JOIN OUR NEW COMMUNITY OF INTEREST
As previously announced, on the 12th April 2021 NCDV has become a Community Interest Company (CIC).
While this important change of status is a further chapter in our organisation’s evolution, tens of thousands of our clients, collaborators and supporters will be, I am sure, delighted to see public interest now officially embodied in our fundamental structure.
For nine years NCDV ran as a limited company, even though the income we made was put back into service enhancements and projects to help victims and survivors of domestic abuse – including our acclaimed in-house pro bono programme.
Our founder, Dr Steve Connor OBE, first opted for private limited company status in 2012 so as to bring in much needed fresh investment, business discipline and technology. When Mark Groves took the CEO’s reins in 2016 investment became critical to our survival. Fast forward to 2021 and NCDV’s strong roots in helping the community require our status to be cemented as a full CIC.
We can now all be 100% clear that our new public status matches the long-standing public ethos of NCDV. Being a Community Interest Company brings with it the opportunity and the responsibility to refresh not just our own entity but also to rally many other organisations that need a helping hand.
That is why I announce today our plans to create a hub for victim resources, under the care of our Head of Partnerships and Development, Sharon Bryan, herself a survivor of, and published author on, domestic abuse.
Sharon has already been busy reaching out to hub organisations who can provide vital front-line support to our clients in many areas: housing, refuge, counselling, mental health, financial advice, support for alcohol and drug dependency and looking after much-loved pets – to name but a few.
Sharon is also leading a related drive to collaborate with as many other non-front-line organisations as we can – those who can also support NCDV and our mission. Please find these important organisations listed on our Supporters Page.
If you think your front-line organisation could be a useful addition to our resources hub then Sharon would love to hear from you: just fill out the simple application form on the NCDV website.
Sharon’s and my shared vision is that our victim resource hub will eventually bring together all the victim services across the country and, from this base, we will create a searchable database of services allowing victims to contact a specific provider by geographic location.
This, in turn, will allow us to create a heat map and channel our resources to those areas where we – or they – are needed the most. We will also be able to devote resources to those support organisations who stand in greatest need.
Let me give you one live example of how things can work.
How does one small support agency cope with an unusual influx of incoming calls? At NCDV, our First Steps Team deals with over 9000 incoming referrals every month but our actual capacity is 12,000. NCDV’s database system has been created to adapt almost instantly to process and system changes, so we can easily create technical solutions to allow us to answer calls to any agency during an unforeseen flood of calls or even take up the slack during holiday season.
This is a unique moment for NCDV. We are hugely inspired by the sharply growing public appreciation of the scale and seriousness of the challenge which domestic abuse presents to our society.
My message to you is a simple one: join us in our struggle to make domestic abuse socially unacceptable. Please join our community of interest.
Please click here to apply to our resource hub.
