Training Description

This full-day training aims to resource individuals and collectives to critically identify and respond to victim-survivors disclosing sexual and family violence. It combines intersectional feminist and abolitionist theories of sexual and family violence with practical somatic tools and strategies for connection and co-regulation. Through experiential learning and interactive activities, it supports frontline and generalist workers to actively identify disclosures and resist common institutional responses and interventions that disempower survivors. 

Radically Responsive invites workers to understand their own bodies and nervous systems as resources to offer support. Participants learn to respond with embodied presence and authenticity, in ways that centre the self-determination and safety of victim-survivors. Groups and teams are provided with frameworks to critically reflect on the impact of responding to sexual and family violence, as well as strategies for collective care. 

Partipants will:

• Critically engage with intersectional feminist and abolitionist frameworks for recognising sexual and family violence, including critical approaches to understanding consent and coercion 

• Gain specialised knowledge regarding trauma-informed frameworks and politicised somatics

• Learn a range of somatic first-aid tools and practices for self and co-regulation

• Engage with strategies for reflecting on participant’s own relational habits and responses to working with violence and injustice, including team processes for fostering collective solidarity 

• Gain an overview of local Sexual and Domestic & Family Violence service-mapping