Victim Support

Victim Support

Summary

Victim Support is a national charity supporting victims and witnesses of crime across England and Wales. Fiona was introduced to Victim Support as an Associate Consultant for Eastside Primetimers in 2020 and has since provided assistance on 3 key programmes.

The Brief

Fiona worked on 3 short-term contracts for Victim Support over a period of 15 months:

  • Mobilise a £3m domestic abuse early help programme
  • Review and enhance the internal audit framework, piloting the approach on the charity’s largest contract area (£15m multi-year service)
  • Review and enhance the charity’s approach to the management of a regional £20m 10-year commissioning and grant making programme
  • The Result

    Fiona integrated exceptionally with internal staff teams to strength the organisational structures from within, providing a mixture of project management and technical support. Specific outcomes achieved for each of the contracts included:

    1. Finalised the grant arrangements with the national funder and stewarding a project management board. Worked with internal colleagues to recruit to appoint a 23-member delivery team, following the review of over 400 applications and dozens of interviews. This included applying an equitable lens (utilising specialist recruiters, successfully ensuring a team with diverse representation). Set up project delivery documents (risk, issue, action, decision logs) and created a resourcing plan to provide the Operations Manager with clear annual and quarterly KPIs to deliver the programme in 5 languages to more than 1,600 victims
    2. Reviewed and re-designed an internal service audit framework to identify improvements for contract and policy compliance. Worked with subject matter experts to pilot the audit, receiving excellent feedback from SMT and frontline staff who appreciated the quality of preparation support (including briefings, guidance including a data dictionary), implementation of a peer review approach, and use mixed research methodology to provide a holistic overview and evidence-based recommendations. This approach included conducting staff interviews; deep dive examinations of cases managed; analysis of large case, safeguarding and complaint datasets)
    3. Reviewed the charity’s existing commissioning and grant management framework and provided technical advice and assistance to identify and address weaknesses, receiving good recognition from the external commissioner’s auditor. Outputs included co-designing a theory of change, funding policy, specifications, application, assessment, and M&E frameworks, adopting an equity lens throughout the process.

    Projects we have been involved with