York-based sexual violence agency, Survive, has set up a National Child Sexual Abuse Advisory Forum to help influence and shape the future funding of specialist sexual violence voluntary sector services locally and nationally.
Following an initial meeting of 24 specialist agencies from across the UK, 11 forum members, including Survive, met with ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) funder, The Leathersellers’ Foundation, to discuss their next funding strategy and grants programme.
Says Survive CEO Mags Godderidge, “No Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) has greater impact than Child Sexual Abuse. It is often long-term and for some, lifelong with many survivors feeling unable to tell someone what happened until years – even decades – later. However, we know that with the right help and support, survivors can heal, rebuild and thrive. This forum is about reinforcing these key messages with statutory, charitable, and philanthropic funders”.
In August, the Royal College of Psychiatrists (RCP) issued a position statement in which it acknowledged that Child Sexual Abuse was the main risk factor in developing complex PTSD and highlighted its association with later depression, anxiety, substance misuse and dissociative identity disorder. The RCP also acknowledged it had caused survivors harm by treating their symptoms instead of their trauma and had too often misdiagnosed survivors with ‘personality disorder’ and delivered inappropriate treatments.
Says Stacey Lamb, Head of Grants at The Leathersellers’ Foundation: “We are so grateful to Survive for bringing such a powerful and informed group together, to share and provide challenge on how funding can be can shaped to empower specialist services. The expertise and leadership in the room was humbling and you could feel the appetite to collectively drive change across the sexual violence sector. The Foundation is committed to helping prevent and tackle the harm of ACEs, and this roundtable discussion advanced our understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing CSA services specifically and will help inform our next giving strategy.”
Survive hopes the Round Table discussion with The Leathersellers’ Foundation will mark the first of many with statutory, charitable, and philanthropic funders. If your organisation would like to set up a Round Table discussion with the National Child Sexual Abuse Advisory Forum to learn more about the prevalence and impact of Child Sexual Abuse and ‘what works’ with survivors, please contact survive@survive-northyorks.org.uk
About The Leathersellers’ Foundation
The Leathersellers’ Foundation enables individuals and communities by working with charities; fosters opportunity through education; and supports the leather industry.
The Foundation’s multi-year, unrestricted charity grants aim to help prevent and tackle the consequences of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and are provided to charities who can evidence a trauma-informed approach and evidence-based interventions and can demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach through evaluation or external research. For more information, please visit https://leathersellers.org/charity/adverse-childhood-experiences/
