West Mercia

Phone

01905 726 896

If you’ve been affected by crime, call your local victim care team in West Mercia. Lines are open 9am-5pm Monday to Friday. Alternatively, you can contact us via live chat any time (available 24/7).

Supportline

08 08 16 89 111

If you need support outside of our open hours, call our Supportline for free on 08 08 16 89 111 or request support via our website.

Get help from your local team

Call us

If you’ve been affected by crime, call your local victim care team in West Mercia on 01905 726 896.

Lines are open 9am-5pm Monday to Friday.

If you need support outside of our open hours, call our 24/7 Supportline for free on 08 08 16 89 111 or request support via our website.

Go online

Contact us via our free live chat service (available 24/7).

Create a free account on My Support Space – an online resource containing interactive guides to help you manage the impact that crime has had on you.

We give emotional and practical help to people who have been affected by crime in West Mercia, covering the areas of Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin. We’re an independent charity and you can contact us for support regardless of whether you’ve contacted the police, and no matter how long ago the crime took place. We’ll help you for as long as it takes to overcome the impact of crime.

If you call your local Victim Support team, we’ll make sure you get the information and support you need. This might be arranging a meeting for you to talk to us and receive emotional support in confidence, helping you to fill out a compensation form or get advice on how to make your home more secure, or referring you to other specialist organisations that can also help.

As well as offering emotional and practical support to people affected by crime, we run a number of specialist services in West Mercia including:

  • Visual Evidence for Victims (VEV)

VEV is a free, confidential service. Partner agencies can take photographs of injuries or damaged property and store them securely. By keeping a record of incidents in this way, we help victims to keep the option of reporting a crime to the police in the future if they decide not to report straight away.

  • Independent Victim Advocates

Caseworkers are specially trained to work with the most vulnerable victims. Our services provide a support pathway focusing on reducing risk factors, and increasing protective factors and resilience levels.

  • Restorative Justice

In partnership with West Mercia Police and other agencies, Victim Support is giving victims of crime the opportunity to access a bespoke restorative justice service. Restorative justice is a process that brings together people harmed by crime with those responsible for the harm. This communication, using experienced facilitators, enables everyone affected by the crime to find a positive way forward. To make a referral or for general enquiries, please email us.

  • Modern Day Slavery

West Mercia PCC have commissioned Victim Support to provide presence of independent support to victims of modern slavery on planned police operations. The role of an Independent Modern Slavery Advocate will work closely with West Mercia Police to:

  • Support identifying and assessing the needs of victims of modern slavery/human trafficking; and
  • Provide support to victims of modern slavery/human trafficking.

The role will support the function of the National Referral Mechanism (NRM) by providing short term interim support (five days) to anyone that consents to the referral and is accepted with a positive grounds decision.

For anyone that doesn’t consent to an NRM referral, or does consent but receives a negative grounds decision, will receive short term (20 days).

  • Hate Crime: I am ME!

Experiencing hate crime can be a particularly frightening experience as you’ve been targeted because of who you are, or who or what your attacker thinks you are. Unlike non-identity related offences, the attack is very personal and specifically targeted, which means it’s less likely to be a random attack. A person may be targeted because of a hostility or prejudice towards their:

  • disability
  • race or ethnicity
  • religion or belief (which includes non-belief)
  • sexual orientation
  • transgender identity.

Victim Support also recognises crimes targeted at women (misogyny) and alternative sub-cultures (such as goth) as forms of hate crime.

I am ME! is a project designed to help communities, statutory agencies and any workplace setting, recognise and understand the impact of hate crime. The service offers training and awareness sessions to anyone that wants to understand what a hate crime is, how to report a hate crime, and also what support is available. By being more informed, we can all play a part in standing together against hate.

Last year we offered immediate support to over 14,000 people affected by crime in West Mercia, and gave in-depth support to more than 1,900 people.

One of the people we’ve helped to cope after crime is Tony.

“Without Fiona, I would have died – there’s no doubt about that.”

Tony’s son Darrell had been missing for 13 years before he was found on a farm near Newport in Wales. He had been held captive, beaten and forced to work for no pay. Tony was thrilled to have his son home but he soon began to feel overwhelmed by the new challenges facing his family. Here he describes the life-saving help he received from Fiona, a volunteer from Victim Support in Kidderminster.

Although it was the best day of our lives when we found Darrell, the weeks and months after became more and more difficult.

Life at home completely changed. Before, things were calm: I could get up when I wanted to, do little jobs around the house, take myself out for a walk. When Darrell came home, he had a lot of health issues so every day we were taking him to the dentist, chiropodist, hospitals, doctors and surgeons. We’d never experienced anything like this and my wife was on the phone every day, in tears, trying to get the authorities to help us to help Darrell. But they hadn’t had a case like this before and they didn’t know what to do.

Jean and I had been married 44 years and we’d never had cross words, but suddenly we were falling out. We had always been so close and everything was perfect – then all of a sudden it wasn’t. I couldn’t cope. I didn’t want to get up in the morning and I couldn’t wait to get to bed at night.

I was a bit apprehensive about getting help from Victim Support. I’d always been able to sort myself out – I’m self-sufficient. But I realised that with the terrible state I was in, there was no harm in going. That’s when I met Fiona. At our first meeting, she asked me to tell her everything I wanted to tell her, and we’d take it from there. She helped me write a list of ways to cope – things to do when a certain situation arose. I carried Fiona’s tips around in my wallet for ages – it was very, very helpful.

Fiona helped me understand why Darrell couldn’t talk to us. He would just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to everything. It was like he didn’t want to speak to us and I found it very difficult.

My weekly appointments with Fiona became a lifeline. During my worst times, seeing my sessions with Fiona written on the calendar kept me going. I knew that I could tell her exactly how I was feeling at that moment, and she would say something to alleviate my feelings.

Without Fiona, I would have died – there’s no doubt about that. She could see that I had become suicidal and she did everything she could and more to help me.

Things are much better now. Darrell is unrecognisable to the person he was a year ago – he’s in his own bungalow and with small, slow steps, we’re helping him turn his life around. My relationship with Jean is better too.

We will do anything we can for Victim Support because without them, we wouldn’t be where we are now.  Everyone from Victim Support has gone beyond the call of duty for us. I’d recommend them without a doubt.