This online course focuses on unpacking the complex issues around rape and sexual violence and the impact of male violence, misogyny, rape culture, on survivors. It will inform counsellors on the different perspectives and responses to this kind of trauma with a view to understand how to offer better support from the lens of those with lived-experience.

This course has been carefully curated by trauma experts who are both survivors and have worked extensively within the gender-based violence sector, and is informed by SLEEC’s large network of survivors from across the U.K. The content has been built from our direct research with survivors who have gone through counselling.

We are offering this course as a response to seeing many counsellors feel unequipped to fully support or understand the complexities and challenges of experiencing rape sexual violence and survivvors telling us they want something more.

It will give counsellors the opportunity to look at the landscape of rape and sexual violence through a new lens, as well as understand the wider context of misogyny and rape culture, and how this impacts and intersects with survivors experiences and recovery.

This course will challenge and surprise you in all the best ways, giving you new tools and perspectives to approach client work.

Content includes:

Understanding what different survivors have found most helpful and unhelpful in counselling; informed by our research and large national network of survivors across the UK

Sharing different tools and questions that can help support survivors better

Challenging your assumptions and expectations around healing and recovery and changing the way you see survivors

Understanding the impact of stereotypes and narratives around survivors and perpetrators

Finding and unpacking your own unconscious bias and internalised sexism and seeing how it impacts your work

Looking at the importance of language around this subject

Discussing sex, sexuality and being able to appropriately hold conversations around sex that meets different survivors’ need

About SLEEC:

Survivors Leading Essential Education & Change: SLEEC is a survivor-run organisation that changes conversations, supports survivors and dismantles the roots of male violence.