 - - - 28,078 - 20,000 (20,000) - - 124,424 - (124,424) - - 26,368 99,871 (65,126) - 61,113 - 64,000 (16,074) - 47,926 54,672 115,500 (100,267) - 69,905 12,158 - - - 12,158 - 6,000 (6,000) - - - 15,000 (1,908) - 13,092 2,160 - 17,908 - 20,068 - 43,000 (19,205) - 23,795 - 41,250 (36,726) - 4,524 9,900 - (9,900) - -
	322,910 1,537,826 (1,294,806) - 565,930
	Transfers and Brought Incoming Resources Investment Carried Forward Resources Expended Gains/(losses) Forward £ £ £ £ £ 351,643 - (20) 207,437 559,060 126,649 1,362,569 (851,297) (207,437) 430,484
	478,292 1,362,569 (851,317) - 989,544 322,910 1,537,826 (1,294,806) - 565,930
	801,202 2,900,395 (2,146,123) - 1,555,474

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

14. STATEMENT OF FUNDS (continued)

The Designated funds are intended to enable the charity and its partners to conduct their activities fully, in the event of a loss of funding, so that an orderly winding up of its projects may be achieved.

14b Statement of Funds (prior year as at 31 March 2021)

14b Statement of Funds (prior year as at 31 March 2021)
DESIGNATED FUNDS Designated Fund DVCN Funds Total as at 31 March 2021 RESTRICTED FUNDS Calyso Browning Chelwest NHS City Bridge Trust City of Westminster Charitable Trust Comic Relief - Whole Housing Comic Relief - Recovery Fund DOHSC – Pathfinder Health Project Erasmus (EU) Esmee Fairburn Hammersmith & Fulham NHS Home Office - Harmful Practice Homeless Link Inner London Magistrates Courts LB of Hammersmith & Fulham London Councils Maidenhead Malachi Trust MHCLG – Whole Housing Approach MHCLG – Housing First & Homelessness MOJ/MOPAC - Emergency Fund National Lottery Community Fund Oak Foundation RBKC - CSE Priorities Fund Treebeard Trust Tri Borough Funding Westminster City Council Winston Churchill Memorial	Transfers and Brought Incoming Resources Investment Carried Forward Resources Expended Gains/(losses) Forward £ £ £ £ £ 200,000 - - 150,215 350,215 1,448 - (20) - 1,428
	201,448 £ - £ £(20) 150,215 £ 351,643 £
	Transfers and Brought Incoming Resources Investment Carried Forward Resources Expended Gains/(losses) Forward £ £ £ £ £ - 5,000.00 - - 5,000 - 49,000.00 (49,000) - - - 68,490.00 (61,054) - 7,436 - 12,690.00 (12,690) - - 12,551.00 35,000.00 (40,784) - 6,767 - 38,200.00 (38,200) - - - 58,664.00 (58,664) - - 12,062.00 - (12,015) - 47 - 25,000.00 (25,000) - - - 66,000.00 (61,420) - 4,580 20,438.00 - (20,438) - - 32,241.00 48,375.00 (62,000) - 18,616 - 5,000.00 (72) - 4,928 11,869.00 51,000.00 (49,070) - 13,799 3,412.00 80,565.00 (80,000) - 3,977 - 30,000.00 (1,922) - 28,078 33,307.00 245,000.00 (153,883) - 124,424 - 69,711.00 (69,711) - - - 51,418.00 (51,418) - - - 120,329.00 (93,961) - 26,368 - 77,000.00 (22,328) - 54,672 11,220.00 - 938 - 12,158 - 15,000.00 (15,000) - - - 2,160.00 - - 2,160 - 3,173.00 (3,173) - - - 9,900.00 - - 9,900
	137,100 £ 1,166,675 £ £ (980,865) - £ 322,910 £

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

14. STATEMENT OF FUNDS (continued)

14b Statement of Funds (prior year as at 31 March 2021)

14b Statement of Funds (prior year as at 31 March 2021)
SUMMARY OF FUNDS Designated Funds General Funds Restricted Funds Total as at 31 March 2021	Transfers and Brought Incoming Resources Investment Carried Forward Resources Expended Gains/(losses) Forward £ £ £ £ £ 201,448 - (20) 150,215 351,643 51,902 966,569 (741,607) (150,215) 126,649
	253,350 966,569 (741,627) - 478,292 137,100 1,166,675 (980,865) - 322,910
	390,450 £ 2,133,244 £ £(1,722,492) - £ 801,202 £

The Designated funds are intended to enable the charity and its partners to conduct their activities fully, in the event of a loss of funding, so that an orderly winding up of its projects may be achieved.

15. ANALYSIS OF NET ASSETS BETWEEN FUNDS

15a. Analysis of net assets between funds (current year as at 31 March 2022)

	Unrestricted Funds	Unrestricted Funds
	Designated			General		Restricted		Total
		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds
		£		£		£		£
Fixed assets		-		2,244		-		2,244
Net Current assets		559,060		428,240		565,930		1,553,230
Total as at 31 March 2022	£	559,060	£	430,484	£	565,930	£	1,555,474

15b. Analysis of net assets between funds (prior year as at 31 March 2021)

	Unrestricted Funds	Unrestricted Funds
		Designated		General		Restricted		Total
		Funds		Funds		Funds		Funds
		£		£		£		£
Fixed assets		-		3,365		-		3,365
Net Current assets		351,643		123,284		322,913		797,840
Total as at 31 March 2021	£	351,643	£	126,649	£	322,913	£	801,205

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NOTES TO THE FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

For the year ended 31 March 2022

16. OTHER FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS

At 31 March 2021 the Company had commitments under non-cancellable operating leases (all for land and buildings) as set out below:

Operating leases which expired: within one year within two to five years The cost of operating lease during the year was as follows: Office lease charges for the year	Total 2022 £ 45,403 - 45,403 £ 45,403 £	Total 2021 £ 44,631 44,631
		89,262 £
		44,631 £

17. PENSION COMMITMENTS

Pension costs in note 8 relate to payments made to a defined contribution scheme. The charitable company's liability is limited to making the payments due to scheme on timely basis. The liability as at 31 March 2022 is £10,240 (2021: £7,784)

18. RELATED PARTY DISCLOSURE

There were no related party transactions, other than those disclosed in note 8 and 9.

19. SECTION 37 STATEMENT

Grant aid of £78,977 was reacived from London Councils in the financial year ended 31st March 2022. The purpose of the grant is to introduce and adopt established set of standands and an accreditation process in response to domestic abuse within the housing sector.

The following table illustrates what the money was awarded for and that it has been used for these purposes:

Grant Awarded Costs Staff Costs Rent Running costs Total Costs Underspent in the year Underspent from last year Total underspend at the year end Other Direct Costs	2022 £ 78,977 £ 51,323 12,837 2,000 2,977 69,137 £ 9,840 3,977 13,817 £	2021 £ 80,565 £
		55,000 20,023 2,000 2,977
		80,000 £
		565 3,412
		3,977 £

The sum of £5,479.75 was witheld in respect of monitoring information not submitted at year end. There was a total underspend of £9,840 which included underspend on staff costs of £3,677, travel expenses of £3,725 and material development cost of £2,438. (2021:£3,977)

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