A Day in the Life of… Suzanne: A Clinical Lead – Sexual Assault Services

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I’m Suzanne.

I work at the South Eastern Centre Against Sexual Assault, and I’m a social worker by training.

As a clinical lead, my main responsibilities are providing support to the staff on the floor, and that can involve prepping for session, but also debriefing after session.

So providing clinical guidance or providing resources to them.

Another part of my role is providing clinical supervision to the social workers in our team.

So that’s a great opportunity to help staff who are learning, who are practising things or who need to debrief on a more clinical level around what’s going on for them.

We have a team that supports young people who have engaged in harmful sexual behaviors or have been alleged to have engaged in harmful sexual behaviors.

So that looks like a family coming into our service, being introduced to their clinician, starting to build a really safe and trusting relationship with them.

And then the clinician beginning an assessment.

I’ve always worked throughout my career with children, young people and families.

I’m really passionate about that area of practice and wanted to work in a space that was as early intervention and prevention based as possible.

Because a lot of the techniques, theories, frameworks and practices that health professionals use in other services are transferable over to the harmful sexual behavior field.

When we’re working with young people, we’re taking a lot of time throughout the assessment phase to understand their needs, their strengths, their skill set, their communication style.

We’re using a lot of art therapy based modalities, a lot of play based modalities. And it’s up to us to be a good therapist in terms of supplying the information in a way that makes sense to the young person.

What we’re trying to achieve is firstly to reduce the chance that there’d be further victims.

Lots of the young people that we work with, at the end of their time with us, will have huge increases in the way that they understand what consent is, what safe relationships are.

And they’re in a much better position to go out into the world and to engage in relationships in a way that’s really respectful and really safe.

Updated 3 June 2024

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A Day in the Life of… Suzanne: A Clinical Lead – Sexual Assault Services

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