Our Team

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Our Team

Directors

Jane Chevous is a survivor of familial child abuse, sexual exploitation as a teenager and clergy rape/spiritual abuse as a young adult. Co-founder of Survivors Voices, she has fore-fronted participation and lived experience in a 40+ year career in education, social care and children’s rights, in the voluntary, statutory and faith sectors.

A qualified social worker, youth & community worker and lifelong learning teacher, she recently gained an MSC with distinction in Mental Health Recovery and Social Inclusion,

As an activist, writer and survivor-researcher, she leads Changemakers, our community of practice for survivor activists; our research and training work; our writing and publication work, and our faith and abuse community of practice. A survivor representative on the National Safeguarding Panel of the Church of England, she is keen to ensure survivors perspectives are central to the necessary changes to safeguarding in the faith sector. Founding director of Reshapers CIC, our parent company, she also leads We Learn We Change, our registered learning provider, specialising in learning for social transformation, led from lived experience.

Author of ‘From Silence to Sanctuary: a guide to understanding, preventing and responding to abuse’ (SPCK) and a writer publishing regularly on abuse and mental health, spirituality and sailing, she explores all these themes at Barefoot Tales. Her other passions include being a grandmother, textile art, playing her accordion and bluewater sailing.


Advisory Board

We have a skilled and dedicated team of advisors with professional and lived experience, who support us in decision making and strategy. This is led by our co-founder and former Director, Concetta Perot.


Concetta Perôt is a psychotherapist and social worker (BACP & HCPC registered) with over 25 years of experience of working with children in care and prisons and running peer-led self help groups with adult survivors of childhood trauma. She has a first class honours in Social Policy from the LSE and an MSc with distinction in Mental Health Studies from the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London. Her dissertation was on the assessment and treatment of trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She is a Research Associate with King’s College London, and was the lead researcher on our Charter for Engaging Abuse Survivors. She has also worked on the NAPAC national helpline providing telephone support for adult survivors of abuse and is experienced in group work, advocacy, training and organisational development. Mother of two and a mosaic artist, she has facilitated many group-based community arts projects and has seen first hand the positive power of both peer-support and creative expression on mental health. Concetta is passionate about developing research evidence and practices for survivor-led, community-based and creative approaches to trauma recovery.


Associates and Volunteers

A team of long-standing members run our peer support groups and Survivor Gatherings. Freelance and volunteer associates collaborate with us on our research, training, consultancy and activism projects. We are grateful to the many volunteers and groups that have been involved in our past activities. Read Our History to find out about our projects and activities over the last 20 years.

Susanna Alyce leads our Survivor Researcher Community

Roz Etwaria of LittleRo.org co-leads all our peer support work.


Organisational structure and accountability

Survivors Voices is a project of Reshapers Community Interest Company (CIC), a social enterprise that promotes creativity, learning and activism to transform people’s lives. We have a high standard of ethical practice (see Our Values), including safeguarding, DBS checks and a complaints process. Our work is  accountable to our community of practice, board of directors and the CIC Regulator.