Turning Pain into Power: A Charter for Organisations Engaging Abuse Survivors in Projects, Research & Service Development was produced by Survivors’ Voices as a result of a uniquely survivor-led research project, in partnership with King’s College London and with funding from the Wellcome Foundation. The research group and authors are all ‘survivor activists’ trying to turn the pain of what has happened to them into power that changes things. The Charter is the basis of our forthcoming Quality Mark for any organisation that may be engaging with survivors of abuse (many of whom may be ‘hidden’ survivors). It is currently in its pilot phase and we are gathering feedback to evaluate and maximise the Charter’s effectiveness in creating organisations that practise good engagement with people who have experienced abuse.
Use of the Charter
We are offering the Charter as a free download during this pilot phase because we want it to make a difference – to help make engagement with abuse survivors more safe, meaningful and effective. To download the Charter, we invite you to complete the form below, so we can contact you for the evaluation. This is optional and will take less than a minute of your time. You will then be taken to the download page.
We offer the Charter as a tool to improve engagement with abuse survivors by individuals and organisations. This includes people you may already know are survivors and ‘hidden survivors’ who are yet to identify themselves. You can use it to plan and evaluate all kinds of projects and relationships, for example service development, communications and marketing, events, research that may involve survivors, delivery of support services, training and professional development. We look forward to hearing how you use it.
Helping us pilot the Charter
We are asking for permission to contact people who download it so we can seek your feedback on what was effective about the Charter and how we can further improve it. How did it inform your thinking and your own individual or your organisation’s practice?
If you are a survivor and don’t feel safe giving us your email, you can still download the Charter. Please use the Contact form on this website to send us your thoughts anonymously.
If you know someone outside of your team who would like a copy, please do not forward the Charter directly; instead please send them to this page (https://survivorsvoices.org/charter/) so they can download the Charter from here and we can contact them too. Please do adhere to the copyright notice at the bottom of the Charter and thank you for spreading the word!
All answers will be held confidentially, according to our privacy policy. We may quote your answer in our research reporting, but we will not publish with identifying information unless you give us express permission. (Please note, the Captcha at the bottom of the form, that stops us getting lots of spam, can sometimes be tricky on a mobile. We have no control over the pictures it chooses. If after trying a few times you find yourself unable to get to the download page, please try on a PC or send us a message).
