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The VOICES Lived Experience Forum brings together survivors of domestic abuse to ensure their insights directly shape policy, services, and research. By creating a safe space to share experiences, the forum ensures that survivor perspectives are valued and heard at both local and national levels.
Working with partners such as the University of Oxford, Sussex University, UCLA, and others, VOICES ensures research into domestic abuse is grounded in lived experience. Survivor input influences research design, highlights gaps in provision, and promotes trauma-informed approaches, making findings more relevant and impactful.
The forum also informs local authority strategies, contributes to national consultations, and supports training for frontline professionals, ensuring systems respond with empathy and effectiveness.
For survivors, involvement is empowering—turning difficult experiences into a force for change. The VOICES Forum ensures lived experience is at the heart of shaping a safer, more responsive future.
At VOICES, we understand how difficult life can feel after abuse. While we are not a crisis organisation and do not provide direct advice, we are here to offer guidance, support, and advocacy to help you move forward safely.
We listen with care, helping you explore your options and feel more confident about your next steps. We provide signposting to trusted services such as solicitors, housing teams, health, and counselling support. Through advocacy, we stand beside you, making sure your voice is heard and your concerns are taken seriously.
Breathe Free is a six-week group course offering a safe, supportive space for people who have experienced domestic abuse. It helps you understand trauma, explore how it affects the mind and body, and discover practical ways to manage its impact.
Each session combines gentle discussions, creative activities, and grounding techniques. You’ll also build your own self-soothe box, filled with calming items to take home as a personal toolkit.
Topics include recognising trauma responses and triggers, practicing grounding and breathing techniques, exploring self-care and healthy routines, and understanding the “window of tolerance.” One session also looks at how trauma can affect children and ways to support them.
By the end, you’ll have greater confidence, practical coping tools, and a self-soothe box to support your wellbeing. Most importantly, you’ll leave knowing you are not alone on your healing journey.
The Recovery Toolkit is a supportive, trauma-informed programme that helps survivors of domestic abuse rebuild confidence, understand abuse dynamics, and develop healthy coping strategies.
Through group sessions, it fosters empowerment, peer support, and personal growth, enabling participants to move from surviving to thriving with renewed strength and self-belief.
The Freedom Programme is a 12-week educational course for women who have experienced domestic abuse or coercive control. It helps survivors understand abusive behaviours, regain confidence, and begin their recovery journey in a safe, supportive space.
VOICES runs the programme in 12 two-hour sessions during term time only, and a free on-site crèche is available for children under school age.
Through exploring the behaviour of “The Dominator”, participants learn how abusers use control, fear, and manipulation. The course also introduces the “Respectful Partner”, offering a clear model of healthy, equal relationships.
The group setting fosters connection and peer support, helping to reduce isolation and rebuild self-esteem.
VOICES offers a 12–18 week counselling programme for survivors of domestic abuse. This is only available to existing clients who have previously engaged with VOICES through gateway courses and assessments, or via in-house referrals from our Recovery Team.
The programme provides a safe, confidential space to explore experiences, understand the impact of abuse, and develop coping strategies. Sessions are delivered by trauma-informed, specialist counsellors trained in domestic and sexual abuse in all its forms, supporting emotional resilience, self-esteem, boundaries, and self-care.
By the end of counselling, participants often feel empowered, confident, and better equipped to manage life beyond abuse. VOICES’ counselling combines professional expertise with compassionate support to aid recovery and wellbeing.
At VOICES, we offer two free legal clinics to support you. For non-urgent issues, the UWE Law Clinic provides free, confidential advice from supervised law students, followed by a clear letter explaining your options. For urgent matters, local solicitors can help with protective orders, child arrangements, divorce, or financial issues, and may apply for legal aid.
If not eligible, a Court IDVA can guide and support you through the process. VOICES can also offer counselling sessions during family court proceedings, giving you emotional support alongside legal help. All services are safe, confidential, and trauma-informed.
At VOICES, you can receive tailored one-to-one support from a Recovery Practitioner. This is a safe, confidential space to explore your needs, goals, and next steps at your own pace.
Support may focus on practical matters such as housing or family court, or on emotional recovery, resilience, and rebuilding confidence. While we are not a crisis service and do not give direct advice, we can guide you towards specialist organisations when needed.
Everything we offer is trauma-informed, flexible, and centred on your wellbeing, so you feel supported, understood, and never alone.