My name is Kerry and I am the Lead Facilitator for D.A.SEEN, formally known as the Surrey Survivor Steering Group.
Started in lockdown in 2020, we are a group of ten women who have all either experienced domestic abuse ourselves or lost a close family member to domestic homicide.
Although we are supported by the Surrey Domestic Abuse Partnership, our group is independent and totally autonomous in what we do and who we work with.
The majority of us have children who have directly or indirectly experienced domestic abuse, and we have cases of child to parent abuse resulting from domestic abuse related trauma.
Every woman in the group has faced additional barriers for many differently reasons including racism, homophobia, culture, faith, mental health, disability, financial hardship.
We all live with the chronic, long-term effects of trauma every single day.
What we do
Our group is passionate and committed to using our experience to inform services, educate statutory agencies and staff, and help other women recover from domestic abuse.
We may not directly benefit from this, but we believe in this process in order to affect change and a better experience for others.
We operate with the core values of integrity, courage, safety, collaboration, and justice. We need integrity, courage and safety to collaborate, and we collaborate to get justice.
What D.A.SEEN has achieved
Since we started during lockdown in 2020, we have gained the trust of many local statutory agencies and national charities, including Women’s Aid, Surviving Economic Abuse and Rights of Women.
We have had the opportunity to work with these organisations to assist them in understanding the difficulties survivors face in relation to each agency. This has included influencing policy and decision making.
To date we have:
- Given a presentation to Metro Bank on domestic abuse.
- Produced a financial pack available to all survivors in Surrey.
- Consulted on the Surrey wide VAWG partnership strategy.
- Consulted on the Surrey gold standard frame work for understanding coercive and controlling behaviour with the OPPC.
- Consulted on the Surrey Police ‘Rape and Sexual Assault’ strategy policy.
- Consulted on the Surrey Police ‘Domestic Abuse’ strategy policy.
- Recorded individual podcast episodes on our experiences of domestic abuse with the then Surrey and Sussex Healthcare IDVA.
- Consulted on the Surrey County Council ‘Anti-Victim Blaming Guidance’.
- Consulted on the Surrey Police ‘Working with Women with Uncertain Immigration Status’ Policy.
- Consulted with the charity ‘Innovating Minds’ trialing their domestic abuse app.
- Consulted on an ‘Understanding Perpetrator Manipulation’ document with the OPCC.
- Met with policy leads from Women’s Aid looking at priorities for change within the family court.
- Have had our work published and have written the foreword for Surrey County Council’s DA strategy for the next five years.
- Consulted with TrueVison, regarding an ITV documentary.
Our focus for the future
Currently we are involved in a pilot project with the Firebird Foundation and Rights of Women looking at how women’s journeys through the family court can be improved. Experiences within the family court remain one of the biggest challenges for survivors who are often re-traumatized during the process, and victim blamed for something that wasn’t their fault.
Continuing to build upon our relationships with statutory agencies is key to improving outcomes for survivors and to save lives. This will be our primary focus as we move into the later stages of this year and into 2025.
We are also aware that D.A. SEEN is somewhat unique in how we have come together and what we have achieved.
With this in mind, we are now looking at creating a ‘blueprint’ of our group that can be replicated in other counties, with support from The Firebird Foundation and Rights of Women.
I believe that one of the key components of our success support from the Surrey Domestic Abuse Partnership who have committed to ensuring that the lead facilitator and our two co-facilitators have dedicated individual clinical supervision each month.
I feel humbled and privileged by what we have achieved: seeing the women that I work with flourish and step into their own power, free from someone else’s power and control.