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To the welfare, the distress, of women and who have experienced or any form of sexual or exploitation during their lives.
Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis (GCRC) exists to promote the welfare, and relieve the distress, of women and girls who have experienced rape or any form of sexual abuse or exploitation during their lives.
We do this Promotingby:and
responding to survivors' needs of sexual violence through an empowerment model of work; Reducing the impact of sexual violence by supporting, educating, informing and advocating for survivors; Challenging oppression of women and girls in all its forms; Challenging societal attitudes condoning and colluding with sexual violence against women and girls, and doing so in a way that both educates and empowers.
We hold one of the the largest service footprint for any Rape Crisis Centre in the country, with 1.2 million girls and women able to call on our services if and when needed across Glasgow and Clyde.
We are independent from statutory services. We sit within a voluntary network in Scotland of other Rape Crisis Centres and alongside organisations to end Sexual Violence Against Women and Girls.
Whilst our service area is contained in Scotland, our influence is not. We seek to secure progressive change at national, UK and international levels through our evidence, experiences and the empowerment of girls and women. We also support UK nationals who have experienced rape or sexual violence internationally.
Proud over every year recognise and recover from the trauma they have experienced. provide a service that is vital and has an undisputable impact.
Our values are our guiding principles. They define the way we work and inform the way we behave.
We act with courage and don’t make assumptions; we ask and answer difficult questions. We speak up, listen carefully, challenge the status quo and reflect – changing and adapting to best support survivors, colleagues and partners.
We are open, honest and ethical. We celebrate diversity and respect others points of view. We are accountable to each other and to survivors, adhering to the highest professional standards. We have no tolerance for hidden agendas or abuse of power.
We own our own improvement, learning from mistakes and embracing the strengths of others. We are committed to building the confidence of survivors and colleagues, enabling informed and purposeful decisions. We support collaboration to grow and develop our organisation. We are each other’s toughest critics and loudest supporters.
We deliver our services with respect, dignity and warmth. We support each other with kindness, nurturing an environment where trust is built and maintained through empathy and candour.
GCRC is a registered Charity and Company Limited by Guarantee. We are overseen by an all-female, highly-skilled Board of Trustees..
The Board of Trustees meets to review regular reports designed to provide oversight of the performance of the organisation in a range of areas, including finance, human resources, operations, income generation and outcomes. A scheme of delegation is in place, and sets out a clear framework within which the Board and all staff can operate effectively with supporting policies and procedures. Leadership and Management of GCRC is delegated to the Director.
A current list of Board Members can be accessed here
Like many women's organisations, GCRC evolved from a collective working model to a feminist governance model. This means that our Board Members:
Prioritise survivors experience and voice. Understand and can articulate feminist values.
Attend to their communication approach and relationships value. Take emotional responsibility. Review and advance their decision-making, collaboration, emotional intelligence and managing differences skills.
Our three services for Survivors are overseen by specialist Team Leaders, who hold expertise and experience in that area.
In partnership with our specially trained Volunteers, we also deliver our Connect Live Service. This provides a phone, text, email and video chat service.
We continue to sustain and diversify our funding base. and to secure new relationships with funders and supporters in different sectors and environments.
The responsibility we have to women and girls in Glasgow, East and West Dunbartonshire, Inverclyde, East Renfrewshire and Renfrewshire must be equally felt and valued. That's why we are increasingly visible and contributing to all of the areas we serve. Our partnerships and relationships with statutory services such as Social Work, Health, Education, Police, and Government must match those we hold with our voluntary sector allies and Rape Crisis Network, if we are to fully realise our vision.
We must continue to increase the quality and expand the coverage of our current services. The internal culture in which we deliver our strategic plan matters. We want all of our workforce to feel motivated, challenged, encouraged and trusted. That their experience and expertise matters, and that their feminist values are evident and empowering for themselves as well as others.
Our commitment to sharing our expertise will be increasingly felt and called upon within our service area, nationally and internationally. Sexual violence is a life-changing, life-altering and life-long experience and GCRC will do more to share the experiences, voice and needs of survivors to aid progressive changes at societal, political and economic levels. Enhancing our ability to evidence our impact, evaluate our services and showcase our approach is vital to our success in this area.
