S.H.E UK is a charity dedicated to supporting adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, sexual violence and rape. We offer a range of long term, therapeutic services to help survivors address the trauma that have endured and empower them on their healing journey. We were formed as a self-help group in 1998 and became a charity in 2000. Since then we have supported over 1100 people.
Our objectives are to:
Our services empower survivors to develop practical coping strategies, build confidence, self-esteem, to build social connections, reduce isolation and understand the effects of abuse to go on a process it in their own time. We offer our clients up to 2 years worth of support as we know short term, time limited support is ineffective. Our services take an holistic approach and we tailor our support to each person's needs. Our clients describe our support as "life changing" and "life saving" - and we are proud to do what we do everyday.
The majority of our focus is on supporting survivors who seek our help. We offer three key services to them - the first is our telephone support service that supports survivors waiting for therapy with us. This service was introduced during the start of the pandemic and has been so valuable we have adopted it now as an ongoing service. We offer people on our waiting, who are often in crisis, a minimum of a 30 minute call per week to help emotionally 'hold' them and signpost them to other support services to help address other challenges affecting their lives.
We offer free 1:1 therapy/counselling on a long-term basis (for up to 2 years), tailored to what each individual needs. Traditional support services offer short term relief through time limited therapy which is often not sufficient to truly help survivors address their trauma. Working with people for 2 years allows trust to develop and allows people to fully open up so we can help them address their complex trauma.
Lastly, our 'Lounge' peer support group helps people build healthy relationships with others and empowers survivors to address their mental well-being issues. We deliver a range of self-development courses supporting people to understand that their feelings are due to their trauma. Survivors develop confidence and self-worth, significantly improving their health and well-being. Individual key working sessions help survivors set and achieve their desired goals to work toward a healthier future – including employment and education.
In terms of supporting non-abusing family members of survivors, we currently support several people and we offer up to 12 sessions of 1:1 counselling to help them to understand and support their loved one as a well as build their own resilience. We are looking at setting up a peer group if we can secure funding for this.
