Chamber and committees

That is fantastic. We will make sure that we pick that question up with the next panel.

Thank you all for your time and for your evidence this morning. We will suspend briefly for five minutes to give everybody a comfort break and to swap over panels.

Next, I will bring in Jeremy Balfour, who is in the room. Foysol Choudhury, who is remote, will be after him.

You remind me of my outreach-worker days, running women’s lunch clubs and groups and going into schools to deliver training as a third-sector women’s aid worker. It always felt as if the statutory-organisations part of gathering data was missing. Thank you very much for drawing our attention to that.

I will bring Stephanie Callaghan to finish up on this theme. Then we will go to Miles Briggs to take us on to theme 3.

That was a very good question, and it was evidence that we needed to hear.

I now hand over to Miles Briggs.

I know that Tumay Forster wants to come in on that as well.

Thanks, Marsha. When my Women’s Aid group in North Ayrshire had an issue with two women with no recourse to public funds, we decided to take them into refuge, but we had no income for nearly a year in that situation. That is not a sustainable situation for Women’s Aid groups across the country.

Eilidh, could you or Laura Tomson answer that?

Laura Tomson would like to come in on that point.

I see that Foysol Choudhury has put his question in the chat. If anybody can have a look at that and answer him that would be fantastic.

One thing that we did ask about specifically but which was mentioned several times is the equally safe strategy. I would be interested in people submitting some answers to the question about what we have achieved in the last five years with that strategy. Where have we not hit the mark and what needs to change with this refresh that we are going through? We have heard a lot of things about the strategy today, but it would be helpful if you could write to us specifically on that question.

Marsha Scott, were you putting your hand up to speak or were you just saying you will do that?

We continue to take evidence on domestic abuse and violence against women and girls. The format of this session will be the same as that for the previous panel. I ask members to direct their questions to a specific witness. If witnesses are going to come in on a point, they should add new information. Please remember that we can take additional evidence from you in writing afterwards if you feel that there is something that needs to be covered.

I welcome our new panel. I know that we are having some technical difficulties with Alison Davis, who is chief executive officer of Saheliya—I hope that I said that right. We will keep an eye on that and see whether she is able to join us. Carolyn Fox McKay is head of operations at Girlguiding Scotland; Mariam Ahmed is chief executive officer at Amina Muslim Women’s Resource Centre; and Tumay Forster is outreach service team leader at Shakti Women’s Aid.

I hope that you all had a chance to listen to the previous evidence session and that you have an idea of the issues that we have already been highlighting. Obviously, we are keen to hear your perspectives on them.

This morning, we are looking at three themes: the background and context of the whole situation around violence against women and girls; prevention; and front-line services and funding. I will bring in my colleague Pam Duncan-Glancy to start on the first theme.