South Asian Health Action and their Mental Health Community Ambassadors invited Quetzal to deliver their awareness raising session about the impacts of childhood sexual abuse on adult survivors and then engage in group discussion answering the question ”What Can We Do to Build Better Communities that Support Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse?”
What can we learn from the discussion
To build communities that support survivors of abuse, the community ambassadors share that we need to:
- Develop one-to-one connection with individuals, understand their issues and challenges first before introducing different possible issues such as childhood sexual abuse,
- Not to misdiagnose someone issue,
- Utilise the social media better to communicate to a wide range of people,
- Make use of anonymous web chat so that people feel that it is easy to communicate their issue without being identified,
- Introduce information about sexual abuse early at school,
- Support people first and initially with their self-esteem and confidence so they have the building blocks to then share their experiences,
- Have bite size presentation with interactive elements about the impacts of childhood sexual abuse,
- Prevent abuse by working with perpetrators so that situations do not escalate,
- Provide a platform to male survivors who may be affected in their sexuality,
- Deliver presentation in different languages to make it more accessible,
- Consider the age group you are delivering your presentation to,
- People who deliver the presentation need to have cultural competences to engage with set communities,
- Split gender so both women and men feel comfortable speaking about this topic,
- Engage with faith leaders to address the issue of abuse and raise awareness.
What’s Next
South Asian Health Action Mental Health Community Ambassadors received the presentation and the outputs of the discussion. They were also given useful information for dissemination in their community including the links to:
- Quetzal Self-help Guide
- Useful Numbers
- Stories of Change written by South Asian Female Survivors
- Shabnum Popat, Quetzal Clinical Lead Radio intervention on Sabras Radio talking about the Breaking the Silence Initiative:
- The 1h Webinar – Breaking the Silence Initiative – What We’ve Learnt So Far
- An invitation to our Community Discussion on the 8th July 11-12.30 on Zoom answering the question ‘”What Would You Do Differently to Break the Silence in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland in Black Asian and Minority Ethnic Communities?”
- An invitation to join our newsletter and read past issues
Quetzal remains at their disposition to mobilise volunteer community connectors and staff for their events and projects aiming to raise awareness about mental health as well as to answer their questions, share information about the charities and services available to support more trauma-informed communities and support their projects.
Quetzal will take upon the learning to improve their resources, increase their capacity to deliver counselling and interventions in different languages by collaborating with other agencies and groups, acquire greater cultural competences, and finally develop projects that are even more impactful for the community we serve in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
