Domestic and sexual abuse: young people

More than 750,000 children and young people witness violence in the home. Young women are almost four times more likely to experience sexual violence than older women.

Aim of the programme

We aim to fund work to support young survivors of domestic and sexual abuse aged 11-25.

Our definition of ‘young survivors’ includes young people who have grown up in homes where they have witnessed violence and harm, and young people directly affected by abuse caused by a family member, by an outsider such as a stranger or family friend, or as a result of their own dating experiences.

There are two strands to the programme:

• Crisis Support: We will fund direct services for young survivors that help them to cope with the harm they have experienced and support them in building safer futures by increasing their understanding of abuse and their resilience to it. This could include services such as counselling, advocacy and group work.
• Young Voices: We will fund work that helps young people to heal through having a voice. This could include setting up a new survivors group or support for an existing group. We will also support work which aims to build networks of young survivors who can speak out to policy makers, planners and the sector, so that their views and voices are directly heard.

Outcomes

Your work will need to deliver one or more of the following outcomes:

• Young survivors aged 11-25 feel that support services have helped them to cope and improve their mental and emotional well being
• Young survivors aged 11-25 feel that support services have helped to keep them safe and increase their resilience against future harm
• Young survivors aged 11-25 feel that having a voice and hearing from fellow survivors has helped to progress their healing process
• Policy makers and planners are more aware of the needs of young survivors

Other important information

• We will NOT fund work with children under the age of 11
• We particularly welcome applications for work with boys and young men as well as girls and young women. We recognise the gendered nature of domestic and sexual abuse and ALL work must be grounded in an understanding about the dynamics of power and control
• We do NOT fund preventative awareness raising work under this funding programme.

You can apply for all or some of your project costs, but we encourage you to get some of your funding from other sources if you can. We will not generally fund the full cost of applications made by charities with an annual income over £10 million. Our grants usually vary between £25,000 and £40,000 per year for a maximum of three years, and rarely exceed this upper limit.

If your work is national or provides a model that could be replicated, we may be able to fund at a higher level. Please call us to discuss this before you submit an application.

You should also read our UK Grants Strategy

This programme is open for on-line applications from 13th August until midday on 19th October 2012.