Challenging Attitudes to Child Sexual Abuse and Homelessness  

A full day of talks and discussion exploring the relationship between Child Sexual Abuse and Homelessness: specifically attitudes which perpetuate victim-blaming.

The conference will highlight trauma-informed practice, values, attitudes and models that support SAY Women's working practices. It will involve professionals, practitioners and young people to showcase ways in which related communities can speak out about Child Sexual Abuse and Homelessness and the impact it has on individuals, communities and society.

Confirmed Speakers Include:

Dr Jessica Eaton 

Dr Jessica Eaton (FRSA) is the founder and owner of VictimFocus, the VictimFocus Blog and The Eaton Foundation. VictimFocus is her independent business providing research, consultancy, writing and speaking in forensic psychology, feminism and mental health. The VictimFocus Blog has 1.2 million readers per year and provides a lively, funny and critical perspective on CSE, victim blaming, feminism and sexual violence.

Dr Jessica Eaton will discuss the way women and girls are blamed and pathologised by services and establishments after they have been abused, oppressed and traumatised.

Discussing her latest research, she will explore how common the victim blaming of women and girls really is, and how it affects service delivery for women.

Jo Watson 

Jo Watson is a feminist, psychotherapist, trainer, activist and survivor with a professional history in the rape crisis movement of the 1990’s. She has worked therapeutically for the last 25+ years with people who have experienced trauma and adversity and has devised and delivered numerous training programmes and conferences for counsellors and psychotherapists, ‘mental health’ workers, teachers and other professionals who work with people in a therapeutic or support context.

Jo actively challenges the biomedical model both inside and outside of her work and links emotional distress to social causes.

Jo will speak about how the diagnostic and biomedical model of emotional distress is being widely criticised for its failure to offer evidence for its core assumptions or effective ways of healing. She will argue that psychiatric diagnosis is so often imposed and that our stories as women are often obscured and sometimes completely negated.

Jo will suggest that it is no coincidence that women survivors of gender based violence and women who experience homelessness are disproportionately labelled with psychiatric disorders.

Catriona MacKean, Head of Homelessness and Housing Support Scottish Government 

Michelle Major, Change Lead Homelessness Network Scotland

Vicky Little, Police Scotland

Rosie Kane, Conference Host

To purchase a ticket  please follow the link below to our Eventbrite page or contact Rebecca Grant rebecca@say-women.co.uk to arrange an invoice or alternative booking arrangements. 

https://www.say-women.co.uk/news-and-events