We ran a series of workshops with Reading Student’s Union welfare officers

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After delivering our workshops to the welfare officers of RSU student societies last year, we returned to deliver this session to even more students. Across 2 days we delivered 9 workshops to over 100 students to discuss how to deal with first disclosures of harm and understanding different traume responses.

We had a large level of correspondence with RSU’s Welfare Officer and Activities and Opportunities Officer to create a bespoke workshop that will assist the welfare officers of over 150 student’s societies and teams to be victim focussed, adopt trauma-informed responses to disclosures of harmful incidents, including but not limited to spiking, sexual violence and hate crimes.

We opened up the conversation with student welfare officers regarding how to respond to disclosures of harm as an effective ally. By firstly confirming exactly what constitutes these different kinds of harmful behaviours, we then looked at the current university processes and ways in which students can report. We applied this information and created unique guidance for officers on how to signpost victims to university reporting mechanisms using empowering and validating language. After understanding the different trauma responses, we applied our knowledge and skills to real life scenarios from students in our community through engaging group work activities.

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I found The Egalitarian’s workshops really informative. Sometimes when you go into a session, you may think you’re already clued up on a lot of topics. However, after completing the session, I realised there were so many things that I didn’t know. Things such as the difference between sexual assault and sexual harassment, or what the most common ways of spiking were, to identifying domestic abuse; these were all topics I had a general idea of but didn’t really have an in-depth understanding of. Many of the issues discussed not only related to my professional role but also were beneficial for my personal life. This training is definitely essential for everyone in terms of spreading awareness on these matters. - RSU Activities and Opportunities Officer

Andy, Venue Manager

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I found the workshops really helpful and informative, particularly for officers organising and attending night time events. Students who attended the sessions found it very interesting and really enjoyed it. - RSU Welfare Officer