Grants and Contracts
New Funding
The PCC was awarded an additional £677,612.69 from the Ministry of Justice in new
funding to support victims of domestic abuse and sexual violence.
In addition to the above the MOJ have allocated a further £130,000 for core DA and SV
services within the OPCC.
£487,405.40 has been secured from the Home Office for programmes designed to tackle
domestic abuse perpetrator behaviours whilst ensuring impacted victims receive support.
The funding will support the provision of the ‘My Time’ and ‘Men & Masculinities’
programmes who work with standard to medium risk perpetrators across West Mercia.
An additional amount of £103,978.60 was awarded towards the rollout of the DRIVE
programme in Herefordshire; designed for high risk DA perpetrators, total new award for
DA perpetrator provision for 22/23 £591,384
£15,000 of this will fund completion of a Children and Young People’s (CYP) consultation
which will seek to identify gaps and develop service provision around domestic abuse
and healthy relationships. Harmful sexual behaviour, teenage relationship abuse, child to
parent violence and will engage with young people to ensure their voice is heard in what
services work for them.
Putting Victims and Survivors First
Sexual Violence
WMRASAC have been awarded £1,530,959 for 22/23 to fund services covering sexual
violence including £100,000 to provide immediate crisis support to reduce and reopen
the counselling waiting list that was closed on 30th June 2021. WMRASAC have had
408 referrals in Q1 of 2022/23.
AXIS have been awarded £222,609 of funding to provide 6 additional ISVA roles.
CSE
WMRSASC £305,000 annually for the provision of the Branch and Purple Leaf Early
Intervention and Prevention services, offering support to those at risk of, or experiencing
Child Sexual Exploitation.
Branch CSE service received 49 new victim referrals to support services in Q1 of 22/23
the majority from Shropshire; a notable increase on previous referral ratios. Of 143
currently in support, 107 have additional mental health needs, demonstrative of the
provider narrative that they are holding increasing CYP mental health complexity, with
clients experiencing difficulty receiving statutory support. The average time in service for
a Branch client is just under a year.
Purple Leaf (Early intervention and prevention CSE service) also received significant
increase in requests for schools’ workshops and 1:1 from Shropshire during Q1 and
delivered 215 sessions across West Mercia (Telford exception) to 605 children and 9
teacher awareness sessions to 106 people. The most popular sessions requested
remain sexuality /gender expression and consent but pornography is raised by the CYP’s
in nearly every session, particularly when discussing sexual objectification. 2 staff will be
working on developing a specific pornography related module over the summer which
will be added to the available session catalogue. Emerging issues – ‘Incel’ ideology
noted in sessions and impact of pornography. Youngest CYP referral for Purple Leaf 1:1
was aged 5 due to pornography access.
Purple Leaf Shropshire resource is currently 0.6 FTE; demand and Shropshire capacity
for school bookings now full, further schools’ requests to go on a waiting list. To be
tracked this quarter as demand could outweigh capacity. Purple Leaf 1:1 support is in
demand with a waiting list of 5 currently.
£155,161 of funding was provided to NHS England for the Regional Paediatric Sexual
Assault Service (SAS) which is a region wide service providing expert care for children
and young people who have disclosed sexual assault or who may have been subject to
sexual abuse. The CYP Sexual Assault Referral Service in West Mercia is
delivered by Mountain Healthcare with all cases being seen at Horizon SARC,
Ida Rd, Walsall. There were 51 referrals from West Mercia in Qtr. 4 to the CYP
SARS, of those 35 did not have a face to face appointment,11 had a forensic
examination and 5 were not examined forensically. All children and young people
attending the SARS are offered counselling services and / or access to an
Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA).
Domestic Abuse
The IDVA service was recommissioned in partnership with Worcestershire County
Council with the new contract commencing April 2022 for 3 years, awarded to West
Mercia Women’s Aid (WMWA) with funding of £1,081,259 base contract over 3 years.
Q1 of 22/23 shows increasing year on year demand for the service with 563 referrals
(hospital data included) compared to 484 for the comparable period 21/22. Hopsital IDVA
referrals have increased from last quarter as a result of being allowed on sites again.
