The government has today published its long-awaited Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy which takes a cross-government approach to prevent and end violence against women and girls and support victims.

The strategy includes a range of measures to intervene early with children and young people to prevent violence, and to provide specialist support for victims of child sexual abuse. These include:

• £50 million to expand the world-leading Child House (Barnahus) model so that children and young people affected by child sexual abuse and exploitation can access specialist care
• Supporting schools to challenge misogyny, ensuring every child understands consent and healthy relationships, while equipping parents, teachers and role models to intervene early and guide young people to act with empathy, respect and kindness to others.
• New legislation to tackle child sexual abuse sites and criminalise artificial intelligence (AI) models that havebeen made or adapted to create child sexual abuse material.

Launching major awareness-raising and behaviour change campaigns, so people know when and how to intervene.

Responding to the strategy, Connie Muttock, Head of Policy at the Centre for Young Lives says:

"We welcome the cross-government approach to tackling violence against women and girls - recognising that VAWG is everyone's business.

"The range of measures to support victims of child sexual abuse, including expanding the world-leading Barnahus model will make a transformative difference to the victims of these heinous crimes.

"A failure to act on childhood misogyny has left many girls experiencing abuse as an everyday part of their childhood.  

"Teenage girls often face a barrage of unsolicited dick pics, pornographic deepfakes, and abuse in formative romantic relationships. This must change and this landmark strategy is a move in the right direction. Training and a new helpline will give specialist support to victims and help to equip professionals with the advice that is desperately needed.

"We should not see this as the end point but as the beginning of a long overdue and wide-reaching strategy to tackle teenage misogyny that shapes a positive generation of boys and young men and gives girls and young women the basic right to grow up safe."