You are receiving this because you are on my (Juliet Grayson’s) email list.    Because you are registered on this as a therapist, you are sent emails informing you of workshops coming up for Juliet, and for StopSO: the Specialist Treatment Organisation for the Prevention of S*xual Offending.  If you would rather just get information from me (Juliet) about my courses on Working With Couples, Pesso Boyden Personal Development and William Ayot’s workshops (men’s work, poetry for therapists, ritual and similar workshops) – and not receive information about StopSO then please send an email to [email protected] saying ‘unsubscribe StopSO’ in the subject line.  We will then unsubscribe you from the StopSO list, but you will continue to get emails from me (Juliet) about my workshops.    If you would rather be on the StopSO list but not get Juliet’s info, then put ‘unsubscribe Juliet’ in the subject line.  If you do nothing, you will continue to be on both mailing lists.
OUR INITIAL STRATEGY
At StopSO we have been following a strategy. The first task was to create enough therapists so that when we had a client referral we would have a local, StopSO trained therapist.  We still have huge gaps (see the map of StopSO therapists, it is not quite up to date, but gives you the sense.  Green and blue dots mean the therapist is trained and approved and ready to go. Other colours mean we are awaiting reports from the therapist’s supervisor or another professional, or they are awaiting further training.   You will see where the big spaces are where we need more therapists – and we don’t have many therapists in London!  Our furthest northern therapist is Inverness, mid and North Wales is under-represented, Norfolk and Suffolk needs more….and so on. So please tell your therapist colleagues about StopSO, and encourage them to join.

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NOW WE WANT TO PUBLICISE STOPSO
Having got a core list of therapists, we now feel ready to let the wider public know that we exist.   We would love it if this brought you more StopSO clients.  If you have the time and energy, or would like more clients then please help us.  Here are some of the ways we have thought about:

PR COMPANY
In the Autumn we are employing a PR company who will help us to publicise StopSO.  They are reducing their fee by 50% to support StopSO.  We will probably be asked to write articles at short notice.  If anyone is willing to be on a list of people we can ask to write an article of 500-800 words, on request, then please let us know, and send a sample of your writing to Juliet [email protected]

CAN YOU LET PEOPLE IN YOUR AREA KNOW ABOUT STOPSO
We have prepared (find more about these on www.stopso.org.uk/for-publicising/ or go to the website and look under the resources tab).
i) a flyer about StopSO for you to print and give to any local services that might have clients to refer to StopSO, eg church, mental health services, G.P.’s, psychiatrists, s*xual health services, children’s services, probation, police, drug and alcohol services etc.
ii) business cards that you can give out to anywhere local to you, to hand to (potential and actual) s*x offenders (contact [email protected] to get some sent to you)
iii) a powerpoint presentation which takes approx. 20 minutes, so you can give a half hour presentation to any local groups (women’s institute) or organisations (church, police, GP’s) who might be interested to know about and/or use StopSO’s services

SPREAD THE WORD ON FACEBOOK TWITTER LINKEDIN ETC
Please like our facebook page https://www.facebook.com/stopsouk, follow us on linked in https://www.linkedin.com/company/stopso-uk-specialist-treatment-organisation-for-the-prevention-of-sexual-offending and on twitter https://twitter.com/stopso_uk, Retweet our tweets and get the conversation about StopSO as widespread as possible

BLOG FOR US
We plan to have StopSO blog and are looking for guest bloggers for 500-750 words.  Send us your proposal (a title and short summary of content). [email protected]

HUFFINGTON POST BLOG
I was recently offered the chance to blog on the Huffington Post. The first blog was called Preventing Child Abuse: How to Work With P**dophiles to Stop The First Crime From Happening  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/juliet-grayson/child-abuse-paedophilia_b_11684296.html  The second was He Is A P**dophile, But That Does Not Make Him A Child Molester http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/juliet-grayson/he-is-a-paedophile-but-th_b_12046562.html   Feel free to pass these articles on, to help get the ‘word’ out.

MANDATORY REPORTING: PLEASE EXPRESS YOUR VIEW BEFORE OCTOBER 13TH
Mandatory Reporting.  I wrote a long report which covers the current law in the UK on reporting s*x offenders, and gives the pros and cons for the government proposal of mandatory reporting for child abuse and neglect in England. Please express your view on their website – all the info is in this article. http://www.stopso.org.uk/mandatory-reporting/

NEW WEBSITE
Maybe this is always the case, but the new website has been quite a saga and taken an unbelievable amount of time and energy to create.  There are two aspects.  The new front part that the public see, which has been time consuming enough in itself, but we also have a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) scheme in the background.  This reduces the workload: for example, much of the therapist application process will be automated (so that once the form is filled in, the therapist and the supervisor and their professional referee will receive automatic reminders, and the therapist will receive information about their application process and its progress).  We have had teething troubles, which we have this mostly sorted now. This means you should get an automated update on your application every month.  (If this is not happening, please do let us know!)

