ENSURING A CONSISTENT INSTITUTIONAL APPROACH WHICH IS DEVELOPED COLLABORATIVELY AND WITH SIGNIFICANT INPUT FROM STUDENTS( AND RELEVANT EXPERTS, WHERE NECESSARY)
84. A number of organisations highlighted that institutional approaches to sexual violence are often inconsistent. The decentralised structure of many UK universities has the potential to inhibit an effective, comprehensive and consistent cross-university response. This can make it difficult for a student to know where and who to report to, and in some cases means that the quality of response varies. Rape Crisis reported that responses to sexual violence are often based on a particular staff member’ s handling of the situation rather than institution-wide procedures. There is also inconsistency across the sector in terms of how universities engage with external bodies, such as specialist services, the police and local stakeholders. This underlines the importance of ensuring that staff across the university have a basic knowledge of what to do and who to refer victims / survivors to internally in the event that they disclose an incident of sexual violence.
85. The need to adopt a cross-institutional approach to all aspects of preventing and responding to violence against women, harassment and hate crime affecting university students – including long-term behavioural and cultural change – was also emphasised in much of the evidence received.
86. The evidence indicated that where the university and students’ union work together, the results have greater impact. Campaigns, particularly in relation to sexual violence and harassment, have often been instigated by students’ unions. The evidence from institutions suggests that where this is backed up by university leadership, a greater amount of activity that is specifically designed to tackle unacceptable behaviour and bring about culture change takes place on campus. Without institutional support, much of the work driven by students’ unions will be less effective.
87. There also appears to be a correlation between those universities that have taken a cross-institutional approach and those that describe more systematic reporting systems, better links with external organisations and the police, specialist staff training and greater general awareness internally of how these incidents can affect the student population. There is scope for these experiences to be shared across the sector via conferences and other events, potentially resulting in a more consistent sector-wide response as well as promoting consistency within individual institutions.
88. The evidence from wider stakeholders highlights that a cross-institutional approach will be more effective in both reducing incidents and effecting cultural change. There is also an important strategic point around ensuring that knowledge and expertise is retained in spite of students’ union officers changing regularly or departures of other key personnel. Therefore, embedding policies, processes, reporting mechanisms, support pathways and initiatives within the university can help withstand changes in personnel. Taking this approach is also likely to improve the consistency of response across an institution, addressing the concern that victims / survivors often receive differing responses depending
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