Change That Lasts is a new strengths-based, needs-led approach that supports survivors of all forms of violence against women, and their children, to build resilience, and leads to independence.
Our approach:
- Listen – always listen to survivors and place their needs at the centre
- Ask & Act – ask the right questions safely & act appropriately
- Specialist support – know when and how to refer to your local specialist service
- Tools – provide clear procedures, roles, information and training across agencies
- Sustained independence and freedom – work together for an independent future for survivors.
Read a summary of the Change That Lasts approach (PDF)
Read the Change That Lasts Evaluation report
Why is this important?
For many women, when they first disclose they are experiencing abuse they are not given a supportive response. Women are not asked for their views on what would make them safer, despite the fact that nobody knows the perpetrator better than they do.
Often women who disclose abuse are assessed by professionals for risk, which then determines what level of support they are given, and often those assessed at lower risk are offered a lower level of support. We believe that this can prevent women identified at ‘lower risk’ getting stuck in abuse without the right support to escape the abuse permanently.
We want to change that and ensure that support is offered based on a women’s needs and that builds on her strengths and resources available to her. With the rights she can build her independence, recover from the trauma she has experienced and get her life back.
Creating Change That Lasts
Our decades of experience working with survivors, and the evidence of research, have taught us a better way. By listening to women we can provide help earlier and make sure its effects actually last.
‘Change That Lasts’ is a new approach that places the survivor at the heart and builds responses around her.
Too often this approach is considered too complicated and too expensive by those who fund our services. To make it clearer, we have created some infographics, visualising these women’s journeys, and the journeys they could have taken. These illustrate the enormous cost, in human and financial terms, of not listening to women and not responding to their needs.
We’re going to keep advocating for a response to all forms of violence against women that has women at its centre.
Read Sarah, Katrina and Yasmin’s stories below.
What does the model look like?
‘Change That Lasts’ consists of three strands, which, if all three are working in coordination, can:
Provide the appropriate response to survivors wherever and whenever they chose to share their experience;
ensure that services are able to identify abuse earlier and are aware of how to refer to specialist support;
provide specialist support to survivors that is tailored to their needs, builds on their strengths, and is trauma informed.
The three strands are:
Change That Lasts Funded Projects
In 2017-18 Welsh Women’s Aid, in partnership with Women’s Aid (England), successfully piloted the ‘ask me’ strand of the ‘Change That Lasts’ model in Powys, supported fully by our member’s Montgomery Family Crisis Centre and Calan DVS.