Redesigning services for victims and survivors with MOPAC

Rob: Thrilled to have you here today to talk about the really meaningful project that we’ve been doing around redesigning services for victims and survivors of sexual violence. What was the challenge that you were facing before we started this project?

Louise: Really, we had services that were under massive strain and a real need for us to work with those, the providers of those services, to have a fresh look, really, at how the services are delivered in London. What can we collectively do to try and kind of tackle those challenges? Bearing in mind the constraints that we face with regards to the funding that we face. And that’s all in the context of just pooling outcomes, really, isn’t it? For victim survivors in the criminal justice system, it’s about 6%, 6% of rape reports where there’s a successful prosecution. About two thirds of victims withdraw from the process before they reach court because the process itself is so traumatising.

Rob: So, Jain, can you tell us more about the four things that Gate One were brought in to deliver?

Jain: So the first one was to develop a demand and capacity model. The second thing we were interested in was to end up with a set of service recommendations. We wanted a commissioning model which Gate One were able to develop for us. And the last thing we focused in on was delivery and that involved working a lot with our providers to ensure we are aiming to future-proof what it is that we want to end up with in London, Gate One were definitely the best consultants that I’ve had the experience of working with. Your approach to going away and learning about intersectionality really gave me confidence. The way that you were dealing with our providers and our other stakeholders, you really gave us what we needed as clients. I felt like we were a team. I’ve enjoyed it from start to finish.

Jonny: It’s worth saying it’s felt pretty unique from our perspective as well. Working through issues as complex as the service provision for victims of sexual violence, it’s not easy getting under the skin of important things like understanding intersectionality, understanding the challenges service providers have.

Jain: And Bethany, you were key to the delivery element of the work that we were doing.

Bethany: Yeah, the victim survivor engagement was a huge part of the work at the start. The biggest focus for us to be victim led and not designing a service that is talking only with providers or the senior leadership of the organisations. We’re talking to victim survivors and engaging with not just the ones with the loudest voices and the groups that are easiest to reach. We’re actually going above and beyond to be more inclusive and thinking about how can we reach people that normally aren’t included in consultations, how we can really broaden that reach and have the diversity of the victim profile reflected in who we’re talking to for the first kind of six months, that’s really the question we focused on answering. Doing all of that work, all those interviews, all of the surveys, all of the focus groups helped us get a good understanding of what victim survivors need.

So working with the providers on what we can do now to help us get set up for the future, but also where we can start seeing benefits for their staff or for victim survivors. So working together, piloting, trying new things together about where they could do something more efficiently, listening to the victims survivors feedback and thinking, where can we start to help address that need in the near term rather than waiting for the new contract to come next year?

Jonny: We’re talking about trying to redesign the service provision and that’s like, it’s so complicated. Bethany’s done an amazing job leading this piece of work but helping us think about and really, really understand what do victim survivors of sexual violence need?

Jain: It’s just not an easy topic and you are actually hearing about people’s experiences and I think you handled it so brilliantly.

Bethany: Thank you.

Jain: So I just want to thank you because you really drew out a lot of key information for us that will shape what we’re doing.

Bethany: Yeah and keeping them informed of what’s coming as well. I think people have really valued that. Some consultations with victims in the past unfortunately don’t always go back to tell the person, this is what you contributed to and I think there’s immediate impact for those over 100 victim survivors that we have worked with, just feeling like they’ve done something and had a voice in this.

Rob: Jonny, tell us more about the wider service design and how it built on the engagement.

Jonny: Once we had done that first phase of trying to understand what the need was, we worked very, very closely with providers. A workshop initially like blue sky thinking, what could it look like? What do we want? How could we meet this need?

Louise: For us, that was also really, really important alongside the victim survivor engagement was like doing this meaningfully with our providers in terms of that co-design and co-production because we are entering into a process that will represent significant change for them in terms of how we will potentially commission these services in future. So it was really, really important to us that this was something that they were actively involved in from the beginning.

Jonny: It was great to have you guys in the room as well, to have commissioners and service providers working together to redesign the landscape. We came up with some recommendations, which is where we underpinned all of that work with a demand and capacity model, bringing together all of various different data sets and then a projected model as well of what do we expect demand to be under various different scenarios? You then look at capacity and demand and you say, okay, so what can we do and what choices can we make for victim survivors within the funding envelope we’ve got. So the service design process was a combination of that qualitative design and the quantitative.

Louise: I think that is an incredibly powerful tool for us because we’re obviously always engaged in conversations, both with the Mayor’s office but also the Ministry of Justice about funding for tackling violence against women girls. We took a colleague from the Ministry of Justice through that model and it was quite stark, the kind of reaction showing them. This is what we think might happen with demand over the next few years. If we see police reports go up by x, or in fact, the proportion of victims that they’re referring into these services go up by x, this is what the shortfall looks like and it’s a very, very, very powerful tool for us in terms of that national lobbying work that we do.

Jain: I do think this is a point of innovation because I don’t believe this has been done anywhere else and actually it will help other areas.

Rob: So can you tell us more about the value that this piece of work created for MOPAC but most importantly for victims and survivors?

Louise: We’ve been doing a lot of work over the last couple of years to look at kind of how we can sort of build on and further improve our commissioning practise. The modelling, for example, does kind of start taking us in a direction that we haven’t necessarily been able to go in as much before. It’s helping us further embed the way we do kind of user-centred design. That’s some of the immediate value to us. It’s been really positive as well in terms of, as I say, the co-designed work with the partners in terms of the victim survivors. I’m hopeful that we will end up in a position where we have a service that kind of reduces the kind of potential postcode lottery aspects that exist currently that improve the equitable access of provision across London, improve the resilience of those services, increase their reach and ease some of the pressures on the system.

Jain: Another impact is it’s strengthened our relationship with our providers and that’s really, really important. We’re fortunate in that we’ve done the hard work to build good relationships with our providers and this has actually augmented.

Rob: That and especially with the collaborative leadership that we’re starting to see really come through in that group. The value of them being able to realise that they’re experiencing some of the same challenges and problems is a really helpful process.

Louise: Helped us as well identify some areas where we can, as a commissioner, potentially be really helping the sector in terms of things that we could be investing in, in sort of like leadership training and things.

Rob: So what’s next for MOPAC?

Jain: We have to start moving now on all the work that we’ve amassed over a year to try and put it into action. So that is a big thing. There is obviously wider work on victim services that we are actually doing as well.

Louise: Yeah we are looking at how we can better integrate the support for victims across services and across the criminal justice system. Everything we can be doing to kind of improve a victim’s experience as they kind of go through the criminal justice system and recover from the impact of what they’ve experienced.

Rob: So what a great opportunity to reflect together on a project that I think collectively we should be really proud of. So thank you so much for joining us to talk about this more today. Thank you.