Space4Action
What We Do
Space4Action (S4A) provides domestic abuse training that educates and raises awareness in the community.
Our training promotes safety; empowers victims, their colleagues and their service providers, and helps build a community safety net. We also campaign on Domestic Abuse & Coercive Control issues. We keep the person who has been abused at the heart of all we do, ensuring that their voice is heard and their safety is paramount, as well as working to highlight the injustices they face.
Although we dislike the word “domestic” and believe it gives a false impression of the nature of abuse in inter-personal relationships, we continue to use it since it is the term most readily and universally understood. We place a strong emphasis on teaching about coercive control because this reflects the most current research, provides a better and deeper understanding of interpersonal abuse and is the element that underpins all aspects of domestic abuse whether psychological, physical, financial or sexual.
Our basic training package has a range of add-ons and variations to suit a range of different workplaces/venues/organisations and we can also offer bespoke training.
C.O.P.E.
All our training and programmes are developed within our C.O.P.E framework, and built upon our four fundamental pillars.
Care
Offer
Protection
Education
Having trained you or your workplace Champions, we will check in with you after 3, 6 and 12 months to see how the scheme is going, whether you need any further support or training, and whether victims in your workplace (whether employees or service users) feel safer or better supported as a result of the scheme. You can also contact us at any time with questions or concerns.
Our work is evidence-based and experience-informed. We are committed to being guided by current research, actively integrating the best available evidence with survivor experiences, community input and professional expertise.
We are committed to collaboration, joint working, and community partnerships. We are generous with our expertise, our tools and our time. We believe in working with varied partners to create stronger and more resilient communities; we are stronger together and everyone in our community has a part to play in keeping people safe.
6 Core Values
Integrity – Be reliable, honest, genuine and accountable. Seek to create safe, open and restorative workplaces with trusted Domestic Abuse Champions.
Respect – Respect victims and their experience; understand that everyone’s experience of abuse is individual, therefore every solution and every choice is individual.
Strength – We believe it takes great courage and strength to survive, seek help and heal. Identify and build on the victim’s strengths, coping strategies and protective factors.
Commitment – Our foundation is a strong work ethic, grounded in a steadfast adherence to respectful and ethical practice; to ongoing learning, to finding new ways and new partnerships to help break the cycle of abuse.
Challenge – We commit to challenge inappropriate behaviour or derogatory language and attitudes; to challenge injustice and challenge victim-blaming.
Believe – Believe the victim, and believe that we can and do save lives, that we have and will change lives and that breaking the cycle of violence and abuse is possible.
Our guiding principle in all the above is Empowerment – we empower bystanders, workplaces and other partners by giving them education and tools to equip them to Recognise abuse, Respond to it and Refer to appropriate support. We equip them to empower victims and survivors by creating support networks that “do with” the person, not “do for” or “do to”. The support given celebrates progress and is survivor-centric: led by the survivors’ voices, centering our work around their experiences, without judgment and with compassion. Through support, understanding and empowerment, our programme will empower people experiencing domestic abuse to see that they have choices and options: and so, working together, we all help give people Space for Action.
Our Goals
To save lives, now and in the future: We provide training that educates, raises awareness, promotes safety; empowers victims, their colleagues and their service providers, and helps build a community safety net.
To champion the needs of people affected by abuse: We keep the person at the heart of all we do, ensuring that their voice is heard and their safety is paramount, as well as working to highlight the injustices they face.
To empower work colleagues, neighbours and service providers to have the confidence to ask about domestic abuse: We empower bystanders by giving them education and tools to equip them to Recognise, Respond and Refer.
Space4Action
A Social Enterprise
Social Enterprises are businesses that are changing the world for the better.
Social Enterprises are in our community to help benefit our community, to tackle social problems, improve people’s lives, provide training opportunities, end stigmas or help the environment. Social Enterprises identify a community problem they want to solve and set about generating the income to achieve that. Another name for a Social Enterprise is a Community Interest Company.
We chose to be a Social Enterprise because we want to combine the professionalism and specialist expertise of a business with the humanitarian aims of a charity in a way that emphasises that we are embedded in our community and working hard for our community.
Social Enterprises help transform the communities they work in.
We believe that since domestic abuse affects 1:3 women and 1:5 men – and the children of these people – it is one of the top problems affecting society. By addressing domestic abuse, we can help create real improvements in peoples’ lives. Our work will also benefit the economy, since early intervention and appropriate support reduces medical or mental health costs, reduces absenteeism and by improving workplace safety and wellbeing, improves productivity.
A company’s employees and clients are far more likely to be affected by domestic abuse than they are by fire or workplace accident, yet while every company has fire training and fire wardens; First Aid training and First Aiders; Health and Safety training and Health & Safety representatives, few if any have domestic abuse training and domestic abuse representatives. Many workplaces are already working to improve workplace wellbeing and mental health awareness, and as part of that, we believe they need to address domestic abuse, or a major root cause remains unresolved and unspoken.
We can help every workplace on the Island to understand domestic abuse, to have zero tolerance for it and to become safe places with trained workplace champions to whom employees and clients can turn for help.
By extending this into a community domestic abuse champions scheme, we can help create a community safety net for victims and survivors of abuse, we can help educate young people so they don’t fall victim to abuse and we can transform the experience of survivors. Working together with our community we can end the taboo and silence and make this Island a safe place where abuse is recognised, openly discussed and safely addressed.
