The support cluster against sexualized violence – Q&A

Q&A

What is the Sexualized Violence Support Cluster?

The support cluster is a collaboration between a number of civil society actors working against sexualized violence against children and young people. The aim is to create the support system of the future for children and young people who are victims of sexualized violence. Getting support after sexual abuse is an absolute right for children and young people.

How will you create the support system of the future?

We work field-building to strengthen the entire field of actors, both public and non-profit, who are around children who have been exposed to sexualized violence.

By coordinating, we can identify common challenges and share resources and knowledge that will allow us to have a better holistic view of the support system we want to change/strengthen. Another important aspect is to create trusting relationships between the public support system and civil society for strengthened referral and collaboration.

Who is included? Can anyone join?

We who together run the Support Cluster are 1000 Opportunities, ChildX, MÄN, Novahuset, Storasyster, Stenbeck Foundation, Tjejzonen and World Childhood Foundation. In order to create the support system of the future for children who have been subjected to sexualized violence, it is crucial that the entire field comes together, which is why we work actively with this and work in several ways with actors outside the cluster, both non-profit and public.

Why did you start the Support Cluster?

We see time and time again how children who are victims of sexual violence do not have their rights met when it comes to the right to support. Too few children receive the right support at the right time. We see a great need for comprehensive improvements in the support system and that is why we started the Support Cluster, together we can share resources and achieve much more change than each organization can do individually on its own. Now we are drawing from everyone’s collective knowledge to get as complete a picture of challenges and solutions as possible.

Technological development is also rapidly advancing and it is expensive and difficult to develop one’s own business, individually we cannot afford or have the time but together we have the opportunity to invest in development projects.

The support cluster against sexualized violence was initiated by the Stenbeck Foundation, the ChildX Foundation and the World Childhood Foundation 2022, with the aim of strengthening individual support lines and collaboration between them.

What do you want to achieve?

A Sweden where no children and young people exposed to sexualized violence lack qualified support when they need it. This is not the case at all today; the support system is fragmented and difficult to navigate for the children who seek support. For those of us who are part of civil society to be able to change the system, we need to work internally within the sector and ally ourselves.

You work in the field, what does that mean?

Field-building is about making unifying and empowering interventions to change systems and achieve sustainable and effective results at scale. In our case, it is about coordinating and strengthening the field of actors, both public and non-profit, that exist around children who are victims of sexualized violence.

We are working to ensure that the field acts more cohesively and that different activities see their part in the whole and complement each other to a greater extent. Through this approach, activities can complement and refer to each other.

This means putting all the pieces of the puzzle on the table, seeing which actors are in the field and drawing on collective knowledge to solve a societal problem.

How does the cluster field-building work in practice? Give examples.

The foundation of the Support Cluster is the collaboration between the organizations that are part of it today. Everyone works with children who have been subjected to sexualized violence and our collaboration itself is a field-building effort in that we learn from each other, see common problems and solutions that make us stronger – and by extension the whole field stronger. As the collaboration develops, we cast our knowledge net wider and contact more actors in the field to collaborate, and that is really the basis of field-building work.

For further questions about the work of the Support Cluster, please contact sara@childx.se.