Thursday 18 December 2025, Deirdre Kehoe, CEO, LMK:
The publication of the new Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) strategy today confirms the Government’s serious intent to tackle what is truly a national emergency.
Placing healthy relationships education at the heart of this strategy is a vital step – one that validates the years of youth-led prevention work already being delivered by the wider VAWG sector, including by LMK, to help young people build healthy relationships for life. Stopping harm before it starts is the key.
Research and our own experience consistently show that the most impactful relationships education is co-designed with young people and delivered by trained specialists.
As an expert delivery partner to schools on relationship education, we at LMK know it’s essential that peer-informed expertise bridges the gap between national policy and classroom reality.
Alongside this, for the government to achieve its historic 10-year target of halving violence, the systemic roots of misogyny that permeate our entire culture must be addressed. We welcome the focus on prevention, and the targeted initiatives to address misogyny, online harms, peer to peer abuse and intergenerational abuse.
But true progress requires acknowledging that VAWG does not impact everyone equally. We must see a deeper commitment to tackling the disproportionate impact on Black women and those at the sharpest end of inequality, whose voices are too often missing from national strategies.
The success of the government’s new strategy, which represents a crucial turning point, is dependent on achieving a fundamental cultural shift. LMK remains committed to working alongside schools, community groups, the VAWG sector and the government to implement a systemic, intersectional approach that addresses the root causes of VAWG, so that our collective ambition translates into lasting change.
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