MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR OF TRUSTEES, JULIET GRAYSON
Welcome to our new newsletter. The initial circulation is to all therapists on my contact list, if you do not wish to hear from StopSO in the future including courses and information please unsubscribe at the bottom of this email, although we do have exciting plans for 2017 !I recently blogged on the Huffington Post. Please feel free to share to help raise awareness Preventing Child Abuse: How to Work With Paedophiles to Stop The First Crime From Happening and He Is A Paedophile, But That Does Not Make Him A Child Molester We are planning to have a StopSO blog and are looking for guest bloggers for 500-750 words. If you are interested please send your proposal (a title and short summary of content) to [email protected]
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 could connect with a local, StopSO trained therapist. Green and blue dots are therapists that are trained, approved and ready to go.Other colours mean we are awaiting supporting documents, supervisory or professional references, or further training.You can see on the map where the big spaces are where we need more therapists – and we need more 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.
CHANGES TO THE STOPSO REFERRAL PROCESS: A REFERRAL FEE
Our current policy is to charge an annual £50 membership fee, which is payable when therapists have their first referral.To help StopSO’s current financial position, from 21st November 2016, a £20 referral fee for second and subsequent referrals will be applied.
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 desperately needed!
NOW WE WANT TO PUBLICISE STOPSO
Having got a core list of therapists UK-wide, we now feel ready to let the wider public know that we exist and to increase public awareness. We would expect this to result in an increase in people approaching StopSO for help and an increase in referrals.
If you have the time and energy we would appreciate your help.
PR COMPANY
In the Autumn we are employing a PR company who will publicise StopSO. They are reducing their fee by 50% to support us. We will be asked to write articles at short notice and 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 [email protected]
CHARITY STATUS
StopSO has applied for charity status and has received confirmation that our aims are charitable by law.This is fantastic news and we hope that this will help us to fundraise :1. for office staff salaries
2. to subsidise workshops and supervision days, thus attracting more therapists to StopSO
3. to offer subsidies to those sex offenders (and their families) who cannot afford to pay for therapy.This has already been quite a journey, which included updating our business plan to accompany 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 5 months! We are in urgent need of more funds. If you know anywhere we could apply to, please let us know.
LET PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT STOPSO UK
We have some resources available for you to help us raise awareness of StopSO UK and the great work that we do. A flyer and a presentation are available here.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Please like our Facebook page, follow us on linked in and retweet our tweets to get the conversation about StopSO as widespread as possible. Links to all our social media is at the bottom of this newsletter.
FLYER – DO YOU KNOW ABOUT STOPSO ?
The flyer is available 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, sexual health services, children’s services, probation, police, drug and alcohol services etc.
STOPSO PRESENTATION
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
BUSINESS CARDS
Cards are available upon request and can be used to give out anywhere local to you. For example, to people who might meet with potential and actual sex offenders, such as GP’s, Police, and local drug and alcohol services. To request business cards please send an email stating how many you require and a delivery address to [email protected]
NEW WEBSITE
The new website has had several teething problems and has taken an unbelievable amount of time and energy to create. There are two aspects; the website that the public see and a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system running in the background. This purpose of the CRM is to automate processes including therapist applications. Therapist applications that are submitted without full supporting documents and references require the most time expenditure. Shortly, automatic monthly reminders will be sent to therapists as a reminder to complete the application process.Phase 1 of the new website/CRM is nearing completion and the draft of phase 2 will commence shortly.
TRAINING COURSES AND NEW CPD
Training can create much needed revenue for StopSO and it helps to develop and build our therapist network. Please let your colleagues know that we are running our basic 3 day training (Crossing the Line, Risk Assessment and Treatment Interventions) in York 28th-30th November 2016. Unfortunately our training in Perth has been cancelled due to lack of delegates. 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. We are currently working on courses for 2017 which will bring new training content.
REFRESHER TRAINING
If you have already attended any training day(s) with StopSO, you are able to attend the same day(s) for a second time, at a cost of only £20 as a refresher. You will receive a CPD certificate. Please email [email protected] to book.
SUPERVISION DAYS & PEER SUPERVISION DAYS
Dana Braithwaite – StopSO Trustee, 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.
NEW INITIATIVE FOR THE FAMILIES OF THOSE WHO HAVE COMMITTED A SEXUAL OFFENCE
We have started a moderated online support group for the families of those who have committed a sexual offence, who are the forgotten victims in sexual offending. Please let people know about this. It is designed for adults only, i.e. it is a support group for those family members affected by sexual offending who are over 18 years old.
UNSUBSCRIBE FROM STOPSO
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