Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre: review of the year

Sexual violence changes lives - and so do we. Over the last year we have seen many developments to our services, which include starting to support young male survivors and changing our name.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last year - we rely on donations to fill our funding gaps to keep our essential service running. Regular donations are vital contributions foy us as they not only help to fund our work, but enable us to plan ahead better knowing that a certain level of support each year is secured. You can set-up a regular donation here.

You can donate for free when you shop online via Give As You Live by being sponsored for an event or organising a fundraising event. If you are interested in fundraising in aid of us please email me at anna.carr@ercc.scot.

JANUARY

We started off 2015 with challenges in meeting the increasing demand for our support services. In December 2014 we had to close our long-term waiting list to help minimise the waiting time, as it had reached over a year long. In January, we worked in partnership with Rape Crisis Scotland to divert our helpline provision to their national helpline - so we could redirect resources to reducing our waiting list for long-term face-to-face support. Our email support service remained open

A group of young people working as part of our sexual prevention project went to Scottish Parliament to speak to the Cross-Party Group on Men's Violence Against Women and Children about what they had learned and the value of the prevention work in schools.

FEBRUARY​​

Our STAR Project started supporting boys and young men aged 12 - 18. To improve the accessibility of our service to young male survivors we launched a consultation on changing our name and had over 200 responses.

The EQUALISE fundraising group at Edinburgh University organised a very successful debate on gender-based violence with Kezia Dugdale, Maggie Chapman, Joanna Cherry QC, Lily Greenan from Scottish Women's Aid and Kathryn Dawson from Rape Crisis Scotland. The debate was live streamed and they raised over £1,500 in aid of us, over their week of activities.

MARCH

We held an exciting event 'Our Voices, Our Future' with Malcolm Chisholm MSP, celebrating our prevention work with young people, and included a full performance of the ‘Do You Know’ theatre production written, performed and directed by young people.

Funding was secured for one year from the Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and NHS Lothian. Five-year funding secured from the Big Lottery for our STAR project for young survivors.

Over the last year (April 2014 - March 15) we delivered 2,060 support and counselling sessions; we responded to 2,443 contacts to our helpline; and we supported 581 survivors of sexual violence and their family members, friends and partners.

APRIL

Our prevention service celebrates its one year anniversary, and started filming a national prevention resource DVD adapted from the ‘Do You Know’ theatre project with Media Co-Op. You can watch a clip here.

MAY

We welcomed several new members to our Board of Directors and Rebecca Stafford became our new Convenor.

JUNE

Our prevention worker, Nadine spoke to STV about the work being delivered in schools nationally, alongside two local young people who have taken part in our prevention work.

JULY

On 1 July we officially launched our new organisational name, Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and our new blog. This was also the 37th anniversary of the establishment of the centre in 1978 (we were the third rape crisis centre to open in the UK).

AUGUST

Two new workers joined our important outreach services in Midlothian and East Lothian. The demand for both these services continues to be high.

SEPTEMBER

The Cabinet Secretary for Justice, Michael Mathieson MSP visited our centre to announce funding for a new Rape Crisis Scotland national advocacy project and Rape Crisis centre in Orkney.

We re-opened our Edinburgh based service's long-term waiting list for support and new referrals to all women and transgender survivors of sexual violence - whether this happened recently or in the past. Long-term support is shortened from 21 weeks to 16 weeks to meet demand for this service.

We were delighted to become one Edinburgh Student's Charity Appeal chosen charities for 2015/16.

OCTOBER

We announced new dates for our multi-agency training courses. We also submitted an application for our training to be accredited.

NOVEMBER

The waiting list for our outreach service, East Lothian Sexual Abuse Service was re-opened. A group of young people at Broughton High School (one of the schools we work with through our prevention project) won their Youth Philanthropy Initiative (YPI) presentation and won £3,000 for the centre.

DECEMBER

We took part in a national event at the Scottish Parliament with Rape Crisis Scotland, Lanarkshire Rape Crisis and Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Highland. The event was hosted by Malcolm Chisholm MSP and we launched a DVD which features four films exploring sexual violence with the young people involved in our ‘Do You Know’ project. The DVD will be used in Rape Crisis prevention work across Scotland.

Over the past 12 months our prevention service has worked with 8 schools and one youth group delivering educational workshops on issues to do with sexual violence to nearly 1,000 young people in total.

2016: LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

In the new year we will be starting our advocacy project and launching a new website. We also face uncertainty about our funding and will be awaiting the outcome of several applications. Donations go directly towards the costs of delivering our all our support and information services.

You can donate here or by texting ERCC50 £(amount) to 70070.

#fundraising #support