Women's network e-bulletin

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These e-bulletins aim to keep you updated on relevant developments for the women’s sector, including the work of Clinks and our partners. We will send these out quarterly, with additional updates when there is urgent or important information.

We are committed to supporting and representing our members who provide specialist support to women, and following the merger with Women’s Breakout we continue to seek funding to allow us to develop our service. We will let you know of any progress on this, but in the interim will strive to provide support from our existing resources.

The next women’s network meeting is today, Tuesday, 8th May and will include:

• A presentation from Rachel Kinsella, Lecturer in the Policy, Evaluation and Research Unit (PERU) at Manchester Metropolitan University on  what counts as evidence, and challenges and possible solutions for evidencing outcomes.
• A consultation session on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Women in the Penal System’s enquiry into women and sentencing.
• An update from Clinks on criminal justice and the voluntary sector.
• Updates from partners on key campaigns and projects.

If you would like to receive presentations from this meeting, please email adriana.thursby@clinks.org.

News from our last women’s network meeting in London, February
We held our quarterly network forum on 20th February in London. During the meeting we gave a policy and campaign update from Clinks work, as well as from others in the sector. You can download the slides here. Rebecca Gomm gave a presentation on evidence, available here. We then ran a consultation on what a good probation service for women would look like, discussing examples of good partnership and co-location. Notes from the meeting are available here.

APPG inquiry on sentencing of women
The APPG on Women in the Penal System is conducting an inquiry into the sentencing of women. The aims of this inquiry are two-fold: to reveal the issues around sentencing that inhibit the use of non-custodial solutions and to encourage and enable the magistracy to avoid sending women to prison. Deadline for submissions is 14th May. Clinks will be responding and if you have anything you would like to raise, please contact Nicola Drinkwater at nicola.drinkwater@clinks.org.

Goverment domestic abuse consultation
The government is consulting on how to prevent and respond to domestic abuse, and recognise that women in contact with the criminal justice system are likely to have these experiences. The deadline for responses is the 31st May and Clinks will be submitting a brief response focusing on the questions that specifically relate to women in contact with the CJS. If there is anything that you would like Clinks to raise, please contact Nicola Drinkwater at nicola.drinkwater@clinks.org.

Inquest report on women’s deaths in prisons
Inquest have released Still Dying on the Inside: Examining Deaths in Women’s Prisons. The report concludes there has been a lack of action from successive governments and puts forward recommendations to redirect resources from criminal justice to community-based services and close women’s prisons. Download the report here.

Majority of tampon tax goes to generic providers
Viv Hayes of the Women’s Resource Centre says the Tampon Tax is not going to specialist women’s organisations, as was intended. Only two in 10 charities awarded funding from the government’s  tampon tax are specialist women’s organisations. See Guardian article here.

Meetings with Minister Phillip Lee: The women’s strategy and women’s community services
Clinks co-ordinated a letter to Minister Phillip Lee, who has responsibility for women in the justice system at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in November. Thank you to all who agreed to co-sign it. Following the letter we were invited to meet the Minister on 6th February, which we attended alongside our members Women in Prison, Together Women’s Project, North Wales Women’s Centre, Changing Lives and Brighton Women’s Centre. The meeting was a positive one. We discussed the challenges with probation services for women, and the need for the forthcoming Female Offender Strategy being developed by the Ministry of Justice to focus on community responses to women.

The Minister made two requests for information at our meeting. He wanted to hear from those on the frontline about your experiences of co-location of health and other services in women’s centres/projects and suggested models of probation provision. For a copy of the information we submitted on this please email nicola.drinkwater@clinks.org.

BAME women and the Lammy Review
Clinks facilitated a group of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) led organisations with an interest in or who provide women specific services to take part in a roundtable discussions with the Ministry of Justice women offenders team on the needs of BAME women in the criminal justice system. This was in response to concerns raised by the sector following the publication of the Lammy Review that the needs of BAME women and issues of intersectionality be properly considered in the forthcoming Female Offenders’ Strategy. We will continue to facilitate dialogue between the MoJ and the sector on this issue.

