We have created a safe space for meaningful engagement and survivors have been willing to share their experiences, views and thoughts with us to create and define a new way to experience justice in Scotland. This method of engagement has led to many opportunities being created for both the organisation and the survivors who have been involved within the developments.
As an organisation our staff team has increased 500% in a year, and we are in high demand, with people wanting to know more and buying into our innovative and progressive approach. There has been international interest in our work and the potential for growth is a rather exciting prospect.
For the survivors who are involved, they have ensured that a silent community are now being heard. Survivors’ voices are at the forefront of influencing the innovation in this project and this is evidenced through the development of our secondary harm and sibling sexual abuse services.
The work we have carried out in the field of restorative justice has identified a gap in service provision for survivors of sibling sexual abuse. We ran a second, more focused consultation after this became evident to us. The consultation again, examined what a service would need to look like, what some of the barriers may be, and what current support already is in place. It became clear that this group of people didn’t feel a sense of belonging with support organisations, as they were not designed for them. As a result of this, we as an organisation felt we had to respond. So, we have now begun the process of creating a safe space for survivors and their families that is dedicated to their needs and that offers a model of support and recovery that is currently unavailable in Scotland.
Thriving Survivors really have been paving the way in ensuring the voices of survivors are heard and that they influence the design, development and delivery of services.
Of course, for us to achieve all of this for our restorative justice service, we needed the support, expertise and knowledge from professionals across many different sectors. We created our Advisory Panel and two working groups to assist with the developments.
Here are some examples of organisations that are members of these groups:
- Edinburgh Napier University
- StopItNow
- Rape Crisis Scotland
- Midlothian Council
- KU Leuven
- Community Justice Scotland
- Scottish Prison Service
- Restorative Justice Council
- Victim Support Scotland.
As with any fledgling project, there have been many learning experiences throughout and the reality of that is they have changed who we are and how we operate as an organisation and who we are as individuals within this complex and challenging environment.
None more so than the challenges we have faced from those who oppose the use of restorative justice in cases of gender-based violence. The idea behind our consultation was to offer survivors a choice and it was hard in the early stages to fully understand why there was such strong resistance to this approach.