CHARITY STATUS
StopSO has applied for charity status.  We think that this will help us access more funding.  We need funding primarily for 1) office staff salaries 2) to be able to subsidise workshops and supervision days, thus attracting more therapists to StopSO 3) to be able to offer subsidies to those s*x offenders (and their families) who cannot afford to pay for therapy. This has already been quite a journey, which included updating our business plan (which accompanied our application).  Many thanks here are due to Andy R., who wrote an initial business plan for us.  We currently have funds to continue for about 9 months!  We are in urgent need of more funds.  If you know anywhere we could apply to, please let us know.

FUNDING
The Allen Lane foundation recently gave us a grant of £5820 towards extra admin staff in the office.  This is very much appreciated and was desperately needed!

CHANGES TO THE STOPSO REFERRAL PROCESS: A REFERRAL FEE
Our current policy is to charge therapists an annual £50 membership fee, which is payable when you get your first StopSO.  To help with our finances, from the end of November we will be charging members a £20 referral fee for their second and subsequent referrals.

NEW CPD COURSE RUNNING
We have a new course that we are piloting: Counselling Victims of S*xual Abuse Who Have Also Abused Others.  This will be held in Oxford on Dec 6th.  Click here for info.  On Dec 5th at the same venue, we have a course we have only run a few times before: Working with the victims or accused of s*xual offending  click here for info  Next year we plan to run some different courses, for those who have completed all the courses that StopSO currently runs.

TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES
Training is one way that StopSO can earn some money and keep going!  Also it helps to develop and build our therapist network, so please let your colleagues know that we are running our basic 3 day training (Crossing the Line, Risk Assessment and Treatment Interventions) in Liverpool, Birmingham, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Scotland (Perth), and Yorkshire.  We hate cancelling training courses, so please help us to ensure that there are enough people to make these workshops viable.  If you know any local networks where you could mention these, or if you would be willing to add them to your facebook page, tweet them, or use some other method (even put up a poster at a conference or place where therapists congregate) we would be very grateful.

SUPERVISION DAYS & PEER SUPERVISION DAYS
Dana Braithwaite led a supervision day in the North, which was very successful, and we have always envisaged that this would be a good way to offer each other support.  If you would like to set up a peer supervision group in your area, to discuss StopSo issues, I suggest that you use the Google group to make initial contact with other StopSO members, or contact Sharon and she will mail out StopSO therapists in your region.  You can either employ a supervisor to join you to supervise and advise you, or create a peer supervision day, depending on the level of experience in the group members.  Usually one can find a low cost venue so that a nominal contribution is enough to make the day run.  Sharon is pretty pushed at the moment, so if anyone else is willing to be a co-ordinator for these, please let us know.  Otherwise Sharon will be helpful when she can. We will be happy to add these to the website too.

STATS RE CLIENTS THERAPISTS
From June 2013 – mid August 2016 we had 288 enquiries.  Of these 36% had not come to the attention of the police or social services.  This means they are asking for help relatively early in their offending journey, which is really exciting.  Think of all those people who will never become victims…due to the work done with these perpetrators!  By mid Aug 2016, 189 therapists had applied to join StopSO across the UK.

OUR YOUNGEST PERPETRATOR
We have been approached for help with a few children who are perpetrators.  The youngest was a five-and-a-half year old boy who had been brought up by a p**dophile until he was two years old, and then fostered.  He started acting out with other children at school, and StopSO was asked to find a therapist for him, which we succeeded in doing.

OUR NEW INITIATIVE FOR THE FAMILIES OF THOSE WHO HAVE COMMITTED A S*XUAL OFFENCE
We have started a google support group, which is moderated, and is for the families of those who have committed a s*xual offence, who are the forgotten victims in s*xual offending. Please let people know about this.  You can find it by going to the StopSO website, go to ‘family members’, then to ‘online support group for family members’.  It is designed for adults only, i.e. it is a support group for those family members affected by s*xual offending who are over 18 years old.

 

 

REALLY INTERESTING PROGRAMMES
Available for over a year, I found this episode of Crossing Continents well worth listening to.  It is called Stealing Innocence in Malawi, on Radio 4, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07krycn   We hear about Malawi’s ‘hyenas’.  These are men hired to s*xually initiate or cleanse adolescent and pre-adolescent girls, some said to be 12 years old and younger.

The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies is a film on Netflix.  It reminded me of the dilemma that faces a non-offending p**dophile – although this man is not accused of that.  This is a drama based on a real life story of retired school teacher Christopher Jefferies who was initially questioned by police as a suspect in the murder of Jo Yeates, who rented a flat from him.  He was vilified by the press, partly on account of his appearance.

Spotlight is also on Netflix.  This film is about the true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child s*xual abuse and the cover up within the Catholic church in USA.

The P**dophile Next Door is on Netflix.  This brave and thought-provoking documentary sets out to discover why legislation to protect children from s*xual abuse has failed, and explores radical and controversial alternatives.  Sadly StopSO does not feature on this, but Dr Sarah Goode, who has since become involved with StopSO, is a part of the programme.

Thanks for reading this, if you got this far!

Best wishes,

 

Juliet

Chair of StopSO

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