Decision details

The Deputy Mayor for Police, Crime, Criminal Justice and Fire has a responsibility to provide services for victims of crime, including victims of rape and sexual assault.

The amount to be invested is a provisional figure for 22-23 to enable payments to be made to the provider whilst final contract value negotiations are concluded. This forms part of the strategic financial review that GMCA and GMHSCP have been undertaking for services that support victims of rape and sexual offences. Any further funding required will be the subject of a separate decision notice.

This budget is allocated to the Greater Manchester Sexual Assault Referral Centre, based at the St Mary’s Centre at Manchester Foundation Trust. The provision is an all-age service which provides support for victims of rape or sexual assault in terms of a forensic examination and crisis support, support for people going through the criminal justice process and therapeutic/counselling support. The service can be accessed by a referral from an agency, including but not exclusive to Greater Manchester Police, or victims can also choose to self-refer. The service currently supports anybody who lives in Greater Manchester in addition to providing support for individuals who were assaulted in Greater Manchester, but do not reside in the area.

Demand
There were just over 11,000 sexual offences reported to GMP in 2021-2022, of which 36% were rape. 55% of these offences were committed against adults whilst over 5000 sexual offences were committed against children. This included 1400 offences which were rape against a child. Approximately 950 forensic medical examinations are undertaken by SARC each year


Attached is a statement from colleagues at NHS Integrated Health Trust around the selection of St Mary’s as the Greater Manchester SARC.



Progress towards agreeing a full Service specification for SARC and Implementing a 3 year contract

Over the course of 2022/23 we have been working with SARC to both document the service provision with the associated costings, and also outline the service needs to improve operational delivery to meet demand. This is with a view to move to an agreed position over a fixed rate contract until 2026.

In order to progress this work, we have been documenting SARCs services based on the segregation of the service into the below 4 pillars:

1. Forensic medical examinations for adults
2. Forensic medical examinations for children / young persons
3. ISVA provision
4. Therapeutic counselling support

We have moved to a position where we are on the verge of agreeing the service specification for pillars 1 and 2 and 3. Once we have finalised this work, a contract will be drawn up to cover 3 years and will be in place for financial year 2023/24

Pillar 4 The Therapeutic counselling support has inherent complications as demand has stripped capacity at SARC. We will seek procurement advice on meeting commercial compliance regulations with any agreed way forward for this work.

To allocate a funding envelope of £1,950,000 to St Mary’s SARC for the provision of support services to victims of rape and serious sexual offences to cover the period of 1st April 2022-March 31st, 2023.This covers the quarterly contract payments for the service incorporating the main staffing costs with overheads, ISVA provision and therapeutic support, and also minor elements of overlapping costs of the Forensic Medical Examinations.

The SARC service is jointly funded by the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership on a 50/50 basis and as such, the amount indicated above is the total SARC budget. The GMCA contribution is half of this. (£975k).

It is important to note that actual costs for the SARC service for 2022-23 are still being finalised. This decision notice has been estimated to cover expected costs, however with some shortfall possible. This will be funded by reserves where necessary.