Thank You from IMARA
Empowering children and families to recover from the impacts of sexual and domestic abuse.
Every child has the right to be safe and feel safe. Support should be there for survivors when they are ready, provided at their pace, for as long as is needed.
Nottinghamshire Law Society's President's Charity 2023
Since Imara was founded in 2011, we have worked with more than 1500 children and young people, from more than 1250 families across Nottinghamshire that have been affected by sexual abuse.
We cannot thank Nottinghamshire Law Society and President Janine McKinney enough, for choosing Imara as their charity this year. We are overwhelmed by the generosity of the society’s members, and the significant donations we have received. This will enable Imara to continue delivering our unique and specialist sleep and anxiety service to many families across Nottingham.
Children and young people across Nottinghamshire face long waiting times for therapy services, leaving them to struggle with acute trauma symptoms, such as; nightmares, panic attacks and flashbacks. Whilst we honour and celebrate the resilience of young people and families to find their own coping mechanisms, this delay to access trauma-informed therapy often consequently affects their ability to move forward from the abuse and engage with other areas of their lives. Secondary to this, we also recognise the pressure that this places on other early-intervention services working with these young people, including Imara’s CHISVA service which supports young survivors of sexual violence through the criminal justice process.
In response to the pressures and wait times, Imara created the Specialist Sleep & Anxiety Practitioner role in 2020 to provide short-term focused intervention for children and young people waiting for therapy. This program provides tools and routines to help reduce symptoms of trauma, including panic attacks and nightmares, helping survivors to feel calmer and sleep better. Whilst helping young survivors address acute issues with sleep and anxiety, it provides guidance for parents and carers, empowering and supporting them. This is with the view that survivors can hopefully start to enjoy other areas in life again including school, time with friends, and hobbies, which are fundamental steps to take when recovering from trauma.
Feedback from clients
Since launching the role, Imara’s specialist Sleep & Anxiety Practitioner Stella Hurst has worked with more than 100 children and young people directly, as well as sharing a number of videos and free resources online for anyone to access.
Clients who have experienced positive shifts in their sleep and/or anxiety levels also reported improvements in how they interact in their day-to-day life, noticing an improvement in their ability to cope with challenges. Clients now leave the house more easily, attend school more frequently, and more confidently interact with their peers, highlighting the importance of sleep and trauma.
We have used surveys completed by children at the start, at their baseline and at the end of work with Stella. This asked questions around their quality of sleep, ability to manage emotions, dealing with challenging events that may arise, and their feelings of safety. All clients who have engaged have seen improvements in all these areas. The results indicative of improvements in sleep, range from 20% improvement, being the most modest, to results as high as 90% improvement. Likewise, the improvements in anxiety range from 34% to 50% improvement.
"In general, I'm feeling more confident than before. I've been speaking more often than I usually do".
“It’s a lot easier to think through what happened. I feel like I can breathe properly. I’ve not got so much weight on my shoulders!”
“Been using the hand tapping under the table and have felt it’s really worked.”
“I did the Self-Havening and managed to calm down quite quickly”
“Did the Self Havening recording once and it really calmed me down, settles me down and my thoughts!”
The impact of your support
While previously supported by a grant from Children In Need since 2020, Imara was facing a loss of funding for the Specialist Sleep and Anxiety role from Summer 2023. With the £8,760 raised and donated by Nottinghamshire Law Society, the role will be able to continue for another year. We are reassured that Imara will be able to continue providing this crucial support to children and young people affected by sexual abuse at such a pivotal moment. This early intervention in their recovery is proving beneficial for many and is reducing the negative impact of therapy waiting times for both families and other practitioners. We are extremely grateful, thank you.
Imara’s Sleep & Anxiety Specialist Stella, along with seven other volunteers, attended the Nottinghamshire Law Society Awards evening to help set tables and sell raffle tickets, alongside an auction of fantastic prizes. We had a wonderful time representing Imara and speaking to members and guests. We were overwhelmed by the support and cannot thank President Janine McKinney enough for giving Imara this opportunity.
Here is what Stella had to say:
“The Nottinghamshire Law Society Awards were such an amazing experience. Everyone was so supportive of Imara and the wonderful work that we do, and they demonstrated this support with their kind words and generous donations. I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with various lawyers and hearing about how they worked closely with some children who are also referred to Imara. Knowing that we are each doing our part in helping these children along the path of healing and justice gave me such a sense of unity and pride for the work that we do.
Over £8000 was raised in one evening, which is absolutely incredible! This will fund my role as a Sleep and Anxiety Practitioner at Imara over the next year. Thanks to the support of the Society and its members, this year many more children will be able to sleep better, feel calmer and feel more confident in themselves. Thank you so much.”
A gift to you from Imara
You may be interested in self-help resources and videos available on Imara’s website and YouTube, which is designed for children, young people and adults alike. Here is a video by our Sleep & Anxiety Practitioner Stella talking you through the Emotional Freedom Tapping Technique (EFT) to improve your or your child’s anxiety: https://youtu.be/tyxEQijTQ8M
Here is the link to the video we presented at the Nottinghamshire Law Society Awards event, where you hear from our Sleep & Anxiety Specialist Stella, and some of the young people who have used our service and are now part of the Participation Group, using their expert opinions and experience to improve our service.
Click here to view: https://youtu.be/M8sHs3ZgeFA
What is Imara?
Imara is an independent specialist service that supports children, young people and their safe family members following disclosure or discovery of child sexual abuse. We are a charity working throughout Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire, and all of our services are free to access. Imara provides creative arts therapies (art, play, music, dance movement) which empower children and young people to process and recover from trauma, and our CHISVAs (Children and Young People’s Independent Sexual Violence Advisors) provide support and information throughout the criminal justice process. Since October 2021 we have also been delivering a creative arts therapy service for children and young people affected by domestic abuse, taking referrals directly from refuges.
We are commissioned by Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner, Nottingham City’s Crime and Drugs Partnership, and subcontracted by Nottingham University Hospitals Trust.
We believe children have the right to be safe, to be listened to and to be believed in.
How can you help?
Unrestricted funding such as the donations from Nottinghamshire Law Society are invaluable to Imara allowing us to provide a more holistic and responsive service, addressing the needs we are seeing in the young people in front of us and working flexibly to fill gaps such as this.
You can support Imara by donating to the Nottinghamshire Law Society Local Giving page linked below
https://localgiving.org/fundraising/NottsLawSociety22-23/
Alternatively, you can support Imara by following our social media or contributing through fundraising events.
Website: Home | IMARA - Empowering children and families to recover from the impacts of sexual abuse in Nottingham
