The National Association for People Abused in Childhood’s (NAPAC) support line, the only national support line for adult survivors of child abuse in the UK, has been overwhelmed by demand since footballers bravely spoke about the abuse they suffered in childhood.
The charity, which has just 10 staff, has received over 10,000 call attempts to its support line in the past five weeks and took 654 calls over this period.
Gabrielle Shaw, NAPAC’s CEO said: “There is a desperate lack of publicly-funded support for adult survivors, so it is left to charities like ours to try to meet this huge increase in demand. We are able to offer excellent support to callers who manage to get through, but it’s just a fraction of what is needed. We can’t do more without proper long-term investment”.
“As a society, we failed to protect thousands of people in childhood. The least we can do now is ensure that when people have the courage to speak about what they suffered, they are able to access the support they need.”
• There were 10,050 call attempts to NAPAC’s support line between 16 November – 20 December 2016
• NAPAC answered 654 calls over this period (6.5% of call attempts were answered)
• NAPAC’s telephone support line is currently funded by the Home Office (through grant funding supplied by the Ministry of Justice) until April 2017 and we are in discussions with them about potential future funding.
• 15% of callers to NAPAC’s support line are telling someone for the first time about what they suffered
• The FA/NSPCC football hotline has been referring adult survivors to NAPAC for emotional support
• NAPAC answered over 5,400 calls on its support line last year
• NAPAC has had over 14,000 new visitors (14,009) to our www.wordpress-256905-799965.cloudwaysapps.com website over the five weeks between 16 November – 20 December 2016
• There has been a tenfold increase in demand for NAPAC’s support groups, from 10 registrations per week to over 100 per week, because of media coverage about child abuse in football https://napac.org.uk/tenfold-increase-in-survivors-seeking-support/
• There is very little specialist support across the UK for adult survivors of childhood abuse. People often have to pay for private counselling.