Month: February 2019

Earlier this year, thanks to funding from the Home Office, the Male Survivors Partnership in conjunction with LimeCulture CIC, announced that 10 new services would be able to participate in the Independent Accreditation Programme for the Quality Standards for Services Supporting Male Victims/Survivors of Sexual Violence in 2019 free of charge!

The services who have successfully applied for a place on the programme starting in March are:

1. RASA Merseyside Counselling Service
2. RSVP Counselling Service
3. The Green House
4. Blue Sky Centre SARC
5. PARCS Counselling service
6. The Birchall Trust
7. St Mary’s SARC ISVA Service
8. Harbour Centre SARC ISVA Service
9. The Sunderland Counselling Service
10. Kinergy

 

Background information

Since their launch in January 2018, the Quality Standards for Services Supporting Male Victims/Survivors of Sexual Violence have been downloaded hundreds of times, and we already have over thirty services that are working towards accreditation.  This means many services are already working to improve consistency, practice and the overall quality of services supporting male victims/survivors.

The Quality Standards and the Implementation Guidance for Commissioners and Service Providers are available online, free of charge: http://www.malesurvivor.co.uk/implementation-guidance-online.pdf

 

There are 24 Quality Standards across four domains; Leadership & Governance, Access & Engagement, Service Delivery and Outcomes & Evaluation. They set out the expectations of the organisation’s leadership, staff and also the client experience.  The Quality Standards create a framework and benchmark that can be used to develop and improve service provision for male victims/survivors, in particular recognising their gender-based needs.

Sitting alongside the Quality Standards is the Independent Accreditation Programme, delivered by LimeCulture CIC.   The programme will award a Quality Mark to services that demonstrate they meet the Quality Standards through a robust and independent accreditation process of documentary evidence review, interviews and site visits.

The length of time for a service to reach accreditation will vary from service to service and will depend on a number of factors including, for example, how far the service has to go to meet the Quality Standards, and/or how quickly the service can provide evidence to the independent accreditation team to show that they meet the Quality Standards.  The independent accreditation team work with services to identify the appropriate timescales, based on initial self-assessment, service capacity and functions and location of the services being accredited.

Ordinarily, the cost of joining the Independent Accreditation Programme is £3,500 + VAT which covers a service, which is based at a single site.  However the Home Office funding has enabled us to offer 10 services the opportunity to join the Independent Accreditation Programme free of charge!

For further information or an informal discussion please contact the Independent Accreditation Team on 0203 6330018 or email accreditation@limeculture.co.uk and we will be happy to discuss your requirements

This week has seen the LimeCulture staff come together in Manchester for our regular planning  & update meeting. As an organisation that works nationally, our core team members live in different locations across England, so we regularly make time to come together to update, share and plan our work collectively as a team. Our busy schedules and the demands of our work mean that we are all often working in different locations from week to week. By coming together, we are able to share our successes, raise our concerns and highlight any themes that impact on our work as a team.

Our team meeting this month focused on ‘Self-care’ – an important topic that is so often overlooked by many employers. LimeCulture has recently been asked to develop self-care training to frontline professionals working in safeguarding roles. As part of the development of this new course aimed at frontline professionals working at the sharp end of difficult cases, we recognised that while self-care is crucial for them, it is also important for everyone else too. “Self-care shouldn’t be seen as be as exclusive for those who have difficult jobs, or as an afterthought for those who are already stressed out by their jobs” says Phil Doorgachurn, LimeCulture’s Director of Safeguarding in Sport. “taking care of yourself is what enables you to do your job…regardless of your role, your grade, your responsibilities,”

“At LimeCulture our staff are our most important asset. Our organisation is only as good as the people we employ so we want to make sure that they are happy and healthy, and actively taking steps to make sure they remain that way” explains Phil, who developed the training alongside Bernie Ryan, LimeCulture’s Director of Training and Development. “Our work lives are demanding, we work hard to deliver for our clients, often with pressures and conflicting demands on our time” says Phil “We wouldn’t be so effective if we weren’t all looking after our selves properly”.

 

LimeCulture decided to take a whole team approach to self-care, by making it the focus of our team meeting. Bernie and Phil delivered the new ‘Self-care’ training to the rest of the LimeCulture team, focusing on the things we do to look after ourselves individually and how this is working for us.

“Everybody has competing demands in their lives, whether this is family commitments, financial constraints, social events, anything else that means you are pulled in different directions. When you add the pressures of your job to the mix it can be difficult to make sure that you look after yourself properly’ says Phil. ‘Taking a bit of time to prioritise yourself each day is key to staying on top”.

Everybody will have different approaches to looking after themselves and so the LimeCulture team looked at the ways they practice self care individually and whether there is more that they could be doing. “For some people, a walk round the block can be all it takes to clear their head, for others a full workout at the gym will recharge their batteries’ explains Phil, “It might be that making a bit of time to read a book, or write a list, or see a friend will contribute to a more balanced life”.

The feedback on the “self-care’ training from the LimeCulture team was excellent. Joint Chief Executive Kim Doyle commented “It was absolutely fantastic to take time out to focus on our self care. We could have been a tough audience – all of the members of our team are very able professionals who operate at a high level in the field of sexual violence and safeguarding – but the team absolutely recognised that looking after ourselves properly is a key contributor to our individual and collective success’.  Each member of the LimeCulture team now has an individual ‘self care plan’, which were discussed and developed as part of the training. “I am really proud that at LimeCulture we have enabled each member of our team to take responsibility for prioritising taking care of themselves. This is good for each member of the team personally, but will also makes us stronger as a team’.

 

LimeCulture’s Self Care training is now available for delivery to teams of professionals.

If you are interested in this 1-day interactive workshop contact info@limeCulture.co.uk for more information.