Activity and approach

Skills for Justice were commissioned to use our expertise in the process of developing and approving apprenticeship standards to facilitate the design and delivery of a domestic and sexual abuse support standard.

By working with domestic abuse and sexual violence specialists, from organisations such as Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis, Respect and more, expert working groups collaborated to develop the standard specifications.

It was important during the design that we considered all the support provision services and how the standard could be implemented across different agencies in public services, the third sector, and voluntary organisations. The standard was therefore developed to be able to support those working in domestic abuse helplines, children and family support, community outreach support, prevention advocacy, independent domestic and sexual violence advice (IDVAs/ISVAs), and refugee support.

A Public Consultation was undertaken to seek feedback across a wide range of stakeholders in England.

We then took the standard through the vigorous approval process, involving stakeholders from across the Government to gather feedback, set funding bands, and publish the apprenticeship.

Outcomes

The new apprenticeship standard was approved for delivery in 2024.

The standard sets out the skills, knowledge, and behaviours of those working in support provision and is available for use by employers. The first intake of apprentices followed soon after, being utilised in healthcare settings.

There are 28 named duties under the standard, including:

  • Respond to and manage crisis situations
  • Carry out risk assessment and safety planning, whilst considering safeguarding issues and individual support needs
  • Provide information and support to enable survivors to make their own informed choices towards recovery
  • Demonstrate an understanding of trauma and apply trauma informed approaches in support interventions
  • Support survivors through criminal and/or civil court processes.

Our sister organisation, SFJ Awards, an industry-leading End-Point Assessment (EPA) organisation, was appointed as the EPA provider, ensuring that our sector specialisms and charitable mission of sustainability, embedding skills within the workforce will help support this new career pathway.

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