About Us
Meet Some of the Team
RSVP is made up of a big hearted, bold and believing committed team of staff and volunteers and our vital survivor steering group. Our team includes trustees, counsellors for adults and children & young people too, Independent Sexual Violence Advocates (called ISVAs), Helpline and Webchat volunteers & staff, fundraisers, trainers, specialist asylum seeker and refugee worker, Parent/Carer’s Group & Circle Facilitators, wellbeing group facilitators, administrators, service heads, wider IT and fundraising volunteers.
Leadership Team:
Lisa Thompson, Chief Executive: lisa@rsvporg.co.uk
Lisa is an award-winning Chief Exec and an experienced trainer in the field of sexual violence and abuse and trauma informed approaches. She has also trained in Transactional Analysis psychotherapy. She is also a mega runner and has run distances from 5km to 215 miles! She often uses her long runs to fundraise for us and in total has raised over £13,000. In 2024 she ran, walked and crawled (her words) 215 miles from one side of Scotland to the other and raised more than £2,000 for us. She also loves the outdoors and the countryside and overnight trips in a campervan.
Anjella Darcy, Head of Adult Counselling and Wellbeing Services: anjella@rsvporg.co.uk
Anjella is an experienced psychotherapist and trainer, she heads up all our busy and growing wellbeing services, including counselling, helpline and group support.
Katrina Blake, Head of Children and Young People’s (CYP) Counselling and Wellbeing Services: katrina@rsvporg.co.uk Kat leads the CYP Counselling and Wellbeing Services and comes with over 20 years of supporting children and young people & keeping their voices centred through services. In the past, Kat has supported looked after CYP as a residential social worker at the local authority; was a senior in a specialised therapeutic children’s home supporting CYP subjected to CSE and wider forms of exploitation; was a family support worker, and facilitated parent programmes via the Race Equality Foundation.
Paula Dower, Head of Fundraising and Partnerships: paula@rsvporg.co.uk
Paula leads the fundraising team to secure income generation. She develops partnerships with funders and partners to secure and strengthen the sustainability of RSVP’s services. Paula also works with RSVP’s Survivor Steering Group to ensure survivor voices are heard in RSVP’s decisions.
Yvonne Langham, Head of ISVA (Advocacy) Services: yvonne@rsvporg.co.uk
An experienced ISVA, Yvonne manages all our advocacy services, including specialist support for sex workers and the LGBT community. Yvonne’s team won the national Limelight award for outstanding ISVA team in 2016.
Hear from some of our current and past team members:
Katrina joined us as a Children’s ISVA/Advocate, then progressed to our Children’s ISVA Team Leader and from end of May 2024 became our Head of Children’s Counselling and Wellbeing Services. You can read Kat’s blog post from when she was a children’s ISVA here
Maddison is one of our Children’s ISVAs/Advocates, you can read her blog post about her role here
Claire used to be one of our specialist ISVAs/Advocates supporting sex workers. You can read about this work through Claire’s blog post here While this specialist work continues, Claire has now left RSVP and this role has been filled by Fiona.
Mark used to be one of our specialist ISVAs/Advocates supporting LGBT survivors, you can read his blog post here While this specialist work continues, Mark has now left RSVP and this work is continued by Bev and Ian.