ANNUAL R E P O R T 2023 Registered charity number 1196530, FBC Centre, Wokingham, RG40 4ES
Victoria Robertson BEM, Founder & Chair of Trustees
As I reflect on the achievements for 2023, I commend our team as well as our partnerships, beneficiaries, their families, as well as the communities who include us as part of their journey. Working together is an honour and also key to understanding risk, vulnerability, identifying gaps and implementing effective trauma informed support for all. Trust and confidence in us and our services is key to defining effective and ongoing, sustainable support.
The statistics of those subjected to abuse in England and Wales remain at their highest, the Domestic abuse commissioner’s office findings from victim-survivors highlights survivor -led support services are the most effective yet least funded. The complex and diverse risks to all due to domestic abuse is something we are passionate about educating all on as prevention, the feedback has been incredible to what we have put in place over the last year.
Whilst I was delighted with the added amendments to the Domestic Abuse act 2021 for all, and most recently post separation abuse being added to the coercive and controlling behaviour law 2105, we also know from clients about the gaps and challenges that still exist. We are honoured to highlight their voices, wishes and remain client centred.
We are proud to provide prevention, education, awareness, recovery services as well as helping create changes to benefit all those subjected to any form of abuse.
I am grateful to our incredible team of survivors for their heart, ability, and innovation to always tackle new challenges and projects which are ever evolving or adapting with humility, grace and compassion. Despite the current financial pressure, limit on available resources, challenges, and impacts across the country, I am especially grateful to all who support, include us, our aims as well as encompassing the children and adults subjected to abuse that our services support through our projects, programmes and activities.
Kaleidoscopic Uk is a charitable incorporated charity (CIO) our purpose as defined in our constitution.
Our objectives for 2023 were to develop and expand our existing services to meet the increasing need, as well as raising as much awareness of all forms of domestic abuse
To adapt our services to meet the need and any gaps identified along the way as best that we can.
To continue to keep the victim- survivor at the heart of everything we do and work with others to raise the profile of peer support and the need for long term peer support services.
Freedom for children and Teen’s programme delivery is something we are delighted to be able to deliver, children often don’t have any support for recovery available that is specific to the domestic abuse.
1 in 5 children are reported to be victims of domestic abuse and children are now recognised as victims in their own right under the DA ACt 2021
Our aim was to provide this to local children to support their recovery from abuse. 2 trained facilitators along with the# support of our volunteers were able to deliver this cpd accredited and recognised programme for ages 5-11 years subjected to any form of abuse in person. With the Teen programme delivered online to those aged 12-16 years.
A total of 157 children and young people benefitted from this course with most accessing our long term support following course completion.
52% also identified with SEN needs
Thank you to Wokingham Borough council for supporting us with funding.
Educate 2 Eradicate is something we had long been developing and had piloted to a local school in 2021, using feedback from this, cluster groups of teachers and head teachers, combined with the voices of child victim-survivors alongside the latest research we delivered to many year groups following the pilot.
Our aim is to highlight the reality, challenge myths and engage children and young people in the conversations about healthy relationships.
Raising awareness of all forms of domestic abuse to children and those that support them in an interactive and age appropriate, trauma informed way.
We were delighted to deliver this to more schools thanks to the fund raising with Wokingham Town Council Mayor who picked us as her chosen charity for 2022 and selected this project for the benefit of all the funds raised. Specifically providing this for FREE delivery in Wokingham Borough Schools.
We are delighted to have delivered this to over 1 thousand children and young people in schools in 2023.
Liberation from abuse programme is something we are delighted to continue delivering due to its success and increase in referrals after the amazing feedback of our course, which has helped hundreds of adults feel heard, validated and liberated as well as informed on their rights and able to help break the cycle of abuse. We help continue their freedom journey with useful knowledge and practical tools, delivered by those with lived experience alongside the latest research.
We continued to develop and deliver the Liberation recovery programme and due to the number of referrals, to meet the need we trained additional survivors to facilitate the course. This was all with the help from the office of police and crime commission for the Thames Valley who funded the programme for 12months ending in 2024.
