Share with:
Comic Relief, with Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and The Clothworkers Foundation, is delighted to announce 11 new investments made through the second round of the Tech vs Abuse fund, totalling over £580,000.
The organisations will test and build creative digital solutions, co-designed with users, to improve the safety of people affected by abuse, and improve service delivery.
This funding is backed by a collaborative research project, (accessible here(opens in new window)) commissioned by the funders and undertaken by Think Social Tech(opens in new window), Snook(opens in new window), and SafeLives(opens in new window).
The researchers interviewed practitioners and co-designed this fund with organisations in the domestic and sexual abuse sector with a keen interest in developing and delivering digital services.
Kicking off in November 2019, for the next 12 months the organisations will develop digital tools, approaches, and services currently at the earliest stages of development.
The grants will last for one year and in addition to receiving financial support, organisations will work closely with a consortium providing specialist technical support and on-going mentoring around user research and product development; Centre for Acceleration of Social Technology (CAST), Snook, Dot Project and Founders and Coders.
Here's some more information on the investments made.
These ideas cut across and address the four ‘design challenges’ identified by the research: recognising it’s abuse, right information at the right time, effective real-time support, and recovery.
(To find out more about these design challenges, read more here(opens in new window).)
‘On Our Radar, in partnership with SafeLives, will develop a digital platform where young survivors of domestic abuse will be able to access a community, safely share their stories, and enable others to recognise abusive behaviour in their relationships.’
‘Surviving Economic Abuse, in partnership with Money Advice Plus, will build on their economic abuse screening tool, developing a questionnaire that will provide safe and up to date information to survivors of economic abuse as well as to professionals.’
Deaf-initely Women will develop a digital hub in Derby and Derbyshire to reach deaf women locally, sharing peer-designed resources, increasing awareness on different types of abuse, and helping to fill the gaps in services.
Respect will test the concept for an app which can be used by specialist Domestic Abuse Perpetrator Services as a tool to support behaviour change alongside existing services.
Womens’ Aid Federation of England is adapting their online survivors’ handbook to make it more interactive, accessible and optimised for digital use, in order to effectively reach more women at an earlier stage.
Against Violence and Abuse (AVA) is co-producing a digital product with young people with experience of domestic abuse, to support them to recover and address their trauma.
Aanchal Womens’ Aid is designing a digital platform for women from South Asian communities to access professional advice, connecting women with peers, ultimately reducing social isolation and rebuilding lives after abuse.
The Haven Wolverhampton is creating a women’s portal for current service users, managing their own user journey when they are accessing The Haven’s existing services.
British Institute of Human Rights is developing a product to support women and practitioners to know their human rights and the duties of public services to respect and protect these, including useful information for meetings with housing staff, education, social workers, and police.
Circles South East is developing a product to build on the existing face-to-face Circles support offered in London, Hampshire, Surrey and Kent, to enable volunteers and professionals to support individuals in real time.
Tender Education & Arts will create a gaming-based digital tool to support neurodiverse young people and those with learning disabilities to understand healthy relationships, designed to work in conjunction with Tender’s existing abuse-prevention programmes.
To find out more about our research and approach visit our tech vs abuse page.
