Chair’s Report for Red Kite AGM 25.11.21

Thank you for attending Red Kite’s AGM. I am sure that you are all aware that 2020-2021 has been an extremely challenging year not only for Red Kite Rape and Sexual Abuse Support Service but also for many other charities. Balancing that with the real progress we have made it has been a rewarding year also.

This is my first full year as the elected Chair and I would never have survived it without the help of my fellow Trustees, the Helpline Volunteers, the Volunteer Co-ordinator Kim Hale, the Social Media Volunteer Team, and the Friends of Red Kite, led by Kate Foxwell. All these people have dedicated their time to improving the lives of those lives are impacted by rape or sexual abuse. I am deeply and humbly grateful to each one of them.

Red Kite became operational on December 14^th 2020 and the Helpline was launched, staffed by the two Executive Directors and Counsellors who volunteered their time to support us whilst we wrote a curriculum, recruited and trained our first cohort of Helpline Volunteers. These Volunteers joined the Helpline in April 2021. Since then, another cohort have been trained and have become operational in October 2021. Cohort three have been interviewed and commence their training in December 2021. We launched despite having only £23K in the bank because we were hearing anecdotal evidence of the horrendous abuse people (mainly women) were being subjected to during lockdown with no means of escape.

In January 2021, we re-branded and our beautiful new Red Kite was designed and gifted to us by Christine Welby and we are all most grateful.

I also want to thank We Create Better who handle our design and printing and who have built and maintain our lovely new website. We have had so many positive comments about it, and it is attracting lots more traffic.

Thanks too must go to Kirstin Oliver who owns Oeuvre A Participatory Service Ltd and who allows Red Kite to use her marketing skills, ticketing service, and Vimeo YouTube platform without charge.

Further thanks must go to Avril Leimon of White-Water Group who provided coaching, leadership, and guidance for our Board Awayday which resulted in the production of our Code of Conduct and other documents.

All these gifts in kind have allowed us to concentrate our spending where it is needed, on the clients. Red Kite can offer those who require it, 12 sessions of counselling free at the point of delivery by qualified therapists. 94p in every £1 raised goes toward service delivery. We anticipate that costs will rise over the coming year as we move from a wholly virtual service delivery model to a mixed economy where consulting rooms will be necessary, and the charity will be keen to establish an office base which will act as a focal point for Red Kite.

Our mission is to provide a safe environment where people can share their experience with someone and receive empathy, belief, and compassion. They will also receive grounding techniques and assessment using validated tools which will assist them in deciding how they want to plan their recovery. Red Kite also offers support to family members and friends who will support people in their recovery.

I am proud that we have also made some progress on another part of our reason d’étre which is to educate and challenge misogyny where rape and sexual assault are tolerated and even lauded in some environments. Cultural change must happen before repugnance towards violence against the person in terms of sexual crimes is such that perpetrators will no longer feel a sense of entitlement to take whatever they want sexually with little fear of detection or shunning.

Our collaboration with the School of Law and Criminology, facilitated by Trustee Mateja Vuk, on the What Were You Wearing exhibition was a huge success and has opened many doors for Red Kite – but most importantly it has brought more callers to our Helpline.

Our Recovery Counselling Service commenced in April 2021 staffed on a sessional basis by a range of qualified therapists from differing psychological approaches. These therapists work with clients to enable them to heal from their trauma, recover and begin to thrive in their families and communities.

Our biggest challenge to date has been getting traffic to the Helpline. Normal advertising routes were unavailable to us until lockdown ended and there has been a reduced customer service in some organisations as they deal with their backlogs. Our Social Media Volunteer team have been posting material on all social media platforms, and we have had greater press exposure because of ‘What Were You Wearing’ and CM23 Connect having continuous articles about Red Kite who have been their Charity of the Year. Caller numbers to the Helpline have risen but are still very low considering the statistics regarding the incidence of rape and sexual assault being around one in three women and one in seven men and one in six people from the LGBTQI+ community experiencing unwanted sexual contact during their lifetime.  

Our caller numbers reflect the demographics, and therefore we have recruited two male Volunteer Trainees for the upcoming cohort. Red Kite is proud of our broad ethnic and cultural mix, and we continue to demonstrate a strong commitment to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion recruitment and practice.

Our plans for next year include finding funding for a Clinical Services Manager and substantive funding for the Charity Administrator post. We have recruited a Fundraising Trustee who will lead on the Fundraising Strategy and endeavour to raise funding from a range of sources which is longer term and sustainable.

We will launch our Holistic Recovery Service to broaden our offer and allow those who were raped or sexually abused before they had the words to speak of it the opportunity to heal from their trauma through arts therapies and other physical therapies. We will continue to bid for funding, but the funding landscape has changed significantly with many Foundations and Trusts repositioning their grants towards Covid recovery projects. We will continue to prove our place in the fabric of charity provision in Eastern Hertfordshire is crucial and join other commissioned services in collaborative work so that we become part of commissioned services also.

Siobhan Nundram

November 24^th 2021