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I can't secure funding to pay them any<br />
more than they are paid – yet they<br />
pesevere because it’s what gets them<br />
out of bed in the morning.<br />
My staff and volunteers literally save<br />
lives – they help people rebuild their<br />
lives and then they help people to grow<br />
into who they always wanted to be –<br />
yet they would earn more money<br />
stacking shelves in a supermarket.<br />
I work 50-60 hours a week, a lot of the<br />
time is spent writing funding bids – to<br />
get the funding to provide these<br />
services – it’s highly competitive.<br />
What do you consider to be the<br />
most important qualities in<br />
someone working with victims?<br />
Grit and resilience – empathy and<br />
patience – and to be as non-judgemental<br />
as is possible for a human being.<br />
How would you respond to<br />
someone who feels that getting<br />
funding for support services is<br />
easy?<br />
I once had someone tell me that people<br />
who work for charities shouldn’t be paid,<br />
it should all be voluntary – that just about<br />
sums up what the public know about<br />
charitable funding….<br />
What I would like to impress on anyone<br />
who thinks that support services are<br />
easily funded is that I have the most<br />
amazing people working for me, people<br />
who set the world alight with their<br />
passion and dedication to the injustice of<br />
domestic abuse, half of them are<br />
volunteers – the half who are paid could<br />
be paid more working in a fast food<br />
restaurant .<br />
There are more charities, trying to help<br />
the ever-increasing number of people<br />
who are being missed due to the<br />
impact of austerity, all fighting for less<br />
money. And there are still a lot of<br />
people out there who don’t believe that<br />
victim/survivors of domestic abuse<br />
should be given support – we stood in<br />
a shopping centre for five hours with<br />
our campaign material asking people<br />
to pledge that they stand against<br />
domestic abuse, and aside from the<br />
odd negative remark and even a couple<br />
of veiled threats, we had no-one sign.<br />
We asked “do you care about domestic<br />
abuse” and the overall response was<br />
“no” – that is how hard it is to secure<br />
funding and support for our support<br />
services. Yet everyone can tell you a<br />
story of someone they know who has<br />
been in an abusive relationship.<br />
Liza Thompson SATEDA
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