Some service exit outcomes around ‘improved health and wellbeing’ have decreased
with provider expressing this is impacted by the client’s ability to manage stress and
mental health due to long waiting lists for mental health support.
The new specialist inclusive IDVA’s have been improving service accessibility by working
in partnership with Age Concern doing ‘drop in clinic’s’, Army Welfare, and eating
disorder clinics. The new YPIDVA roles are embedding, conducting awareness sessions on new roles with partners and received a total of 25 referrals for Apr-Jun 22.
£41,200 was awarded to West Mercia Women’s Aid to run a Children and Young
People’s project. The funding is for Children and Young People’s Workers to engage
with 5 – 19-year olds identified as at risk of suffering significant negative outcomes as a
result of domestic abuse within their family / home environment. The YPIDVA has seen
25 referrals from across West Mercia in Q1 of 22/23. The service was started in Q2 of
21/22 and saw 5 referrals and has grown steadily since.
Drive is run in both Herefordshire and Worcestershire – the total cost of the programme
in its entirety is £579,384.36. (This is made up of contributions from the PCC and other
partner agencies). DRIVE is a RESPECT accredited high-risk perpetrator programme
(run in both Herefordshire and Worcestershire by Cranstoun) which aims to reduce the
number of child and adult victims of Domestic Abuse. It is a whole system approach,
which uses an intensive individual case management intervention alongside a multiagency
response. Drive challenges and supports perpetrators to change their behaviour
and works with partner agencies (like the police and social services) to disrupt abuse.
When looking at the referral data we see during Q1 of 22/23 referrals into DRIVE and
IDVA where 37 and 38 respectively. When comparing this to Q1 of the previous year it is
a moderate decline down from 49 and 53 respectively, but has been as a result of staff
vacancies within the service.
The PCC has provided funding for two DA support Officers, one in Worcestershire and
the other in Hereford at a cost of £31,870 each the total cost being £63,740. These roles
provided support to the Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Panels in Worcestershire and
Herefordshire as part of the DRIVE project.
The VAL were awarded £33,250 in 2021-22 which was carried over into 2022-23 for the
Domestic Abuse proactive intervention project, to enhance the existing VAL provision
and increase the opportunities to proactively reach out to DA victims and survivors who
have not been referred for support and provide them with a point of contact through their
cope and recovery and criminal justice journeys.
Victim Advice Line & Victim Support
The VAL was awarded £820,515 for 2022-23. During Q1 of 22/23 the VAL worked with
4441 victims of crime. This is slight increase on Q1 of 21/22 which saw the VAL work
with 4164 victims of crime.
Victim Support have been awarded £481,474 for the current financial year. Quarter 1 of
22/23 saw 393 victims referred into Victim Support. When comparing this data to Q1 of
21/22 it is a slight decrease down from 423 referrals.
Q1 also saw the launch of the PCCs Hate Crime grant round this was awarded to Victim
Support an £55,197 investment to deliver an engagement and awareness programme to
increase public awareness of and confidence in reporting hate-related crimes and
incidents. Due to the recent launch of the project data is not yet available.
Road Peace have been awarded £73,518 for the provision of support to victims.
RoadPeace is working within the Victim Advice Line, to deliver a new and innovative
support and information service for victims of serious injury collisions, piloting in
Shropshire, working closely with local police. Since the project launched there has been
109 referrals, which was up 1 since the previous month. Of these referrals, 48 have been
bereaved, 38 have been injured (or carers for the injured), and 23 have been witnesses.
In terms of support provided – 27 have been referred to a befriender, 19 to the local
support group, 16 to the legal panel, 13 have been sent guides, 8 have received
casework assistance and there are 3 people on the waiting list for next year’s Resilience
Building Programme. Regarding recurring themes and support.
