The Improvement Service is supporting work to develop and test a Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Needs Assessment Tool for Scotland. The tool is intended to help local multi-agency Violence Against Women Partnerships, and other relevant strategic groups, build a shared understanding of local need, identify strengths and gaps in current systems and services, and consider how collective resources can be used more effectively to improve outcomes for women, children and young people affected by VAWG.
Background
The VAWG Needs Assessment Tool was developed in response to a joint commitment by the Scottish Government and COSLA to support a more robust, evidence-informed understanding of need across Scotland. It aligns with the ambitions of Equally Safe: Scotland’s Strategy for Preventing and Eradicating Violence Against Women and Girls, by supporting partners to use local and national evidence to inform strategic planning, service development and commissioning.
The tool encourages local areas to consider the following core questions:
- Who are we? What does our local landscape look like in terms of population, demographics and socio-economic outcomes?
- What are the key issues/ challenges being experienced by women, children and young people who have and/ or are currently experiencing VAWG in our local authority area?
- What systems and services are currently in place locally to prevent and eradicate VAWG and respond to the needs of women, children and young people experiencing VAWG?
- To what extent do local systems and services currently meet women, children and young people’s needs?
- What are the collective resources currently available to partners to meet the needs of women, children and young people experiencing VAWG?
It also supports partners to consider hidden and under-represented forms of harm, and to make use of existing evidence and lived experience learning in a safe, meaningful and trauma-informed way.
Test Phase 2025-26
Following the development of the draft tool, 10 local Violence Against Women Partnerships across Scotland participated in a test phase between September 2025 and March 2026. The test phase aimed to generate learning on how the draft tool could be improved, identify examples of good practice in undertaking VAWG needs assessment activity, and increase understanding of the capacity, resource and support needs of local partnerships using the tool in different contexts.
Learning from the Test Phase
Learning from the test phase shows that the VAWG Needs Assessment Tool has strong potential to support more strategic, evidence-informed planning. Test areas used a range of approaches including: data analysis, stakeholder workshops, service mapping, commissioned research support, surveys, focus groups and engagement with women with lived experience of VAWG.
Feedback also highlighted that meaningful needs assessment activity requires time, coordination, access to relevant data, specialist service involvement, and support for safe and trauma-informed engagement with survivors of VAWG. Test areas particularly valued peer learning, practical templates, worked examples and national support to interpret available evidence
Next Steps
The Improvement Service is using learning from the test phase to refine the VAWG Needs Assessment Tool and develop a wider package of supporting resources, including practical templates, case studies and guidance to support future use. A learning report will also share key findings from the test phase and highlight the support local partnerships may need to undertake needs assessment activity in a meaningful and sustainable way.