Report on Defining and costing a comprehensive package of services for gender based violence

This research is the outcome of a recommendation made by the 2016 Report on the Diagnostic Review of the State Response to Violence against Women and Children, commissioned by Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, for the ‘Department of Social Development (DSD) to lead in comprehensively defining psychosocial response services for victims of violence against women and children, establishing minimum core services and funding implications for their implementation’.1 Three activities were undertaken to identify and cost a set of core services responding to gender based violence (GBV), namely: a literature review, primary research and development of costing models, and a policy brief. The study’s research method was designed to take into account the weak institutionalization of most existing care and support services in policy, creating a corresponding absence of description and standardization; and the near absence of evaluations for almost all services. Thus recommending particular models is extremely difficult in the face of these unknowns. To allow for this we adopted a realist evaluation approach2 to the research which places a strong emphasis on the theories of change underpinning programmes. The primary research received ethics clearance from the Human Sciences Research Council Research Ethics Committee and included extensive stakeholder consultation throughout the research process. Data collection included a total of 39 face to face, in-depth interviews and 34 focus group discussions with a wide range of government and NGO stakeholders and beneficiaries at national, provincial and local level. Expenditure analysis of services was also undertaken using current expenditure figures made available by implementers or where the information is in the public domain. The costing exercise involved the development of nine separate Excel-based costing models to calculate the unit cost of providing the individual service set out in the recommended core package of services. Each costing model was developed using the costing model structure indicated in figure 1 below. Figure 1: Structure of the costing models KEY FINDINGS: LITERATURE/DOCUMENT REVIEW Domestic violence in all its forms is very prevalent in South Africa, as are sexual offences.