Early Intervention and Prevention
The Children’s Society have been provided with £601,979 annually to provide the
CLIMB service which supports children and young people at risk of criminal exploitation,
now in year 3 of the contract, with ability to extend +1, +1. CLIMB 1st and 2nd year
delivery and engagement were impacted by the pandemic, however they still managed
to achieve their annual targets. The service is mostly accessed (by referral data) by
young males 14-17years. Q1 22/23 data shows 43 appropriate referrals, with positive
activities tailored to the individual which have included: puppy training classes, boxing,
chess and drama. The Children’s Society have also been provided with £40,000 to fund
a pilot project Steer Clear Link Worker, working closely with the Police to provide a
trusted adult mentoring service for anyone at risk of or on the periphery of knife related
activity seeking to offer intervention and tailored diversionary activity pathways to prevent
and reduce youth knife crime in Telford & Wrekin.
The Men and Masculinities programme is delivered by Cranstoun for perpetrators (low
to medium risk) of domestic abuse and covers Worcestershire and Herefordshire to work
with 125 perpetrators for 12-month period Apr 22-March 23. The programme is delivered
in partnership with West Mercia Women’s Aid who deliver the victim support provision
that supports linked / ex-partner(s) to those men accessing the service. The total cost of
the programme is £190,672. (This is made up of contributions from the PCC and partner
agencies.)
The Richmond Fellowship deliver My Time in Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin which is
also a Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Programme for those assessed as low-medium risk.
The programme also works with perpetrators from under represented and racialized
communities – which includes, LGBTQ+ communities, BAME communities, and female
perpetrators of abuse). The total cost of the programme in Telford is £148,960 and
£251,752.03 in Shropshire. (This is made up of contributions from the PCC and partner
agencies.)
Longlands care farm has been awarded £30,000 for the current financial year and in the
most recent reporting period has seen Student numbers increased considerably with 11
new starters in Spring Term 2 [6 weeks: 28 Feb-8 Apr] and an additional 4 new starters
in Summer 1 [5 weeks] 25 Apr-27 May 2022] a total of 15 new students in Quarter 3. Total overall: 27 students
The PCC funds projects run by the force to provide early intervention and prevention
programmes. These include:
- The We Don’t Buy Crime was provided £88,864 for 3 FTE WDBC officers and
£87,710 for non-pay costs. This funding seeks to reduce burglary throughout West
Mercia. The Crime deterrent ‘Smartwater’ is part of this and it is distributed across
villages and towns to protect people’s property. In the latest reporting data from May
2022 61,463 Smartwater packs have been registered since the project started in
November 2015. £1,453 were registered in April 2022. - The PCC has provided £186,474 to fund 5 RABOs (1 for each LPA). These officers
will proactively engage and work with communities on crime prevention and
awareness raising initiatives. Each officer has access to a rural and business crime
fund to support their work and a vehicle to increase reach within their communities. - The PCC provides £82,021 for Exploitation and Vulnerability Trainers. To
coordinate and deliver a prevention package around Child Exploitation (CE) to
professionals and community groups delivering services to children.
Building a More Secure West Mercia
Reduce Offending
The PCC provides funding to Remember Veterans to reduce offending among veterans
and service personal through YSS who been awarded £25,000. YSS has recruited a Link
Worker for Telford & Wrekin & Shropshire. The new RV Link Worker will start 19th July
2022 & after their induction will begin increasing our visibility for RV & veterans support
across STW. Q1 for 22/23 saw 5 referrals made this is a decrease from 13 in the same
quarter the previous year.
The PCC has provided £360,671 of funding across West Mercia for DIP services
delivered by four local authorities (Worcestershire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Telford
& Wrekin. They work within the local criminal justice system the service supports the
Integrated Offender Management (IOM) programme, provides arrest referral support in
custody, manages a caseload and provides the treatment element of community
sentences Drug Rehabilitation Requirement (DRR) and Alcohol Treatment Requirement
(ATR) order. Q1 22/23 performance data has not yet been received by the OPCC.
£110,239 of this funding goes to WMYJS to provide timely and effective specialist
substance misuse assessments and interventions to young people in the criminal justice
system or who are at risk of entering the youth justice system with the intention of
reducing the harm caused by substance misuse, assist young people to recovery and
reduce the likelihood of offending and re-offending.
£9,197 has been awarded to Crimestoppers (funding is through top-sliced the 5 CSPs).
