Our Crowdfunder appeal is in full flow now and we’re really grateful to everyone who has donated to our campaign.

This week, we’ve been looking at our third strategic pillar over on our social media channel – Advocacy, or the A in our TEAM UP acronym. We shared some of the ways we’ve been advocating for victims of trauma through our work.  

This includes involvement in REDRESS’ Survivor Advisory Group (SAG). Through the group, our Trauma Clinic manager Dr Sarah Whittaker works with other members to ensure that the UK complies with its international obligations in relation to torture.

 SAG’s main priorities are protecting the absolute prohibition of torture, and putting survivors’ voices at the centre of domestic legislative and policy proposals.

 The group’s work will ensure that the UK’s domestic legislation meets international standards, facilitates accountability and reparation for survivors, and does all it can to prevent torture.

 Dr Whittaker, a clinical psychologist, explained her role within the Survivor Advocacy Group: “REDRESS cares deeply about the mental health of the group’s members, so I review and support their wellbeing as they participate in its work. I also have a voice in the group to bring a clinical perspective to any policies that are created by Government.”

Trauma Informed Hosting Coalition 

We also outlined the work of our Trauma Informed Hosting Coalition, which sees TTI come together with nine partner organisations, namely Barnardo's, Citizens UK, Hope at Home, Housing Justice Cymru, Migration Yorkshire, Naccom Network, Refugee Council, Refugees at Home and RESET.

As a collective, we are working together to ensure hosting schemes in the UK are trauma-informed. This will help create the best possible conditions to prevent re-traumatisation, support long term recovery, and promote the wellbeing of hosts, guests and the people who work with them.

Our strategic advisor and coalition lead Tiffany Watts said: “Our aim is to create best practice guidelines to share with the charity, public sector and policy makers to ensure all hosting schemes are trauma informed."

She added: “It is wonderful to be working alongside such fantastic organisations, uniting in a shared vision to provide the best possible support to victims of trauma.”

Collating data is key to advocacy 

The coalition came as a response of an extensive research project in response to the rise in UK hosts welcoming refugees into their homes.

We carried out quantitative research with 50 organisations and qualitative interviews with 10 organisations and four hosts. As a result, we ascertained that over 90 per cent of people had received no information about trauma through the process of signing up to host. And 100 per cent received no support in terms of looking after their own mental health. You can read the full report here.

In order to advocate for these generous hosts, we created a top tips document for them, giving them advice about how to take a trauma-informed approach to their guests. This was later turned into a video, which can be seen here.

Finally, we focused on our strategic litigation work. Strategic litigation refers to the process of taking on a legal case to tackle injustice, and advance an agenda broader than that individual case. All of this helps protect society from human rights violations.

 At TTI, we support individuals and organisations involved in strategic litigation by providing psychological services to maximise the impact of litigation efforts. Specifically, this means providing psychological and evidence-based support to enable individuals to effectively participate in legal procedures and provide reliable witness testimony.

To find out more about our work in this field, click here.

Please support us today

As a small charity which relies entirely on external funding, we would really appreciate your help. If you can help us TEAM UP to Tackle Trauma, click here.