Victim Support appoints Opinion Leader to establish online panel of victims of crime

Victim Support is the national charity for victims and witnesses of crime in England and Wales. Victim Support’s core mandate is to offer emotional and practical help to people who have been affected by a crime. Last year it provided support and advice to almost 1.5 million people. 

The charity is focused on advocating change and improvements to the criminal justice system, to ensure that victims and witnesses receive the best possible service and support through potentially very distressing experiences – it is therefore essential that Victim Support fully appreciates the views and needs of victims and witnesses so it can continually improve the service it offers. In addition, Victim Support needs to understand how the wider criminal justice system is working to enable it to be an effective advocate for change. 

In relation to this, Opinion Leader has been commissioned to run a pilot programme of research using the Caucus digital platform (www.caucusworld.com) with members of the public to understand their experience with Victim Support and the wider criminal justice system.  Once the views of the public have been gathered, face to face discussion groups will focus on generating solutions to improve the services. These solutions will then be fed back into the online community for further discussion and refinement.

Mike Dixon, Director of Policy at Victim Support said: “We are excited to be working with Opinion Leader. They showed a real understanding of the issues victims face, proposed an exciting and innovative way to research victims’ views, and have a strong track record. We hope that this research will help victims’ voices to be heard even louder in the months and years to come.”

Opinion Leader is very excited to be working on this important engagement project. Following the pilot it is hoped that the online community model will be rolled out to a much wider audience.

ENDS

Notes to editors:

Opinion Leader
Founded in 1992, Opinion Leader is a market research consultancy specialising in deliberative, qualitative and quantitative research and consultation, with a strong emphasis on innovative solutions. Since 1992 we have been at the forefront of pioneering new solutions to problems including increasing public participation in policy debate and the difficulty of engaging excluded audiences.

Opinion Leader is part of the Chime Group’s Research and Engagement Division including sister agencies Facts International, Caucus, Naked Eye, Brand Democracy and Ledbury Research.

For more information please contact:
Neil Samson, Consultant
Opinion Leader
T: 020 7861 3203
E: [email protected]