Plans to spend more than £35,000 on tackling domestic violence in Moray have come under fire – from a women’s refuge charity.
The Scottish Government has siphoned the sum from its prisons budget to go towards the creation of a new post within Moray Council.
The scheme has now been rubber-stamped by the local authority, as a way of driving down instances of the crime by installing someone to work in troubled areas.
A newly employed social worker will attempt to stamp out offending before it occurs, by offering “person-centred” help to perpetrators.
But the financially struggling Moray Women’s Aid charity has blasted the initiative, and claims the money would be better spent on helping victims to get their life back together.
The manager of the Elgin outfit, Elle Johnston, also cast doubt on how successful the initiative would prove.
Mrs Johnston said: “Money like that should be spent on supporting women and children who have suffered domestic abuse.
“This is drawing funding away from hands-on support for the victims, they should be more important than the perpetrators.
“I understand that we do need to work with offenders, but I have a lot of concerns about how effective perpetrator programmes actually are.
“But the victims should always come first, and at the moment we are struggling to get by.”
Mrs Johnston said she had completed several studies into the merits of similar schemes, and claimed they did not yield impressive results.
The Moray Women’s Aid group offers shelter to more than 150 children every year, and helps hundreds of women through both taking them in and offering counselling over the phone.
Last night, a Scottish Government spokeswoman stressed that the new post was being created to prevent abuse from occurring in the future.
She said: “While there will always be a need for prison sentences in some instances, evidence shows that community sentences and community justice alternatives have an important role in helping changing the behaviour of perpetrators so as to reduce and stop abuse in the future.”
The new post will be based within Moray Council’s Criminal Justice Team in Elgin.
Domestic violence plans slammed
