The Chair welcomed Jo Wood to the forum, to give a talk on the work of RASA.

Jo informed the forum that leaflets about the group were available at the meeting and informed the forum of the following:

• The group was started in 1986 following the rape and murder of a young woman in Borough Road, Birkenhead.
• Statistics show that one in four will be affected by some form of sexual violence.
• Contact is made by women of all age ranges (an 87 year old lady called the centre to talk about abuse from her father when aged 8-10 years, as she wished to talk to someone about this before she died).
• Rape / sexual abuse were a horrible hidden crime that mainly affects young girls/women and we are often the first people they confide in.
• The Group has a secret safe house in Birkenhead and has 607 live cases, 277 of which are within Wirral.
• Cases are dealt with depending on when they occurred and how the person wishes contact to be made (some people prefer to make contact just via phone / e-mail).
• We work closely with Merseyside Police on current cases, and the Police has a unity team (police officers, solicitors etc.) working together on such cases.
• Statistics across the country show that 6% of rapists, from the 50% that are reported, are convicted.
• The Group also offers help and support for male survivors of rape and sexual abuse.
• The annual income of the Group is £80,000.
• The estimated cost to the economy of the 629 new clients last year taking two days off sick was £518,000+. Many abused children / rape victims end up in prison and the estimated cost to the economy of trial and six month prison sentence was £26 Billion+

The aim of the Group was to relieve the emotional and physical distress by listening; helping people to live with what has happened to them and giving them back the power taken from them and empowering them to do what is right for them.

The Chair thanked Jo Wood for her presentation and the following questions / issues were raised:

Mike Collins – does the group go into schools?

A. Not at the moment as we do not have the resources for this, but we are working towards this with NHS Wirral.

Barbara Epstein – are training courses available for people that work with young people and if so how do we find out about these?

A. there can be arranged by contacting the Group, details were included in leaflets available at the meeting.

The Chair added that funding was a major issue for the group and much time and work was being put into trying to secure small pots of funding. We should all do what we can to support the group, and confirmed that he had tried to get £40,000.00 of funding from the surplus available from Wirral CDRP but had not yet been successful. Jo Wood confirmed that she had managed to secure half of the funding required for the next financial year.

Minute decision: Resolved that: Jo Wood be thanked for her presentation.