Supporting survivors of VAWG to recover from violence requires a holistic approach that ensures their access to a broad range of services. Mapping should consider as many services as possible to help identify gaps in provision and opportunities for new programmes to link to existing services. Services to consider include, but are not limited, to: 

• Health Services, including: hospitals, health clinics (public and private), mobile clinics, sexual and reproductive health clinics, school health clinics
• Police, courts and legal services, including: specialist police units for women and children, other police stations, magistrates, courts, traditional justice mechanisms and organisations providing legal advice and aid
• Psychosocial support services, including: counselling, peer-support groups, self-help groups
• Shelter and safe houses, including: temporary shelter at community or district level, longer-term shelters and refuges, and housing placement services
• Available mobile and remote services
• Education and skills services, including: adult learning classes, skills training, apprenticeships
• Employment and livelihoods services, including: job placement and job training, cash transfers, savings clubs, and micro-finance
• Child care and support, including: creches, nurseries, schools, support groups for children born of VAWG
• Survivor advocates, funds and case management support, including: local social welfare and child protection officers, women’s rights organisations, mentorship programmes, reporting networks, and survivor advocates and paralegals at community and district levels trained to support survivors to understand their options and support them to access services. There may also be funding mechanisms available to support survivors to access response services. 

There are a range of ways to identify existing VAWG response services during a service mapping process. Which method/methods are most effective will depend on your context and available resources. Ensure that you actively seek out the experiences of diverse survivors such as survivors with disabilities, LBT survivors, refugee survivors and survivors from persecuted ethnicities during your mapping. Without considering the availability of services for diverse survivors, your mapping of services will be incomplete. Some approaches to gathering information include:

• Conducting an online search for VAWG response services
• Conducting surveys to service providers
• Contacting UN agencies, CSOs, NGOs, local government offices and WROs (e.g. social welfare, child protection) and partners to find out which services they provide or refer survivors to
• Contacting survivor networks that are inclusive of survivors from diverse backgrounds to interview representatives or (if appropriate) survivors themselves about their experience using existing services and their understanding of the gaps
• Visiting a sample of services to interview staff and assess service provision, resources and quality

Deciding which questions to include in a mapping will depend on your context, resources, and scope of programme. Some key questions to consider include but are not limited to:

• What types of services currently exist? How many of each?
• Who are the actors proving services (government? CSOs?)
• Are these services accessible to everyone, including people living in vulnerable situations?
• What are the specific context barriers to accessing these services?
• What is the quality of the services provided?
• Do these services take a survivor-centred approach to delivery?
• Is an integrated approach promoted?
• Does the government provide adequate budget?
• How accessible are these services to the communities they are intended to serve? (For example, consider distance to services, transportation available, security around services, cost of services, availability of trained female staff, existence of a culture that respects diversity and has a zero-tolerance policy to discrimination)
• Are survivors paying direct or indirect fees (e.g. for forms, faster access to medical help) to access these services?
• Who delivers these services? (For example, are they trained practitioners or untrained volunteers?)
• How do these services fit within a referral pathway? In practice, are referrals made between services?
• Is there sufficient capacity in specialist support services?
• To what extent are users of these services happy with the service provided? (Ensure you consider the perspectives of survivors from diverse backgrounds)
• From the perspectives of survivors and practitioners, how could these services be improved? (Ensure you consider the perspectives of survivors from diverse backgrounds)
• What does it cost to provide these services?
• What existing investment and services do these services receive? From whom? How sustainable is this?

The data gathered during the service mapping can be used to help inform both the design of a new service or programme and also to support programmes to develop clear referral pathways. Clear referral pathways will help new programmes or services connect survivors to other services that they may need access to. The following is an example of the type of information a programme might want to collect in order to support them to refer survivors to other services.