Support line freephone: 0808 2840484 Enquiries: info@csass.org.uk
Hello, our names are Sophie and Sofia (everyone gets us confused). We are work based learning students from the University of Chester completing a 5-week placement at Chester Sexual Abuse Support Service (CSASS). Our placement is designed to give us a well-rounded experience for what it would be like to work with a small charity. We will be working directly with survivors when answering the phone, talking to shop keepers, and helping at stalls. So far this week we have completed lots of interesting things. We completed our inductions with all members of staff, getting insight into each of the roles and how they work together making things run smoothly. We also attended a Health and Safety course for which we have received an attendance certificate.
After completing the admin jobs such as the risk assessments, fire safety and IT training we started doing some fun things. We created a “morse code” bracelet with a hidden message in with another local charity called Tomorrow’s Women working directly with survivors . We completed outreach work within the community raising awareness about sexual abuse by visiting various restaurants, cafes and bars handing out our CSASS stickers asking them to be displayed. Luckily all the business’s we spoke to were happy to help.
On Monday and Wednesday night we shadowed on the support line a service that CSASS offers. We talked to other volunteers and found out how they feel volunteering with CSASS. They gave us some particularly useful insight into how they became involved with becoming a volunteer and why they find the service important. They are all very enthusiastic about helping and told us how answering your first call on the support line is not as scary as we think. It was great to be in a non judgemental environment where we could witness the impact we were making with survivors. We also met some of the counsellors and had a nice chat with them. We also made support calls to clients on our waiting list to check in on them and see how they’re doing.
For next week we have some exciting things planned such as more outreach working in a local school, attempting to make macramé feathers with Tomorrow’s Women.
