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Despite the pandemic, the Team at Break The Silence, providers of professional support for Survivors of sexual trauma, have continued to focus on organisational development and service improvement.
The charity has embedded a culture of continuous improvement within the organisation, achieving the Committed to Excellence accreditation in 2018 from the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), and the charity are currently working towards level 2 of the accreditation through implementation of key improvement projects; transferring from spreadsheet based systems to software based accounting systems for improved financial management and reporting and cost benefit analysis; further development of their client management system to improve clinical management, data security, monitoring and evaluation; and implementation of phase 2 of their IT infrastructure up-grade plan in order to better embrace and utilise technology.
The Team at Break The Silence carried out an anonymous Client survey recently in order to evaluate and identify any areas for improvement in relation to their remote service. From the survey, 100% of respondents said that during covid-19 their counselling support transitioned smoothly from in person (face to face) to remote support; 100% of respondents said it was beneficial to have access to remote support, and using the rating 1-5 with 5 being the top score, responses show a rating of 4.9 for convenience of appointment and a rating of 5 for Psychotherapist’s professionalism and understanding.
Finding new ways of working throughout 2020 has brought challenges, however it has also provided Break The Silence with the opportunity to explore and improve service choice and increased accessibility for Clients; explore opportunities to reduce their impact on the environment; and embrace digital technology.
Clinical CEO, Sharon Belshaw said, “We were delighted to be able to continue to offer our vital support during the pandemic to help our Clients continue their recovery journey. It has been an extremely challenging time for Clients and the Team were relieved and grateful that they were able to continue to work remotely, but it’s also been challenging for them too. To ensure staff wellbeing we carried out a wellbeing audit, and from this identified a range of different support options that would offer additional support to our Team; professional training in cyber therapy and remote support; health and wellbeing guidance; peer support groups, increased supervision to name just a few. The Team at Break The Silence are amazing and even during the pandemic they continued to work on improvement and to help reduce our waiting lists. In quarter 1 we had 75% attendance and have worked hard with 79% attendance reported in Q3. In Q1 we had 17% cancellations and the Team have worked hard to reduce this to 12% in order to ensure best allocation of our resources”.
Break the Silence continue to provide support remotely to survivors of rape and sexual abuse, their partners, and family members age 13+ and support is available to all genders. Options for support during covid include; telephone counselling, asynchronous counselling, video counselling, and video EMDR (eye-movement desensitisation and reprocessing). Referrals for support can be made via telephone, email, or online through our website. If you would like to find out more about our services, access resources, or refer for support online, visit our website and why not take a few minutes to find out more about our work by watching our organisational video, just search: “Break The Silence | Overview on Vimeo”
T: (01563) 559558
E: info@breakthesilence.org.uk
W: bts.nxds.com/