Bristol City Council (BCC) provides support services for people affected by domestic abuse and will be recommissioning its domestic abuse services in spring 2022. 

Domestic abuse can be psychological, physical, financial or emotional. It can include mental abuse, sexual harassment, physical and sexual violence, control (not being allowed to go where you want, when you want), coercion (being forced to do things you don’t want to do), female genital mutilation (FGM), forced marriage, sex work or prostitution, trafficking and modern slavery.  

In order to enable and encourage small and local organisations to be able to bid for the contract to tackle these complex issues, BCC has produced information about partnership working/collaboration as part of the pre-bidding consultation which is taking place until end of Jan 2022. 

The purpose of this consultation is to give smaller organisations time to form collaborative relationships / partnerships in the run up to bidding. BCC has factored this additional stage into the process to encourage and facilitate connections between organisations interested in collaborating with each other. 

BCC believes that collaboration between organisations can bring a number of benefits to service delivery and so tackle some of the startling statistics regarding domestic abuse. According the Bristol based charity Next Link at least 750,000 children a year witness domestic violence, on average a woman is assaulted 35 times before they call the police, and domestic abuse has a higher rate of repeat victimisation than any other.  
 

The intended benefits to organisations of taking a collaborative approach include: 

• Providing a coherent and simplified offer to the service user.  
• Increasing the expertise available to address the complex issue of domestic abuse. 
• Increasing diversity of service providers which then meets the need of a wider range of service users. 

The consultation is open between 8/12/21 and 31/1/22 and BCC are encouraging views from a diverse range of organisations.  Contribute to the consultation online and to offer your organisational contact details for sharing with potential collaborators, download this document for completion and return to Bristol City Council.