NRCC Changes its Name
Nottinghamshire Rape Crisis Centre Changes its Name
Following a successful bid to provide specialist support to survivors of rape, sexual assault and childhood sexual abuse in the city of Nottingham we have been able to expand our range of services and what the organisation offers.
This key funding has enabled us to develop additional premises at Clarendon Chambers, which has meant that we can offer more counselling rooms and hours, increasing the number of people we can support at any given time. We are also able to support men from these premises, whilst also ensuring that women are still offered support in a women-only space. Our ISVA team are now based in the city centre, increasing our availability to survivors and our accessibility to court.
As well as opening new premises, we have continued to build on our existing service provision, and have recently welcomed a new group of fully trained volunteers onto the helpline. We also have our new website, which includes our Creating Safety Online Self-Help Programme and we now provide email support, a Mindfulness course and access to creative therapies.
This expansion inevitably led to the question ‘does the name Nottinghamshire Rape Crisis Centre accurately reflect us, or the work we now do?’ After running a survey and consultation with our service users, we discovered that some people found the name off-putting or inaccurate. Not everyone accessing the service has been raped or are in crisis; many have lived with the effects of past abuse for many years.
Using the feedback from the survey, we decided that we needed to change our name. With the support of a website and marketing company, we considered acronyms and single words like ‘hope’ but found that none of these felt inclusive to all our clients or encompassed the wide range of services now we offer.
‘Notts SVS Services’ is the name we finally agreed on, which acts as an umbrella name all our other services could position themselves under. SVS stands for ‘Sexual Violence Support’ a term which would be known to service users, through contact with us, but whose abbreviation would be more discreet on letter heads. By using the umbrella name, this has then enabled us to colour code our services so that each could have its own distinctive leaflet and brand.
We are really pleased with our new name and website, which we feel provides information about what we do and who we support, with clear signposting to immediate support where this is needed. Our new website also contains a blog, enabling us to keep you up to date with changes happening in our field, and a newsletter which we hope you sign up to.
As always, we welcome any feedback on our services and website and we are here should you need us. If you would like to receive our newsletter, please sign up here.
