Every day in the UK girls and women as young as 8 and as old as 80 turn to self injury to cope with abuse, trauma, loneliness and despair. This project will allow Self injury Support to expand our specialist services, reach more women at risk of harming themselves and provide self injury training to other services and improve support across the UK . Expanded services will reach at least 500 more women affected by trauma, sexual violence and self injury who deserve our care and compassion.
The UK has one of the highest rates of self-harm in Europe & only 30% of people ever seek medical help. People who use self-harm are up to 100 times more likely to die by suicide. Self-harm is especially common in women who have experienced abuse & trauma, where the undeserved shame and taboo of both abuse and using self-harm mean they feel unable to reach out for help even in the depths of despair. Our services offer women anonymous, non-judgemental support they cannot access anywhere else.
We provide non-judgemental, open access emotional support by phone, text, email, webchat and online information and self help tools. Highly trained female volunteers deliver person-centred listening support, signposting and self help materials. Specialist staff train a wide-range of organisations to offer better support around self harm, so that no matter where someone turns they get a compassionate and constructive response.
We will support at least 500 women by phone, text, email and webchat and train 200 staff to offer support outside the organisation. We will support at least 500 women to understand, reduce or stop using self harm.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
