Victim Support have a team of specialist Independent Sexual Violence Advisors, known as ISVAs, across Cumbria.

ISVAs offer free non-judgemental and confidential support and advice to survivors of sexual abuse. They work with adults, children and young people (age 5+).

ISVAs can work with you whether or not you’ve reported the crime to the police. It doesn’t matter when the crime occurred.

Some of the things an ISVA can do include:

• Provide personalised support to help you manage after crime and feel safer
• Offering support before, during and after court
• Acting as a single point of contact between different agencies
• Ensuring your and your dependants’ safety

All our ISVAs have to complete independent ISVA training in order to work as accredited ISVAs. The training is provided by Limeculture and Safelives.

An ISVA will contact you within two working days after receiving your referral or by the preferred method and time of contact requested in your referral.

They will discuss an ‘exit strategy’ for when your needs have been met. Where there are outstanding needs, your ISVA will discuss other, more appropriate services to refer or signpost you to.

All ISVAs undertake specialist ISVA accredited training and receive clinical supervision to ensure they’re able to provide safe and effective support to victim-survivors of sexual violence.

If you’ve received support from one of our ISVAs, you can provide feedback here.