– Dr Nicola Sharp-Jeffs, founder and CEO
As the bells rang in 2020 on New Year’s Day, no one could have foreseen how the year would play out. Yet once the pandemic arrived, we were only too aware of the impact a government enforced lockdown would have on victims of abuse. We immediately got to work and realised our core value of being agile had never been so critical. When the second three weeks of lockdown were announced, traffic to our website increased by 257%.
The unique challenges of Covid-19 arrived at the tail end of what had been another busy year for SEA, as we continued to raise awareness around economic abuse and work to transform responses to it.
And thanks to our team and our supporters, we have made great strides. Over the last year, economic abuse was recognised in the Domestic Abuse Bill, we helped one of the UK’s largest bank launch a specialist team to better support customers and staff, and with more of our own staff, we worked with more sectors – from housing to the police – to help people understand economic abuse and offer the right support.
In April 2020, SEA celebrated its third birthday. With balloons and cake over Zoom, the team and some of our SEA Sisters took a moment to reflect how far we’d come. Despite a changing world, a change in working habits and a changing team (now up to 20!), one thing has remained constant: our unwavering commitment to the victim-survivors of economic abuse.
Surviving Economic Abuse is a registered charity. If you would like to support our work you can make a donation or become a regular giver. Visit our donations page for more information.
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