Devon Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Service, in Partnership with the Strategic Delivery Partnership Team at Victim Support are delighted to announce that we will be hosting Devon and Cornwall’s first ever practice conference focused on sharing best practice, deepening knowledge and advancing our shared understanding about what works in supporting survivors of rape and sexual violence. It will also be a wonderful celebration of our collective practice, and a restorative space to promote your wellbeing.
Call for Abstracts
Sharing Best Practice in Working with Survivors of Sexual Violence
26th of March 2025
Exeter Phoenix Theatre
A hot lunch will be provided and we have commissioned an excellent theatre performance after lunch as part of the day. We hope you will be involved in this exciting opportunity.
The conference will be held on 26th of March 2025 at the Phoenix Theatre Exeter and we have funded places for around 120 practitioners from across the sector to attend. Opportunities to sign up will follow in the new year once we have confirmed the programme.
This is now your opportunity to be involved in this event with our call for abstracts.
We are seeking your application to deliver either one 20 min presentation and be involved in a panel discussion on several different themed presentations. Or deliver a 1 ½ hour experiential workshop.
20 mins presentations
Please send a maximum 200-word descriptor of what you propose to present and your preferred theme to focus your presentation on to marie@devonrapecrisis.org.uk by the 20th of December 2024. We need to know who you are and what you want to present. Your 200 word write up should include the title of your presentation and an overview of what conference delegates will learn from your presentation. Your abstract will be part of our conference programme which will allow delegates to choose in advance what parts of the conference will most appeal to them and support a deepening of their practice. So please be clear on what you wish to deliver to enable our attendees to make informed decisions in advance of the day.
- Deepening Inclusion
3 slots available
We are particularly keen to hear about practice which is deepening inclusion.
Prompting questions you might seek to explore in your presentations;
What are you doing to deepen inclusion?
What have you learned?
What changes have happened when you deepen inclusion?
What impact have you had?
What challenges do you encounter?
What best practice have you implemented to support inclusion and what can we all learn from your experiences?
2. Effective Support
3 slots already filled – no invite for abstracts in this theme
This theme will seek to discuss effective support.
Prompting questions you might seek to explore in your presentations;
What is effective support?
How do we know it is effective, and effective for who?
How do we ensure the quality of our support gives survivors what they need?
How do we balance the requirements of our funders and other stakeholders at the same time as promote the practice we know is good?
3. Working in challenging environments
3 slots available
We are interested to hear about how you deliver practice in challenging environments.
Prompting questions you might seek to explore in your presentations;
How does the environment affect your practice?
How do you overcome the challenges presented within challenging environments?
Who helps you to do this?
What best practice have you learned from your practice in these spaces?
How does an environment affect key concepts in good practice? (i.e promoting psychological safety, trauma informed space, power and control etc)
4. Values based practice
3 slots available
Prompting questions you might seek to explore in your presentations;
How do we model our values in our practice?
What values matter most to us and our organisation and how does this shape our practice?
What happens when our practice doesn’t mirror the values we want or hope for?
Does value based practice produce conflict or harmony?
Does values based practice work? And how do we know it does?
Workshop
1 slot available
We will be running x2 experiential workshops during the event. The first is themed around practice in Art therapy. Therefore, we are particularly keen to offer a different type of experiential workshop opportunity for learners. The workshop should include 25 spaces and should provide an opportunity for conference attendees to do something interactive, practice based and experiential. Suggestions could include body work, dance, co-production, activism, online digital platforms etc ….or anything which you think complements the delivery of a workshop.
Please send a 200 word workshop descriptor to marie@devonrapecrisis.org.uk by the 20th of December 2024. What will you be exploring in the workshop, how will you ensure inclusion, what do you need to deliver this (resources), and what can people expect from your workshop? How will they interact and engage in your workshop and what will they leave with?
Enabling you to give your best
If you are unsure how you and your practice fits into any of these themes, or the type of engagement you wish to deliver we are available to chat through some options with you – just drop us a line and we can arrange to support you to shape your abstract and to help you give your best on the day. Please also let us know if you want us to make any adjustments to support your engagement. We will accept video abstracts, or spoken word proposals which we can help craft into an abstract for you. So please do not let any of this put you off. We also do not want finance to be a barrier – so if you want to be involved and feel your funding is a barrier, please do let us know and we will do what we can to support your engagement. We want the event to promote diversity and be as accessible as possible.
We look forward to hearing and seeing all the great practice across the peninsula as you send in your proposals.
Many thanks
Davina, Marie and Helen – DRCSAS Conference Organisation Team