Funding contributes towards the salary of a Regional Manager who will deliver 3 anticrime
campaigns a year. At the end of Q1 a Telford Knife crime campaign had run and
finished however Crimestoppers are just waiting on the statistics to review how
successful it was and make planes on how best to move forward with the issues in
Telford. The focus next Q will be to run the County lines campaign successfully and
support in any other activity requested by the force, it will also be to continue to improve
the profile of the regional manager and Crimestoppers.
Willowdene is a project which enables vulnerable women who are offending, or at risk of
offending, or leaving the custodial estate to transform their thinking and behaviour to
build a purposeful, stable and offending-free lifestyle through access to holistic gender specific trauma-informed one-stop-shop provision delivering rehabilitative and
diversionary pathways for timely access to support services. The PCC provides
Willowdene with £103,000 worth of funding in 22-23. Willowdene had 13 new referrals in
Q1 with 69% engaging with the service.
The PCC has provided £70,000 to the West Mercia Youth Justice Service to develop
support and deliver the range of interventions to support youth caution and conditional
cautions and support the joint decision model for young people committing offences. This
includes contacting known victims, where appropriate, to provide them with information
and invite them to become involved in restorative processes. 351 people were referred
in 2021-22 which well exceeded the target of 180.
Cranstoun have developed an education programme that improves treatment pathways,
diverts drug users from long-term drug use and reduces drug-related crime. The
DIVERT™ programme can be delivered remotely or in person and caters for anyone
over 13 found in possession of an illicit substance. The PCC is funding £43,791 towards
this programme. In Q1 there has 128 referrals from West Mercia Police Officers.
Road Safety
The PCC provided £5,000 to support the U17 Pathfinder programme this volunteer run
project is designed to reduce the number of road traffic collisions, casualties (KSIs) and
convictions amongst vulnerable novice drivers, i.e. 17-24 year olds through pre-licence
driver development. Pathfinder held their first event for 22-23 with 21 referrals just below
the target figure of 22. Pathfinder are looking at holding 5 more events throughout the
current financial year.
YSS have been provided with £228,742 for the #Morse project. Road users committing
motoring or criminal offences will be referred to YSS for mentoring support to get to the
root cause of the offending behaviour and offer holistic support to prevent further
offending. #MORSE will offer a combination of 1-1 intensive support and short
specialised interventions delivered by the FRS. Morse has seen 60 referrals being made
into the service for Q1 of 22/23 this is an increase from the same quarter the previous
year which saw 45 referrals made into the service.
The PCC has provided funding available to the local policing Superintendents to fund
projects designed to improve safety on roads. Currently £13,568 has been allocated to
road safety projects through the CCF.
Reassuring West Mercia
The PCC has awarded a total of £100,000 over a two-year period (2021-22 and 2022-
23) to developing a partnership response, working closely with all five Community Safety
Partnerships (CSPs), to properly tackle fly-tipping and identify ideas and proposals that
can be implemented which will help eradicate this damaging criminal offence.
The PCC was successful in being awarded £1.7 million from the Governments fourth
round of safer streets funding. The funding will be used to improve safety of women and
girls across West Mercia. Furthermore, the funding will be invested to increase the
number of StreetWatch schemes, provide a digital platform for volunteers to support
victims, run an education programmes for partners working in the night time economy
and schools and colleges focused on healthy relationships and raise awareness in
communities. The bids will also cover projects in Shropshire, Herefordshire and Telford &
Wrekin.
The PCC has provided £500,000 to Telford & Wrekin Council for a 2-year project called
‘Telford Safer, Stronger Communities’. The project is a partnership initiative between
Telford & Wrekin Borough Council and the OPCC which seeks to address the root
causes of crime within targeted areas, improving the lives of the communities within
Telford & Wrekin.
The PCC provides £29,785 to support the Neighbourhood Watch project. The project
will provide the strategic link between partners, agencies and the Police to work together
in relation to all forms of watch schemes.
The PCC has allocated £100,000 worth of funding for CCTV through each of the 5 CSPs
(an allocation of £20,000 per CSP). Only North Worcestershire have submitted an
application for this current financial year.
