Residential Women's Centre in Wales

The MoJ's Female Offender's Strategy aims to reduce the number of women serving short custodial sentences and provide more robust sentencing options in the community for women that address the causes of offending and support more effective rehabilitation. The Female Offending Blueprint for Wales similarly seeks to support women to engage with services in the community by exploring a range of options for secure, safe and reliable accommodation and by developing women-focused services.

Part of implementing these strategies will focus on developing a pilot model for safe accommodation and holistic support for women in the community, as an alternative to a short custodial sentence, where they can address the underlying causes of their offending such as substance misuse, domestic abuse and poor mental health. This project will seek to deliver a trauma-informed Residential Women's Centre in Wales.

Additional information: The proposed delivery model is for a robust alternative to custody for women aged 18+ providing intensive rehabilitative support in the community for no more than 9 months. The service will consist of three parts, the first two parts will form the community order requirement:

o A Residential Unit: this will provide about 12 beds allowing vulnerable women with complex needs, who would otherwise be sentenced to custody, to stay for a defined period of at least 8 weeks up to a prescribed maximum likely to be 3 months. o A Support Hub: providing community-based accommodation and offering interventions to meet the needs of residents and ex-residents to address complex needs which are often the underlying causes of offending. This can include, for example, support for drug or alcohol treatment requirements. o Move-on support: allowing for the development of skills and provision of settled accommodation needed for residents as they transition from the RWC to the community with access to the support hub as required. Women will reside at the RWC as part of a Community Order with conditions attached to the centre. We hope through engagement with the market we will establish an optimum model for the accommodation and whether it is viable for the supplier to provide both the premises and service delivery or whether it is preferable for the authority to provide the property and we solely outsource the service delivery element. This is a very early call for market warming and not a commitment to tender at this time. We would welcome contact from providers in the market who are well experienced in working with vulnerable women rehabilitation services, trauma-informed approaches etc, with a particular focus on supporting women to develop a pro-social identity and strong local community links in Wales.

We are in the process of considering the most viable and effective ways of engaging with the market during this time and it may include virtual conferences and focus groups and eventually possibly more localised engagement sessions.

To register early interest and ensure you are added to our mailing list, please notify us at

[email protected]

Background Information:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/719819/female-offender-strategy.pdf

https://gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2019-05/female-offending-blueprint_3.pdf