Support for Women

You will be seen by one of our assessment team to suit your gender preference. The person seeing you will do a risk assessment and a support plan with you to see who we can best help you. The assessment is very much a two way process.

Once we receive your referral, we will contact you, via email, to arrange an appointment. We recognise that taking that next step is very difficult and, if you prefer, we can carry out the appointment via a telephone call, to talk through any concerns you are experiencing and ways in which we can help you to overcome them. If you want to speak to someone who has had similar experiences to yourself, before talking to a counsellor, we can arrange for one of our female Friends of START to contact you.

Yes, we have a daily help and advice line specifically for females (telephone 01962 868688) which is available 10-2pm each week day. This is not an emergency line. We aim to return any calls left on the answerphone within 24 hours.

If we feel you need other types of help we will signpost you to other female services that we feel maybe better placed to support you. These will be discussed with you and could be either the statutory services such as mental health or other health services or other specialist voluntary agencies. We can contact them with your consent. There are some national, female-specific, helpful, support services to which we may signpost you, which can offer additional help and advice.

We will keep you regularly updated on where you are on our counselling Waiting List. While you are waiting for counselling, you can also attend one of our female-specific Peer Support groups and we may also suggest other services which can help you while you wait. The initial assessment will identify the support we feel might help you, including possibly contacting crises teams, as START is not an immediate crisis service. These will be services which can work alongside START services.

Yes, to support you for the initial assessment, or for a session of face-to-face counselling, but not at Peer Support group meetings.

No, we do not discriminate between males and females. Everyone we see is a survivor of sexual trauma and is treated the same, regardless of gender. We have unisex toilet facilities at our offices in Winchester, but may have separate facilities for males and females at the offices we use in Andover and Basingstoke.

No, we operate an appointment only system.

Yes, we run Peer Support groups specifically for females through our STEPS programme. Self-referrals to these groups can be made through our website’s Contact page. These groups meet monthly and are led by female facilitators.

We use the RADAR issues and outcomes tool created by The Survivor’s Trust to record your presenting issues at assessment and to chart your progress through counselling. Progress will be reviewed every six weeks, with you and the counsellor completing a new RADAR form. You will have copies of each RADAR form so that you can see the progress that you are making, during the process and when the counselling sessions end.

While we try and match each individual with a compatible counsellor and will always ensure your gender preference is respected, in rare cases the counselling relationship doesn’t work as well as we would hope. Should this issue arise, you can raise it during your first three sessions and ask to have another counsellor. We will seek to find an alternative counsellor as quickly as possible.

Yes, we collect data using the details submitted on the referral form, adhering to current GDPR legislation. This information is used, anonymised, to support funder reporting and to determine trends and demands, which helps us in planning future service needs. Your personal details are kept on a secure computer database and once you end your contact with us, we destroy all personal records after three years as part of our GDPR policy.