Calls for information
VAWG services: Members have told us that they have experience of VAWG services turning away women who have a conviction or are in contact with the criminal justice system. We would like to provide more detail to the Advisory Board for Female Offenders and the Ministry of Justice about where this is happening and why. If you have any information about this could you please send it to Kate Aldous at kate.aldous@clinks.org.
Evidencing impact: During our consultation meeting with former members of Women’s Breakout, you told us that one of the challenges you are experiencing is evidencing your impact and monitoring outcomes of your work. We are seeking examples of good practice to share with members. If have a successful approach, we would love to hear about it. Contact Kate Aldous at kate.aldous@clinks.org.

Partner updates

Agenda

• Joint Commission with AVA (Against Violence and Abuse) on complex needs and sexual and domestic violence: call for evidence is closed. The Commission will produce a report by the end of the year.
• Research into place based approaches for women is under way and will report in the summer.
• Mental Health Units (use of force) Bill - The Bill has passed its second reading in the Commons and has gone into report stage.
• Mental Health Act Review: submitted evidence about the particular experiences of women in detention. Interim report due in the spring.
• Co-chairing the Women’s Mental Health Taskforce – with the Minster, Jackie Doyle Price.
• If people want to keep up to date with Agenda’s work, please do sign up for the monthly newsletter.

Women’s Resource Centre

• A fair deal for women campaign – seven asks for government including those relating to safety, support and justice; equality and human rights; and health.
• Times Up initiative and fund – advice, support and signposting; legal and policy work; advocacy and prevention. Grant making will be open in the spring 2018.
• Join as a member.

Women in Prison

• 2020 Ambition campaign – a public awareness and lobbying campaign with the objective of building a united and loud voice leading to the significant reduction in the women’s prison population to 2,020 by 2020. See their supporters briefing  for more information.
• Asking all 2020 supporters to contact their MP to call on their influence over the development of the Ministry of Justice’s Female Offenders’ strategy.
• To pledge your support for the 2020 Ambition, find out more about how you and the women you support can get involved, and to use our online lobbying tool to contact your MP go to www.WIP2020.org.uk
• As part of this campaign Women in Prison wants to build a louder and more positive voice on Twitter to promote the vital and excellent work of women’s support services and Women’s Centres. Please follow Women in Prison - @WIP_live and use the hashtags #2020by2020 or #WomensJusticeStrat so they can retweet – with stats, case studies, photos from your service showing policymakers the amazing work that you all do and how crucial it is to invest in community women’s services.
• For more on WIP’s campaigning contact the Policy & Campaigns Manager Claire Cain – claire.cain@womeninprison.org.uk.

Prison Reform Trust

• Recall: analysis of local and national data on women recalled to prison and the need to reduce this.
• Training:  evaluation of a small pilot training programme on responding to the needs of women in the criminal justice system.
• Imprisonment of mothers: Dissemination of the new information resources produced by Dr Shona Minson.
• Impact of imprisonment on children: Sarah Beresford’s report for PRT (forthcoming) on the impacts on children.  
• Foreign national women: Highlighting the problems faced by foreign national and trafficked women in prison (with Hibiscus).
• Influencing work: Providing evidence to the Welsh Affairs Committee inquiry into prisons in Wales, Domestic Abuse Bill consultation (when published) and role of the proposed Commissioner – on the basis of our briefing and the summit that informed it. Continuing to press for publication of an ambitious community-based whole-of-government strategy on women in the criminal justice system.
• Local Data Resource – to highlight local variations in women’s imprisonment and support local efforts to tackle this.

Talk to us!
If you have suggestions for topics you would like covered at our network meetings, information you want to share in the newsletter, or good practice for a case study or presentation get in touch: kate.aldous@clinks.org or telephone 020 7383 0966.

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