Dear RASASC Teams one and all,
London Landmarks Half Marathon
Absolutely huge and heartfelt thanks to our runners, cheer team, supporters and sharers-of-links and fundraising pages. The day was incredibly uplifting and empowering for those taking part and the total sum (still rising as I write) was our best yet. Well done and thank you all.
Legal Advisor (ILA) service
The government has announced a new service for rape victims involved in the criminal justice process. Independent Legal Advisors will provide much needed legal support and, as well as being a step in the right direction, it is recognition of the unreasonable burdens placed on victims having to navigate the CJS.
Super Complaint
Due to the police delays resulting in survivors of sexual offences waiting years for their cases to be investigated, a super complaint was brought by Cambridge Rape Crisis Centre, Centre for Women’s Justice, Rape Crisis England & Wales and Bindmans LLP. This has now been accepted by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services and will be investigated. No further updates at this time.
Victim Survey
The Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales has launched the 2026 Victim Survey to gather insights into victims’ experiences of crime, support services and the criminal justice system. The anonymous survey is open until 6 May 2026, takes around 15 minutes and is open to anyone aged 16+ who has experienced or reported a crime since January 2021.
Thank you all for your ongoing hard work on a daily basis,
With best wishes
Daisy
Welcome and goodbyes
Welcomes:
We'd like to extend a warm welcome to all of our new team members at RASASC, we have three new ISVAs, Holly, Louise and Holly-Anne, four new Volunteer Counsellors; Alison Brooks, Jaquie Bond, Zee Virani and Katalin Horvath, and two new office volunteers; Engagement & Fundraising Volunteer Maddie and Admin Volunteer Katia. Welcome to RASASC!
Goodbyes:
And a fond farewell to Volunteer Counsellors Karl Ayling and Pauline Williams, Support Line Volunteers Sonia Pritchard and Jess Burgin, Admin Volunteer Udval Enkhtaivan, and while we also say goodbye to Volunteer Counsellor Catherine Anderson, we are delighted that she will be staying on with us in a new role as an Assessor.
Thank you for all of your invaluable work, and good luck for the future.
Fundraising
High Sheriff Award
We were delighted to be recognised in the recent High Sheriff Awards, following a visit to RASASC from The High Sheriff and his wife in November 2025. The High Sheriff is also generously supporting the work of our Youth Counselling service which supports young survivors aged between 13-19.
LLHM
As Daisy mentioned, we had a team of 10 runners in the London Landmarks Half Marathon - including Daisy herself, who took on the course for a second time! So far they have raised over £9,000 between them - the most we have ever raised!
We also had brilliant supporter Diya bravely taking on a skydive for us earlier this month who raised over £700.
Get in touch with us at
events@rasasc-guildford.org if you would like to do an event for RASASC!
Volunteers needed
Getting out and about in the community we support is vital to ensure we can raise awareness and funds for our services,
We have two events coming up over the summer that we need volunteers for:
- Rock Choir Flashmob
- Saturday 11 July 2026
- Approx. 11am -1pm (time tbc)
- Guildford town centre
- Pride in Surrey
- Saturday 8 August 2026
- All day event, shifts will be allocated throughout the day
- Stoke Park, Guildford
If you can help with either event, please contact Helen on
helen.fundraising@rasasc-guildford.org.
Admin team
We're delighted to have the support of our fantastic volunteers Joan, Julia and Katia, who are a wonderful asset to the team. They have been helping out with a variety of tasks including:
- welcoming our clients to the office
- completing attendance for the counselling service, which is invaluable in supporting our grant applications
- making the office a more welcoming and comfortable environment
- helping us meet our due diligence by keeping service wide essential training up to date for our staff, sessional colleagues, and our volunteers
- minuting meetings and coordinating updates
- working with the team to produce accurate monitoring processes
And generally being amazing!
The Admin Team would like to say a huge thank you for all of your invaluable support.
ISVA Team
Following a very difficult six-month period of losing staff and struggling to offer the level of support to our clients that we would like, I am delighted to say that the ISVA situation is looking much brighter!
We have three new starters, Holly started in January, who comes to us from Woking Women's centre and is a qualified IDVA. Lou also started in January and is a counsellor in training. Holly-Anne started in April and comes from a child and family worker background. A huge welcome to all three.
Bea and volunteer counsellor Bev continue to run our peer group several times a year which is a huge success. Mel continues to keep up the outreach work that Sophy and Audrey started, alongside looking after her clients.
During the difficult six months we were so short staffed, the whole team were amazing and worked over and above to continue offering the service to our clients and to ensure we could avoid closing to new referrals.
We were able to manage this situation by Susan handling the inbox brilliantly with the help of Casey triaging new cases, which she continued to do remotely for a while once she left RASASC to move to Birmingham. We wish Casey well in her new venture.
Roxy unfortunately has been poorly with an emergency operation at the end of last year and is recovering slowly. Yvonne does a fantastic job as my right hand woman, I'm not sure how I would manage without her!
We continue to build and maintain good relationships with Surrey Police, CPS, SARC, Victim liaison at Probation, CICA, sexual health clinic and Guildford Crown court but the frustrations with the CJS continue.
If you find yourself in the office, please do pop your head round the door and come in for a chat, you are always welcome!
Counselling
Our wonderful counsellors are currently supporting 95 adult clients, and the waiting list for counselling is now 18 months. Though this is still too long and we have the aim of reducing it further, it is a great improvement on the past, and for many clients the wait is considerably less.
We are also continuing to offer the Online Introductory Course to support clients whilst on the waiting list and before therapy.
Thank you to everyone for the their hard work, including Davina and Nina in the office, our supervisors, counsellors, assessors and custodians.
We are changing lives!
