The Scottish Government is being urged to appoint a Violence Against Women and Girls Commissioner as part of plans to transform services in Scotland.
The recommendation is one of a number put forward as part of a proposed overhaul of services to create a more effective funding model and give better access to help and support.
A report from the Independent Strategic Review of Funding and Commissioning of VAWG Services in Scotland has now been published and makes ambitious demands in order to ensure Scotland is compliant with international human rights conventions.
The review states there should be a legal right to, and guaranteed funding for, minimum core services after hearing evidence that current provision does not work for large numbers of women and children.
Those from minority ethnic communities, disabled women and deaf women, in particular, are being failed.
READ MORE: Man, woman or rapist - we can't define a person by their crime
The Chair of the Review, Lesley Irving, said: “I am confident that our recommendations, which are grounded in the evidence we have gathered over the course of the Review, will allow us to take a very significant step forward in how we respond to VAWG in Scotland.
"It’s time to make that commitment.”
As part of the review, the committee held more than 100 engagement events with women, children and young people across Scotland and received evidence from 475 people.
Should Scotland implement the legal right to services it would be the first country in the world to do so and would mean that third sector services were no longer reliant on short term competitive funding rounds from a variety of sources.
Instead, the report recommends, a model of collaborative commissioning should be in place with decisions about funding made in the local areas close to where services are provided, rather than centrally as it is at the moment.
It also emphasises the importance of education, including for boys, and the need to focus on prevention.
Scotland is currently not compliant with several international human rights conventions, including the Istanbul Convention and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
READ MORE: Does the 'how' matter as long as women are supported?
To put Scotland in line with best practice developments at European level, the report recommends that a new body called the Istanbul Convention Implementation Observatory (ICIO) is established, and a VAWG Commissioner appointed to ensure progress is maintained.
Defending the high costs that would be involved in its recommendations, the report says urgent action is required to prevent women and their children from violence.
COSLA's Community Wellbeing spokesperson, Maureen Chalmers, said: "COSLA appreciates the commitment shown to ensuring Local Government involvement and the Review's cross-governmental approach.
"I look forward to forthcoming discussions with COSLA Leaders and the Scottish Government on its ambitious recommendations."
The report’s recommendations will take several years to be fully implemented, and the Scottish Government and COSLA have been asked to provide a timeline for implementation by December 2023.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here