Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the mechanism for the allocation of specialised Independent Domestic Violence Advisors focused on the abuse of older people and the way it relates to (a) the level of older person-focused abuse and (b) the relative proportion of older people in the local population.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) is using additional ringfenced funding to increase the number of Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVAs) and Independent Sexual Violence Advisers (ISVAs) it funds by 300 to over 1,000 by 2024/2025. For 2022/23, we are providing £34 million of ringfenced funding for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) to locally commission IDVAs and ISVAs. It is the responsibility of the PCCs to decide how to target recruitment of specialist IDVAs, including those that support elderly victims, based on their assessment of local need.

In addition, the Government is committed to further building capacity in specialist service provision and has launched a £6m Violence Against Women and Girls Support and Specialist Services Fund. The fund is led by the Home Office with a £3m contribution from MoJ for ‘by and for’ services, open to both national and local organisations. ‘By and for’ services are specialist services that are led, designed, and delivered by and for the users and communities they aim to serve. One of the fund’s ambitions is to increase the number of ‘by and for’ IDVAs and ISVAs.

The MoJ continually reviews the most effective mechanism for allocating funding for IDVAs and ISVAs.