News
By Sharon Belshaw, CEO – Clinical at Break the Silence
Every International Women’s Day, our timelines fill with promises about valuing and protecting women, and those messages really do matter. But after the posts are shared and the events are over, what support is actually out there for someone who feels the time is right to ask for help?
The survivors of childhood sexual abuse, women and men alike, need the opportunity to be supported and heard all year round. It is vital that help is there 365 days a year, including specialist counselling, trauma-informed workplaces and healthcare providers, and communities that know where to signpost people to when they go seeking more information or support.
Professional help, delivered with kindness
Break the Silence offers survivors in North and East Ayrshire a safe, trauma‑informed service shaped around the realities of sexual trauma and how it presents differently in different people. Our clinical team offers choice and many different therapeutic modalities.
Our therapists invest heavily in CPD and are constantly improving their knowledge so survivors can trust they will receive gentle, carefully tailored therapy sessions over several months. If you self-refer or refer someone else to us, you can trust that you or they will be met with warmth and professionalism, and receive the very best service we can offer.
Being trauma-informed
But Break the Silence can’t do this work alone. We need workplaces, colleges, GPs and wider healthcare organisations to better understand sexual trauma and the impact it can have on people, and for them to engage with all people in a trauma‑informed way. This could mean taking the time to listen without judgement, offering real choices wherever possible, avoiding ‘just get on with it’ responses, and making reasonable adjustments that help people feel safer and more in control of what happens next.
Representing survivors
Break the Silence sits on cross‑party and national prevention groups, ethical framework groups and specialist networks because we want to bring survivors’ realities into those conversations, influence standards, and share learning about things like vicarious trauma, neurodivergence and accessibility. That level of engagement takes time and energy, but it means we’re not only delivering therapy; we’re also helping to shape the environment that survivors live and work in.
Effective signposting
Of course, none of this matters if people can’t actually find their way to the support they seek. We hear, again and again, how survivors have had to work so hard to be believed, have been passed from one service to another, or told they don’t meet the threshold to obtain help, even when they know they are struggling.
Clear, compassionate signposting on websites, in community spaces, and by partner agencies can make a huge difference and could be the difference between someone giving up and someone getting help. Part of our role in Ayrshire is to be visible enough that survivors, their family members and health and social care professionals know we exist.
Reaching out
If you’re a survivor of childhood sexual abuse in North or East Ayrshire wondering where to turn, you can contact Break the Silence via our website to ask questions or find out more about what our support looks like.
Support us
Building communities that feel safe for survivors is long, steady work, not something that can be solved in the space of an awareness day. Sustainable funding and meaningful partnerships are what allow organisations like Break the Silence to keep doors open, retain specialist staff, sit at the table in national conversations, and be there when someone is ready to talk.
If you are interested in supporting Break the Silence, we would be very happy to talk about longer‑term support, training, or charity partnerships that help keep our specialist support available to those who most need it – women and men – all year round.