Valerie's Law to support Black DV victims

[ArabellaScott]

Article in the Guardian (sorry) today:

www.theguardian.com/society/2021/sep/15/police-urged-to-better-protect-black-women-who-face-domestic-abuse?fbclid=IwAR2_WZCFEG46-U3dYvoLkXHoFXQwLkKku3GJEXmrllZT2Hd5fYkp8KxwY0c

There is a petition for 'Valerie's Law', too, which I think I can't link to but is findable if you search the Gov petition site. It's already been debated, by the look of it. Text of petition:

'Make specialist training mandatory for all police and other government agencies that support black women and girls affected by domestic abuse. Police and agencies should have culturally appropriate training to better understand the cultural needs of black women affected by domestic abuse.

Too many African and Caribbean heritage women have not been afforded the same level of support that is offered to others. This can only be addressed by Cultural Competency training being rolled out across the police and other government agencies. Without specialised training, it is practically impossible to support, or risk assess black women. This often puts black victims at increased risk.'

I shared mostly to raise awareness of the campaign for 'Valerie's Law', which is ongoing.

I understand that yes, if the petition gains 100k it will be debated. It's a third of the way there, and I would hope that a debate might hve better results than the current response - which I agree seems a bit of a brush-off. At least it will raise the profile of the campaign.

I have only just noted that the gov response is actually much longer than the first, definitely dismissive soundng para! You have to click to expand it. Have also just noted that the Home Office's response on the petition page had already been redrafted :

'This is a revised response. The Petitions Committee requested a response which more directly addressed the request of the petition. You can find the original response towards the bottom of the petition page'

From what I can tell, a Governmental department replied after the 10,000 mark and their response was deemed to not have answered the nature of the petition directly enough so they had to re-write and reword it.

Once the responses hit 100,000, it has to be put forward to be debated in Parliament. As I'm guessing that many politicians won't know about this petition or the circumstances behind it, this will bring it to a wider audience. The Government as a whole may well come back and say 'as we said in our response to the petition...' but if it's being debated then at least questions can be asked about the decisions made regarding how money has been allocated, if the decisions taken are far reaching enough etc.

I may be entirely wrong about this but it seems to be the way that petitions work - there's an autonomic response after 10,000 signatures and if the petition hits 100,000 signatures, there is obviously enough public feeling that it should be further discussed in Parliament.

Signed. Thank you for sharing.

signed, thank you for sharing and drawing my attention to this. It made me think about things I hadn't considered before

Bumping

How can we have mandatory training on this for the police when domestic abuse training isn’t mandatory for police officers?