SEA was founded in 2017 by Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs, now our CEO, following her 2016 Churchill Fellowship to the US and Australia to learn about best practice in responding to financial abuse. The innovative projects that she witnessed made her determined to ensure that women in the UK received the same response.
The first meeting of 4 founding trustees takes place to begin to set out the future direction for the organisation.
Following media coverage on Women’s Hour, the first members of the ‘Experts by Experience’ group get in touch.
Registration with the Charity Commission means we are legally a UK charity.
Our founding project – the Economic Justice Project – launches, funded by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The official launch of SEA in Parliament is attended by supporters, volunteers and well-wishers, with Victoria Atkins MP, then Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, speaking in support of our work.
Our first report, Into Plain Sight, publishes to coincide with the charity’s launch and is covered on BBC Breakfast, the Today Programme and in the Guardian. The report finds that six in ten successful prosecutions for controlling or coercive behaviour include economic abuse.
The first meeting of the Experts by Experience group, which now has more than 100 members, is attended by 18 women with lived experience of economic abuse.
The Experts by Experience take part in a Home Office roundtable discussion – organised and facilitated by SEA – as part of the consultation on the Domestic Abuse Bill to ensure survivors’ voices are at the heart of it. This report captures their contribution.
SEA and Money Advice Plus receive funding from the Tampon Tax to work in partnership on the Domestic and Economic Abuse Project (DEAP) to build the capacity of organisations working with victim-survivors.
Our inaugural conference on banking takes place at Salesforce Tower in London, with the aim of helping banks and financial institutions implement the Financial Abuse Code of Practice developed by UK Finance with charities, including SEA.
The Government launches its draft Domestic Abuse Bill including economic abuse in the statutory definition of domestic abuse. This follows our work to brief civil servants and Ministers.
Our first strategy launches, setting out our three-year plans to create change in four ways: awareness-raising and education, professional responses, systems change and policy influencing.
SEA is shortlisted in the 2019 Charity Awards in the Campaigning and Advocacy category for our policy work to get economic abuse recognised in the statutory definition of domestic abuse in the Domestic Abuse Bill.
The Domestic and Economic Abuse Project with Money Advice Plus wins an award for Best Partnership at the Institute of Money Advisers Awards.
Lloyd’s Banking Group launches its Domestic and Financial Abuse team, trained by SEA to fully understand the complexities that customers experiencing economic abuse face.
SEA proposes an amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill to extend the offence of controlling or coercive behaviour to post-separation abuse.
SEA launches the Financial Support Line and Casework Service for victim-survivors of domestic abuse, together with Money Advice Plus.
Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs, SEA’s founder and CEO, is awarded an OBE for services to victims of domestic and economic abuse. The news comes a week after we win two Third Sector Awards – one for best partnership with Money Advice Plus and Nicola for Rising CEO.
With funding from the Money and Pensions Service, SEA, together with Money Advice Plus, launches the Economic Abuse Evidence Form – a single tool that a money or debt adviser can use as evidence that a client has experienced economic abuse.
SEA advises the writers of Coronation Street on the economic abuse storyline, reaching five million viewers.
The government announces that it will support SEA’s amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill which leads to post-separation abuse becoming a criminal offence.
SEA publishes The Cost of Covid-19 – a report into the experiences of victim-survivors facing economic abuse by a current or former partner during the Covid-19 pandemic.
SEA founder and CEO Nicola Sharp-Jeffs is named Charity Times’ Rising Leader of the Year.
UK Finance publishes the 2021 Financial Abuse Code, reflecting economic abuse as a recognised form of domestic abuse. SEA CEO Nicola Sharp-Jeffs wrote the foreword.
SEA launches its new three-year strategy for 2022-25, Making Waves, outlining plans to focus on improving policy and responses to economic abuse in the financial services and women’s sectors.
SEA and partners Money Advice Plus are awarded a funding boost of £1.7m from the National Lottery Community Fund to expand the scope of the Financial Support Line and Casework Service and the Economic Abuse Evidence Form.
SEA’s founder and CEO Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs published a new book, ‘Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse’.
The book explores the many ways abusers control victims through economic resources and highlights the urgent need to involve ‘non-traditional’ stakeholders such as money/debt advice organisations and the financial services sector.
We celebrated SEA’s 5th birthday by looking back at some of our greatest achievements to date. We also took this opportunity to look ahead to our next challenges and SEA’s latest strategy ‘Making Waves’.
We shared our knowledge of economic abuse to support a new nationwide awareness raising campaign from HSBC. Members of the SEA team shared their sightings of the campaign across the length of the UK.
Two years in the making, this reasearch project aims to establish what we know globally about economic abuse in the context of intimate partner violence.
‘Economic abuse: A global perspective’ brings together evidence and learning from a variety of sources from all over the world to paint a global picture of what we know about this form of abuse. The study also highlights gaps in knowledge and practice that urgently need to be filled to ensure that all victim-survivors can access economic safety and justice.
SEA collaborated with UK Finance to update their ‘It’s Your Money’ leaflet. This clear and helpful resource was shared with all the signatories of UK Finance’s Financial Abuse Code.
SEA and Money Advice Plus provided input on a new economic abuse toolkit developed by the Cabinet Office. The toolkit aims to support public sector bodies that are recovering debt by helping staff understand, identify and help those experiencing economic abuse or living with its effects.
SEA supported Women’s Aid’s successful call for emergency funding for victim-survivors of domestic abuse to flee the abuser. The Flee Fund has since been expanded to include additional funding to help victim-survivors rebuild their lives after abuse.
Following extensive influencing work by SEA and Gingerbread, the Child Support (Domestic Abuse) Act makes it easier for victim-survivors to be safely paid the child support they are owed by moving onto Collect and Pay without having to get agreement from the abuser or prove they won’t make payments.
The government increased access to legal aid for victim-survivors of economic abuse by excluding those in receipt of Universal Credit and exempting inaccessible capital, like joint homes, from the means-test following SEA’s work on the Legal Aid Means Test Review.
SEA worked with Starling Bank to develop their new ‘Hide References’ feature after raising victim-survivor Rebecca’s story with the bank. This new feature enables victim-survivors to hide upsetting or abusive messages in payment references.
SEA launches ‘Seen yet sidelined’, a research report revealing that every 20 minutes an economic abuse victim-survivor reports to the police yet economic abuse continues to be sidelined within the criminal justice system. The research was covered by The Observer, ITV News and BBC Woman’s Hour.
For Economic Abuse Awareness Day, SEA launched its new research finding that one in five women in the UK have experienced economic abuse by a current or former partner in the past 12 months.
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