Finally, we will continue to be ambitious as an organisation. We will take risks in order to reap rewards for survivors. We will invite challenge and we will continue to campaign and advocate for better; both in our pursuit of equality for women and girls and in our need to be fully resourced to meet the demand for our services. There is an incredible amount of learning from our past to build on; and there's an incredible amount still to do to eradicate sexual violence.
Each of our strategic objectives, has four desired outcomes.
If we achieve these, we will know and be able to evidence, that we have succeeded.
We have reached more women and girls who are underserved by our services, by using evidence led approaches.
We have strengthened existing partnership working and developed new collaborations to widen our services offered.
We have reduced the waiting list to our services to a maximum of three months.
We have improved the understanding of consent, first responder and bystander approaches amongst young people and staff in schools, youth groups, colleges, and universities.
We have reached more organisations in other sectors, both public and private, increasing our ability to prevent sexual violence in work and social places.
We have improved our information and communication resources, taking advantage of digital platforms as well as traditional tools. to the prevention of sexual violence and the ability of survivors to safely disclose their experience.
We have invested the income secured from our training and consultancy work in new projects, increasing our ability to prevent sexual violence.
We have contributed to local, national, and international policy and practice developments, using our evidence and experience in preventing and responding to sexual violence.
We have contributed to local, national, and international forums and partnerships to enhance the rights of women and girls, with their experiences shaping our priorities.
We have advocated for women and girls who have experienced sexual violence to be heard and better understood, in collaboration with partners throughout national and global campaigning days and events.
We have consistently campaigned to protect women and girls' needs for safe spaces and to improve the cultural understanding for Wethis.have clearly contributed to achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls so that we play our part in achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set out by the United Nations. embrace diversity and excellence within workforce.
We have recruited, developed, and retained a diverse workforce with different skills and experiences to deliver the best standard of Weservices.havea trauma informed and reflective workforce, who benefit from an ongoing process of development and performance review. We have safe and welcoming spaces for our workforce to deliver our services.
We have a culture that embraces and values workforce engagement and experience.
Survivor and partner experiences will continually inform our monitoring and evaluation framework. Our Strategic Objectives and Outcomes will guide our following internal processes each operational year: Operational and Service Plans. Fundraising PerformancePriorities.Plansfor our Workforce.
Each of these will have a monitoring and evaluation framework allowing us to assess the impact and progress we are making day-to-day and at formal review points by GCRC Director and Management Team.
The progress made quarterly will be formally reviewed with our Board, allowing us to review or revise our operational approach, or to give specific regard to areas of concern or new strategic opportunities.
Our annual performance will be published at our Annual General Meeting, with funders receiving quality, evidenced and engaging performance information from us at required contractual reporting points throughout each operational year.
Since 1976 we have continued to evolve our services, enhance our expertise and use our influence as political, societal and economic developments and opportunities allowed.
When the global pandemic began in 2020, GCRC were successfully delivering a range of distinct projects: emotional support, advocacy, prevention and specific support for young people and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities.
Despite this and our importance to women, girls and survivors, we continued to experience the same issues we have had throughout the past four decades. Insecure and short-term local and national statutory funding impacts our ability to plan sustainably for the medium-to-longerterm; demand continues to outpace our resources, resulting in waiting lists for our vital services.
Women and girls should not have to wait at all for our help.
In 2021, the GCRC Board agreed to seek the support of independent change specialists. Focussing on distinct themes of - Our Place, Our Partnerships, Our Policies and Our People - they sought to review and recommend learning that leaned on our past, reflected our current status and created the best conditions moving forward. This included working with the Board and Staff Team to appoint our new Director, Claudia Macdonald, who took up her helm in August 2021. With new Board members also appointed in late October 2021, GCRC feels positive about where we are going, and, more importantly, why we are heading in the direction we are.