The PCC has provided £20,000 to WMSAR and £6,000 to SARA to work closely with
West Mercia Police and other emergency services to provide an effective, sustainable
and valuable team of unpaid professionals to search for missing persons, promote water
safety, respond during flooding and civil-contingencies (the first report for 22-23 is due in
Q2) The same funding has been allocated for 23-24 and 24-25. In addition, £18,400 has
been allocated to the Royal Lifesaving Society to facilitate a role within an expert water
safety organisation, to develop the water safety education portfolio of the PCC and
Home and Dry Campaign.
Reforming West Mercia
CSP Partnership
The five CSPs of West Mercia covering the 5 different Policing areas were awarded a
combined total off £636,541 for 22/23. This is split by:
- Shropshire CSP = £98,441 (Have currently spent £50,200)
- Hereford CSP = £100,666 (Have currently spent £68,700)
- Telford CSP = £158,934 (Have currently spent £72,700)
- North Worcester CSP = £139,250 (Have currently spent £139,250)
- South Worcester CSP = £139,250 (Have currently spent £91,789)
The CSPs fund a wide variety of projects that focus on community support, reducing
offending, victim care and early intervention and prevention.
Other Commissioning Activities
Prevention Bids
The Commissioning team have completed their joint proposals for the £1m prevention
fund which the PCC allocated in his 22/23 budget. The proposals are due to be
presented to the West Mercia Governance Board in August. One of the bids which
has been submitted to the force PCC / Governance board is for funding towards
a Harmful Sexual Behaviour prevention project. This need has arisen following
the reporting of significant numbers of West Mercia schools on the ‘Everyone’s
invited’ web-site. We have also had anecdotal evidence from partners and
service providers, specialist providers have also reported an increase in referrals
for support for CYP who don’t meet the AIM3 threshold
Needs Assessment
Needs assessments are currently being completed by the Force Strategic Planning and
Insight Team. Lot 1 is a Domestic abuse Perpetrator Needs Assessment commissioned
by the PCC to the West Mercia Police SPI team to complete. This piece of work is
intended to be completed by August 2022. Lot 2 is a Children and Young People’s
Consultation aimed at informing the development of service provision in relation to
domestic abuse and healthy relationships. A Commissioning Officer is also writing a
Serious Violence needs assessment specification for the SPI team to complete.
Prevention Strategy
The joint Force and PCC Prevention Strategy has now been published following work
completed by the Commissioning Manager and Force Head of Prevention and Strategy.
As discussed in the previous report, key objectives of the strategy are fewer victims, less
crime, increased public confidence in policing, and greater public involvement in
preventing harm.
OOCD
There are Government reforms afoot to simplify the adult Out of Court Disposals
(OOCDs) framework, to ensure consistency across police forces in the way low-level
offences are dealt with out of court. The new framework will reduce the number of
OOCDs from six to two in legislation, comprising an upper tier disposal titled
‘Diversionary caution’ and a lower tier disposal titled ‘Community caution’ and will come
into effect in April 2023. The Force are arranging workshops inviting representatives from Local Policing, Criminal Justice, OPCC, Change and L&D. The workshop would
provide an opportunity for all parties to consider the impact of moving to a two-tier
system and what the next steps should be to roll out the changes. One workshop has
taken place so far and the Force were asked to do a needs assessment to see what the
requirements are and where there are any gaps. We are waiting to hear how this is
progressing and also for an invite to the second workshop.
Listening to the voice of victims and survivors of serious sexual abuse and assault conference
This conference took place on 23rd June. A date has been set for the West Mercia
Sexual Assault and Abuse Partnership Board with the first meeting arranged for the 27th
September 2022.
SARC West Road, Telford
A consultant has been appointed to undertake feasibility and concept design study. A
number of work streams will be developed to manage consultation, re-location of service
for the duration of any development of the site etc.
Establishment of a partnership commissioning group
Following the Mental Health Needs Assessment, commissioners from the Local
Authority, Integrated Care Services and public health are working together to implement
recommendations from the Needs Assessment.
Summary of 2022-23 PCC Funding Initiatives
Please follow the link below to obtain more information about all of the OPCC funded projects during 2022-23:
