The successful practice promotes the safety of women suffering domestic abuse and harmful practices, such as forced marriage, honour based violence and Female Genital Mutilation, within BAMER (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic and Refugee) communities. The main aspects of this initiative are partnership working, development of policy, advice and support to professionals and victims as well as engagement activities with affected communities. It started in 2010 as Savera Liverpool but it has since been reproduced and expanded to cover a local, county and then regional area, which now covers the whole of the North West of the UK. 

The development of a regional forced marriage protocol, a training package in harmful practices, a 24 hour helpline for professionals and victims needing advice and support (through a web-site in different languages) and a harmful practices steering group have been successfully set-up so far. Professionals are now better equipped to deal with harmful practices and women have somewhere to go.

This practice has been identified in the framework of the CSO WINS project (Capacity-building in the Southern Mediterranean to Open policy dialogue and monitoring for Women IN Society), with the support of the European Union’s Neighbourhood Civil Society Facility.