FAQs

We do not deliver the Own My Life course to women, we train practitioners within local services to run the course. This is because we believe that local services are best placed to support you. CLICK HERE to access the "Find A Course" page, and you can then contact your local organisation. Many organisations are running the course online, so if you can't find one that local to you, do contact your nearest course as they may be able to include you in an online course.

This will depend on the policy of the organisation running the Own My Life course that you attend. Our guidance to services running the course is that women can attend in-person/on-site courses if they are still with their partner, but if women are joining an online course, they need to have separated from their partner. This is because there are different safeguarding considerations when running the course online.

In Summer 2022, we introduced our Expectations of Sisterhood which all new facilitators and organisations are required to adhere to when delivering the Own My Life course. If you feel a course you are attending is not being run in ways outlined in the Expectations of Sisterhood, please contact us on info@ownmylifecourse.org and we can find a way to support those running your course to be aligned with our expectations of sisterhood.

While our materials are generally focussed on women who have been subjected to abuse by men, we have some materials which are focussed on the ways lesbian or bisexual women may be abused by a female partner. Our organisational model is that we deliver train-the-trainer courses for facilitators, with local organisations delivering the course. As a result of this, it would be the organisation running Own My Life who would be best placed to tell you whether you will find their courses able to fully support your needs. You can find the nearest organisations to you that run Own My Life HERE.

During some criminal investigations (particularly into sexual violence), if the victim has been participating in counselling, the police can request access to the counsellor's notes as part of the investigation. These notes may then be made available to the defence team (and the perpetrator) as part of a criminal court case.

While Rape Crisis is campaigning to change this (see HERE), at present this situation means that women are often advised not to participate in counselling while a criminal investigation is ongoing. This should not affect women participating in the Own My Life course, as it is not counselling, nor a therapeutic intervention, and facilitators do not take any notes about the session or about individual women's participation in sessions.

If a woman is attending Own My Life and either she, or the service supporting her, are asked by police to declare if she is accessing support; we would encourage services to describe her as "engaging in appropriate group support services". Own My Life is not therapeutic and isn't counselling, and so should not be part of the types of services that become difficult to access in advance of being a witness in court.

We encourage services delivering Own My Life to develop a policy for managing this eventuality in relation to any group work and other support they offer.