To learn more about our Change period please see Appendices
In 1976 a group of women in Glasgow came together to form a Rape Crisis Centre. This Centre would be the first in Scotland, and remains the longest operational Rape Crisis Centre in the United Kingdom. Support services for women survivors of male violence were being opened across the UK as part of a grassroots movement of women who were determined to speak out against this violence, to challenge the myths that surrounded women’s experiences of male abuse and the stigma that they experienced.
In 1983 the Rape Crisis Centre in Glasgow secured money from the then Urban Aid Fund to establish the Women’s Support Project in the East End of the City. This project has developed into a model of good practice, respected across the country, and has been instrumental in the development of the Women’s Safety Centre (now WISE Women), involved in the setting up of SAY Women, has worked on the September Month of Action on Child Sexual Abuse for a number of years, and provides specialist training to professionals across Scotland.
Articles were appearing in other mainstream magazines such as Women’s Own and in 1989 the Evening Times. The Women’s Support Project in Glasgow carried out a survey on rape in marriage which found that almost half of the women in Glasgow who had been raped, had been raped by their husbands.
In 1999, the Scottish Executive established the Domestic Abuse Service Development Fund to provide funding for work on domestic abuse, but this fund also allowed work to be carried out by Rape Crisis Centres across the country.
Then, in January 2004, then Minister for Communities Margaret Curran announced that the Scottish Executive would provide £1.86 million funding for Rape Crisis Centres in recognition of the historical underfunding experienced by centres across the country.
In June 2006, the Solicitor General Elish Angiolini reported 50 recommendations that came out of the Review of Investigation and Prosecution of Rape in Scotland. These recommendations included specialised training for prosecutors, strengthening communication with victims, early and co-ordinated access to medical support for victims and ensuring that the process is more thorough and fair.
When the new Scottish Government came into power in May 2007, they made a commitment to continue funding the very valuable contribution women’s organisations have made in this field. With the Violence Against Women and Rape Crisis Specific Funds many centres became more secure and able to plan for longer term work.
In June 2014, the Scottish Government and COSLA launched Equally Safe: Scotland's strategy for preventing and eradicating violence against women and girls. This strategy made it clear that all sectors of society have a responsibility to actively work towards preventing male violence, and that prevention and equality measures must be embedded across all sectors.
2012
Establishment of National Sexual Violence Prevention Programme, to promote children’s rights to protection from violence and abuse. It is overseen by Rape Crisis Scotland and funded by the Scottish Government.
Establishment of The National Advocacy Project, a Project that provides dedicated advocacy support for survivors of sexual violence who have reported or are considering reporting the offences to the police.
Delivering Equally Safe Fund, overseen by the Scottish Government allocated funds to organisations, including Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis to support eradication of violence towards women and girls, to September 2023.
Glasgow and Clyde Rape Crisis is proud of our origins, our history and the legacy we have left throughout our time since 1976. We have continued to evolve our services, enhance our expertise and use our influence as political, societal and economic developments Atallowed.thepoint
when the global pandemic arrived in 2020, we were successfully delivering a range of distinct projects: emotional support, advocacy, prevention and specific support for young people and Black, Asian and Ethnic minority communities. These projects were commonly referred to as Core Support, Support to Report, Rosey and Ruby respectively.
Despite our coverage, our success and our importance to girls, women and survivors, we continued in 2020 to experience much of the same issues we have throughout the past four decades. Insecure and short-term local and national statutory funding continues to impact on our ability to plan sustainably for our medium to longer term future; demand for our services continues to outpace the resources we have, resulting in girls and women sitting on waiting lists for our vital services when they should not have to wait at all for our help; continued gaps and disparity in national policy intentions and on the ground experiences of survivors and a Violence Against Women and Girls Sector in Scotland that continues to have to justify its need and impact.
Whilst Covid-19 changed our ability to deliver our services as we normally would, we are incredibly proud that in the 2020/21 operating period, we were still able to support over 1700 survivors. It is testament to the Workers and Team Leaders present throughout this time that we maintained our service provision. However, the retirement of the Centre Manager and Deputy Manager, alongside the global pandemic's impact on our services did prompt us to review and rethink our services, and in turn seek to revive as an organisation when the Covid-19 restrictions began to lighten later in 2021.
