The Survivors Trust is pleased to announce that we have been awarded funding by the Ministry of Justice to develop specialised training and holistic support for Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs) which is available free of charge to qualified ISVAs in England and Wales.

The Ministry of Justice has allocated a total of £1.2m of funding over two years to five organisations to provide training and infrastructure support for new and existing ISVAs and IDVAs, and service managers. 

We will be delivering a range of training and support activities for ISVAs across England and Wales, in collaboration with specialist partners, including:

• Specialised training for qualified ISVAs that is designed around supporting victims with protected characteristics or complex needs.
• Holistic training and support, targeted towards wellbeing or professional development of ISVAs.
• ISVA service manager training.
• Facilitating networking and best practice sharing for ISVAs.

The above provision will naturally extend to Children & Young People’s and Family Independent Sexual Violence Advocates (CHiSVAs) and Family Independent Sexual Violence Advocates (FISVAs). 

Please note that the funding will not pay for basic ISVA training.  However, TST member organisations are already able to benefit from discounted course fees for the ISVA Practitioner Diploma delivered by our experienced trainers.

TST already hosts a successful quarterly forum for qualified ISVAs/ CHiSVAs, which was launched at the start of 2023.  The funding means that in 2024 we will be able to offer a separate generalist forum specifically for CHiSVAs/ FISVAs, whilst continuing our already-established ISVA Practitioners’ forum.

We are holding our last quarterly ISVA Practitioners’ forum of this current year on Friday 8th December where we will be able to provide further details of our plans under the new funding to those ISVAs and CHISVAS whom we are already in touch with. The new quarterly CHiSVA forum will be launched on Friday 26th January 2024.

If you are an ISVA or CHiSVA/ FISVA, or have individuals in these roles in your organisation who are not already signed up our general quarterly forums above, and you feel they would benefit from these regular opportunities for peer support and best practice sharing, please do ask them to get in touch by emailing [email protected] for further details and to be added to our email mailing list.

We also already have three free one-day CPD-accredited workshops specifically designed for qualified ISVAs which are available now to book onto. Please click here for further details.

The Survivors Trust looks forward to providing further details of our plans for ISVA support over the coming weeks.