Victim Support Scotland
Victim Support Scotland is Scotland's leading charity supporting victims of crime across Scotland. We have 120 staff and hundreds of volunteers, aiming for 450 by the end of this year with ambition to grow even further and we are expanding our services across Scotland each year. We aspire to provide high quality support services as well as working with victims and witnesses and collaborating with partners to help transform the criminal justice system in Scotland so that victims and witnesses' experiences are vastly improved.
We are unique in that we support people affected by any type of crime and we provide emotional and practical support to help people move on with their lives. As well as services in communities and courts across Scotland we have a free national helpline that operates 7 days per week and a specialist service support people bereaved by murder and culpable homicide (SFBC service) which is currently supporting around 200 people. This year we further expanding, our local teams are planning evening and weekend support and we are working with victims to co-create a new national service, a Single Point of Contact service for victims of children and young people who harm them. This service was agreed as a result of our influencing work where we successfully lobbied for changes to the Children Care and Justice Bill to ensure victims received adequate information and support.
Digital technology is a huge part of what we do, as is valuing diversity and inclusion. We aspire to be an organisation where everyone belongs, providing support to people when, where and how they want it. This is really important to us. We want to empower victims to move forward with their lives.
We recognise that utilising digital technology can really help us achieve this vision. We have evolved a lot over the years and now have a fantastic website full of self-help information and advice, a live chat service and we were Scotland's first third sector organisation that employed Near Me video conferencing technology. Last year we won a CivTech competition that has meant we now have Virtual Reality immersive tours of every court and remote evidence suite in Scotland. This will allow witnesses to become familiar with the court they are attending in a trauma-informed way.
We want to take our work further, we want more people to benefit from support and we want to make more strides to transform the justice system. We are looking for people to join our board who have a good grasp of what the future might bring from a digital perspective and how this might be used to help victims of crime and organisations like ourselves.

About this vacancy
Level of Board commitment required:
Approx one two days per month comprised of (quarterly board meeting (hybrid); quarterly committee meeting; learning and development (workshops equate to once a quarter; online compliance training); annual board strategy away day).
Induction period:
No but there is a comprehensive induction plan that is self-guided. Role descriptors, code of conduct etc can be provided on request.
Contact
Kate Wallace
kim.fraser@victimsupportsco.org.uk