Bristol Crisis Service
for Women

is a voluntary organisation and a charity. We were set up in 1986, to support women in emotional distress.

We particularly help women who harm themselves (often called self-injury). This is how some people cope with their feelings and problems.

Our aims

• To offer support to women in emotional distress, and particularly to those who self-injure.
  
• To develop services, and raise awareness of self-injury and mental health issues, through training and providing information.

We have carried out a lot of research into the experiences and needs of women who self-injure. As well as helping to shape our own services, this work has also helped people:

• get a better understanding of self-injury; and
• find the best ways of working with women who self-injure.

We have also written ‘good practice guidelines’ for working with people who self-injure.

What we do

A wide range of women use our services. Some have long-term mental health needs and must have out-of-hours support to cope in the community. Others are facing a more immediate crisis and need to talk through their experiences and feelings. They may also need to get information about appropriate local services and resources. Many of our helpline calls are about self-injury or sexual abuse.

Helpline

We run a helpline for women in emotional distress. We offer any woman who rings a chance to talk through her feelings in confidence, without fear of being judged or dismissed.

Groups

We run and support self-help groups and are developing this work. Our experience has also shown there is a need for face-to-face counselling, and we hope to be able to provide this.

Information

We produce publications about self-injury for individuals and their supporters. These include leaflets, information sheets and booklets.

Training

We also offer talks and training courses to professionals such as social workers, accident and emergency staff, mental health teams, prison staff, rape crisis lines, and to groups of service users.

Current projects

We are developing and extending our helpline service to make it easier for the whole community to contact us. We are also extending our information service and working on developing material to support specific groups who self-injure, such as young people, women from ethnic minority groups and women in prison.

How we work

Bristol Crisis Service for Women is run by a management group. The helpline is staffed by volunteers, who receive full training and support for their work. Volunteers work alongside paid workers in carrying out many aspects of the organisation's work.

How we are financed

We get funding from a wide range of sources, including charitable trusts, central and local government agencies, the Lottery, and individuals. Much of this funding is in the form of one-off grants for specific projects.

We are trying to secure longer-term funding. This will help us to continue our work, expand our services and respond effectively to the increasing need for crisis support in the community.

We offer any woman who rings the opportunity to talk through her feelings in complete confidence. Many of our calls are from women who have suffered sexual abuse, or who injure themselves as a way of coping with their feelings.

We have a range of publications, including a series of booklets about self-injury.

Please contact us for more information about our work, training or publications.