We are trauma-informed
Our service understands what trauma is and how our brains and bodies react when faced with violence and abuse and its aftermath. We understand the impact of trauma on people’s lives and we validate survivors’ resistance and resilience in getting through in the best way they can.
We work with survivors to find the right holistic and therapeutic services for them. We share information about trauma and provide in-depth listening and practical grounding to support survivors.
We are empowerment-based
Our service is empowerment-based. This means our work aims to enable LGBT+ people to have choice and control over their lives. This is incredibly important for survivors when choice and control have been taken away from them.
Empowerment is about seeing each person as a whole human being. It is about recognising that there are many aspects to someone’s identity and life experience, including sexual or romantic orientation and gender identity, and also your ethnicity, background, age etc. Violence and abuse can have an impact on all aspects of someone’s identity.
We are person-centred
Our service is centred on the needs of the people we work with and is founded on the values of safety, respect, non-judgment, professionalism, and anti-discriminatory practice:
- Safety is fundamental to our service. We hold survivors who may be experiencing distress or difficult times. We offer a warm individual service within clear boundaries.
- We believe that the working relationships we create with survivors are fundamental to the healing process.
- We respect and understand the many ways that LGBT+ people choose to live and express themselves.
- Our staff are trained, supported and supervised effectively. This includes robust practices around case management, record keeping and safeguarding. We work to the highest standards of conduct about our behaviour and practice at all times.
- LGBT+ people have intersecting identities and experiences of marginalisation and discrimination, for example related to race and ethnicity, faith, disability, age, and class. We understand how the experiences of poverty, asylum-seeking, mental ill-health and other inequalities affect the risk and experience of violence and abuse.
