What do we mean by Trauma Informed and Person Centred

Safeline is a person-centred, trauma-informed sexual violence support service.

Since 1994, we’ve directly supported 100,000+ people impacted by sexual violence. The expertise and insight gained informs our deep understanding of how trauma affects survivors and enables us to develop and adapt our high-quality and effective trauma-informed practice — empowering individuals to cope and recover, ensuring:

• Safety
• Trustworthiness and transparency
• Peer support
• Collaboration and mutuality
• Empowerment, voice, and choice
• Cultural, historical and gender access

Safeline’s approach to delivering this person-centred, trauma-informed service – meeting Equality Act 2010 duties and ensuring all survivors feel services are accessible – is enabled by three key factors:

1. Supportive values, practices, and expertise
2. An accessible, comprehensive, and integrated service model
3. Expert and quality-assured people, processes, and policies

Safeline’s approach is built on a foundation of supportive values, practices, and expertise, ensuring all survivors feel safe, empowered, and can access the service.

• We’re an inclusive organisation, supporting people affected by sexual violence, irrespective of age, gender, sexual identity, culture, religion, language, and physical and mental health needs.
• We actively tackle prejudice and promote understanding between people from different groups to advance equal opportunities and foster good relations between those who share protected characteristics and those who don’t. We recognise that meeting our Equality Act 2010 duties may involve treating some more favourably than others.
• We place the person at the centre of our service, treating the person first and focusing on their abilities, rather than disabilities or conditions. We tailor our approach to specific needs of survivors, considering their unique life experience and characteristics.
• We have expert understanding of how trauma impacts (psychological, social developmental etc.) and recognise that when a person is in crisis, their readiness to talk and psychoeducational needs differ. We address these with empathy, non-judgement and acceptance, and value their difference and diversity, recognising the unique user behaviours and coping mechanisms.
• We create a safe and transparent environment with appropriate time for each individual to trust and feel comfortable to engage.

Our service-delivery model is designed with users at the centre, and shaped by survivors, ensuring it is accessible, comprehensive, and integrated — a ‘one-stop-shop’ for people affected by sexual violence.

• Safeline is survivor-led, with former service-users and survivors represented at all organisational levels, including Board. The survivors’ voice influences and informs everything we do.
• We provide comprehensive services that minimise the need for survivors to access multiple providers, as each poses a chance to re-traumatise.
• Our dedicated national telephone and online support services (text/livechat) enable survivors to access support from wherever they live and choose their preferred communication channel.
• Our website contains inclusive information and resources needed before, during or after contact. The content, style, tone, and language are designed to speak to users, empower and create a safe and transparent environment.
• We utilise Language Line, accessing 200 different languages to enable service users to speak freely in the language of their choice.
• We maintain explicit terms-of-service and appropriate boundaries, establishing a trustworthy and transparent dynamic.

To enable our quality assured person-centred trauma-informed approach, we have the right people, processes, and policies in place:

• Our workforce (staff/volunteers) is experienced and trained to provide person-centred, traumainformed support, tested thoroughly at interviews, and monitored rigorously thereafter.
• Our workforce is diverse, reflecting communities they serve (genders, ages, ethnicities etc.), to ensure we’re able to work with survivors in the way they need and give them autonomy and choice of who supports them.
• Each team is line-managed by safeguarding leads and provided with accredited specialist clinical and management supervision.
• All services are independently accredited against best practice quality-standards, incorporating the 6 principles of trauma-informed practice and EIGE best practice.
• Our effective governance, policies and procedures ensure compliance with all appropriate legislation (including the Equality Act 2010, Disability Discrimination Act 2005, Domestic Abuse Act 2021 etc.). These are reviewed/updated annually, reflecting learning and best practice, eliminating unlawful discrimination, harassment, and victimisation