Background

The Scottish Parliament's Cross Party Group for Survivors of Childhood Abuse (CPG) was set up in 2001 with the clear aim to demonstrate the need for a National Strategy in Scotland to ensure that co-ordinated action was taken, locally and nationally, to improve the lives of survivors and help prevent future abuse.

The National Strategy is the result of efforts of this group of people and many others and was launched in September 2005. Two Lead Professionals and a National Reference Group were then appointed to take forward the implementation of the Strategy. Membership of the Reference Group includes people from a wide range of voluntary and statutory services, survivors and survivor groups, including In Care abuse, and Scottish Government representatives.

Progress

The first year’s achievements were presented at a major national conference, the first of its kind in Scotland, in February 2007. You can download the Conference Report. Since then we have:

  • Provided funding under the Service Development Fund, where both voluntary and statutory agencies were invited to apply for funding to develop a range of services for survivors.
  • Working in partnership with two health and local authorities in Scotland to develop pilot projects in order to collect previously unrecorded data on survivors who come into contact with gynaecological and mental health clinics.
  • Begun to map out awareness raising and public education through a communications campaign.