Our Sanctuary support groups continued to grow in person and online monthly where clients come to offload, in a safe space, gain advice and support as well as being among others in similar situations. We gathered feedback to highlight any gaps. Some were identified including the restriction on clients attending to access essential items such as food, bin bags and household items due to financial/economic abuse as well as the cost of living.
Our Sanctuary support groups continued in their popularity in our safe spaces where people gain support and advice as well as meet peers in similar situations with many friendships formed. The coffee, cake and craft continue to help provide a chance to offload, feel supported while being creative and feeling grounded through the crafts, access ongoing and specialist support.
We extended our multiple monthly groups to other communities and areas to reach many more victim survivors. With feedback we adapted our groups to also include essential and household items due to the increased pressure on all with the cost of living and financial/economic abuse and limited access to other supports available thanks to support from the National Lottery funding
Due to the gaps identified for children accessing long term support and also that due to abuse fun can be sucked out of family life on top of the cost of living we decided to trial a new service called Fun with Mum.
The monthly sessions provide those referred in: Safe space, friendly face Activities for ALL ages Light meal and refreshments A chance to reconnect within family and with others in similar situations
Fun With Mum is a support group for children who have experienced domestic abuse. This group provides the opportunity for you, as mum, to enhance your connection with your child/children through play and fun in a safe place. We know fun is so often sucked out of family life when abuse occurs.
With feedback we implemented this group which has been growing each month. Like all of our services they are free to attend and there is specialist support available. Thanks to support from the Finchampstead Baptist Church for some funding to make this possible.
Our activities have continued to strengthen and develop throughout 2023 with a huge increase in clients referrals, additional needs identified and range in accessing our services from partner organisations and services.
We continued to adapt, evolve and update all we provide based on feedback which is essential as a survivor-led charity. Starting our ‘Fun with Mum’ monthly sessions so that children also have ongoing, longer term support.
Supporting our clients as well their families and evolving to do this is something we are passionate about, so we aimed throughout the year to do so in as many ways as possible.
This includes many projects mentioned but in addition with providing pamper hampers to clients on mother’s day and food hampers for the whole family at Christmas., thanks to the support of Wokingham United Charities and Berkshire community foundation.
We also network with others to provide clients with presents for children on birthdays and Christmas which are harder financially for all with huge thanks to Berkshire helper elves and the Giving tree for many in need of a helping hand.
Mother’s Day can be a day that most clients are triggered by when having escaped abuse and most clients wouldn’t have the time or resources to focus on themselves, so with the support of those purchasing a variety of gifts or donating items we were able to provide some gifts for mum as well as a food hamper for the family of goodies for all to help them celebrate and help relieve some pressure with the food hamper and pamper hampers.
Due to economic and financial abuse plus the cost-of-living crisis as well as many clients never being able to access holidays due to control of the abusive partner the funding of our Family Freedom fund enabled families to borrow and have camping holidays using our purchased equipment. This meant many clients and their families could and can have a holiday without the outlay of costs for the equipment as well as that of storing it all.
Christmas has always been a time of increased pressure on families and especially victim-survivors of abuse. We wanted to continue our Christmas family food hampers which we did successfully for 86 families, the hampers include all the nice goodies for Christmas and beyond to keep people fed over the festive period when accessing help is harder to do.
Awareness
Raising awareness of all areas of abuse, it’s impacts, gaps and reality is part of our constitution. To do this we held many social media campaigns as well as in person or virtual events for people to take part in as individuals or organisations.
We created awareness videos from the voice of survivors to further educate all on different topics of abuse and Post separation abuse. These proved hugely successful and now are used by other charities and organisations as part of their awareness/training. We held the first ever post separation abuse awareness week #psaaw which was a huge success with some of our resources going viral. Due to this we were invited to deliver training to other services/organisations on this topic.
We also produced the first uk survey around PSA for those being subjected and were able to publish the results.
Our annual Domestic Abuse prevention convention, 16 days of activism/white ribbon vigil as well as taking part in many other events to represent Kaleidoscopic Uk survivor voices were a great way of also raising awareness and combined outreach
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Jane Ainslie Prudence Bray MBE Laura Harris Victoria Robertson BEM Priya Dawkins