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Survivors Action Forum

With SAF – You’re not just a survivor — you’re a leader for change.

When survivors lead, real change happens

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The Heart behind SAF

Every survivor of violence deserves to be heard — truly heard. Yet too often, especially for Global Majority women, experiences are dismissed, misunderstood, or lost inside systems that promise protection but deliver harm.

The Survivors Action Forum exists to change that.

Here, your voice is more than a story. It is evidence, leadership, and power. SAF invites you to share your lived experiences, ideas, and insights — not to be tokenised, but to influence real reform across policing, health, education, and social care.

Your contribution directly shapes survivor-led resources, training, policy guidance, and systemic change across the UK.

Our Vision

To build a survivor-led movement where lived experience drives real change.

Where:

  • Survivors are recognised as leaders
  • Experiences become actionable insight
  • Services are shaped by those who have lived through them

Survivors are not statistics.
They are the architects of safer, more respectful systems.

What Your Voice Creates

Survivor-led Solutions

Real experiences, real answers. Share your ideas and solutions to help create resources designed by survivors, for survivors. Your insights will inform practical tools, guides, and awareness campaigns to support others navigating trauma and broken systems.

Challenging Harmful Practices

Your voice matters. By highlighting where systems failed, and where they worked – you’ll help us challenge harmful practices and promote respectful, trauma-informed approaches across policing, health, education, and social care.

Driving Survivor-Led Reform

Your contributions feed directly into our BeyondTrauma Advisory Network, where professionals learn from survivor voices. Together, we’re building meaningful, survivor-led reforms that improve services and policies nationwide.

How to take part

You can contribute in a way that feels safe, private, and fully in your control.

#IAMTHEEVIDENCE

Complete the Survivor Action Form

A confidential, self-paced way to share your experience.

Through our secure form, you can:

  • Share how systems supported or failed you
  • Highlight barriers you faced
  • Identify what helped
  • Suggest changes survivors need
  • Offer ideas for safer, trauma-informed services

You can:

  • Skip any question
  • Pause at any time
  • Stop whenever you need

You are always in control. Your wellbeing leads the pace.

What Happens After You Share?

Your voice does not disappear.

Every contribution:

  • Is fully anonymised unless you have requested otherwise
  • Becomes part of survivor-led insight and evidence
  • Informs trauma-informed training and resources
  • Shapes professional practice and policy reform
  • Contributes to our “You Said, We Did” impact updates

Your experience becomes part of a collective movement for change.

Empowering Change

why this matters

Your experiences are not stories for reports — they are evidence for change. Every contribution helps build a future where services work for, not against, survivors.

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Our Impact

what Survivors Gain from SAF

A powerful platform to share your experiences and ideas
100%
Confidence that your voice contributes directly to change
95%
Visibility of how your input shapes training, resources, and reform
90%
Public acknowledgment of your role in leading change through our Honor Wall and public reports
98%

A private, survivor-only space filled with support, connection, and resources designed just for you.

The Survivors Support Forum is a confidential online community created exclusively for survivors who want a safe space to connect, share, and heal at their own pace.

This supportive environment offers:

  • A private, verified survivor-only community

  • Gentle, trauma-informed moderation

  • A calm and respectful space where you never have to explain your experience

  • Optional sharing — you control your pace and comfort

A resource-rich space

Each forum category contains helpful, trauma-informed resources created specifically for survivors, including:

  • grounding and regulation tools

  • downloadable support worksheets

  • emotional wellbeing resources

  • safety planning guides

  • culturally-sensitive materials

  • reflective prompts

  • after-care and self-soothing practices

  • survivor-created insights and shared wisdom

These resources are designed to help you feel supported not just during moments of difficulty, but throughout your healing journey.

A place to feel understood

Inside the forum, survivors can:

  • connect with people who “get it”

  • share your experiences without pressure

  • receive supportive responses from others on similar paths

  • take part in community discussions at your own pace

  • access grounding tools when you feel overwhelmed

  • feel safe, valued, and not alone

Joining the Survivors Support Forum is optional, and separate from the Survivor Action Form.
You are always in control of your level of participation.

View our Forum Here
www.beyondtraumaacademy.com/community/saf

CASE STUDY EXAMPLE

Bex’s Story – Turning Lived Experience into Change

Bex came to the Survivors Action Forum with her experiences of navigating systems that left her feeling unheard, dismissed, and unsupported.

Through SAF, she shared:

  • The barriers she faced when trying to access help
  • The emotional impact of not being believed
  • What would have made her feel safer and supported

Her voice did not sit in a report.

It became part of real, tangible change.

From Bex’s contribution, we developed multiple survivor-informed resources for professionals, which now sit within our BeyondTrauma Advisory Network (BTAN) professional resource hub.

These resources are used to:

  • Improve professional understanding of survivor experiences
  • Guide trauma-informed responses
  • Support better decision-making across services

But the impact wasn’t only systemic, it was personal, too.

By sharing her experience in a safe, structured way, Bex:

  • Reclaimed her voice
  • Recognised the value of her lived experience
  • Became part of meaningful change

Her experience is now helping shape safer responses for other survivors navigating similar systems.

From Experience to Impact Bex’s story is one example of what happens when survivors are not just heard, but listened to in a way that leads to action. Every contribution through SAF: Builds survivor-led evidence Informs real-world resources Strengthens professional practice Drives systemic change You are not sharing into silence. You are shaping what comes next.