There is a version of this story that begins in 2019, when a steering group formed, a consultation opened, and three specialists put their names to a response that challenged twenty years of harmful policy. That version is true. But it is not where the story starts.
It starts earlier, in the way that meaningful things usually do.
A connection that took root slowly
Erene Hadjiioannou and I first met in 2014 or 2015, through the kind of professional encounter that you register as significant even if you cannot yet say why. Erene is an Integrative Psychotherapist, author, speaker, trainer, and activist, with specialist expertise in supporting survivors of sexual violence of any gender. She is also someone who thinks carefully about systems, about where they fail, and about what it costs the people who fall through them.
We stayed in each other’s orbit. That matters, because the work that came later did not arrive fully formed. It grew out of years of conversation, of watching each other’s thinking develop, of building the kind of trust that cannot be rushed. By 2018 and 2019, we were ready to do something with it.
I often say that changemaking is the long game, and that is exactly why we need people around us who get it. The relationship with Erene is a precise illustration of that principle.
Forming the group
When the Crown Prosecution Service opened a public consultation on its pre-trial therapy guidelines in 2019, the problem it needed to address had been in plain sight for two decades. The guidelines, in place since 2002, contained a clause that prevented survivors of crime from speaking openly about their experiences in therapy if they had an active report, investigation, or trial running concurrently. In practice, this meant that survivors navigating the criminal justice and mental health systems at the same time were asked to compartmentalise the very thing they needed to process. Therapeutic services were placed in an untenable position: offering talking therapy to people who could not, within the framework, speak freely.
The guidelines disproportionately affected survivors of sexual and domestic violence, precisely the group most likely to be holding both processes simultaneously. And they had been written without meaningful account of the full range of people they would govern.
It was clear that a response to the consultation needed more than one kind of expertise. It needed legal knowledge, clinical understanding, and a direct grasp of the equity failures built into both systems. That is why Dorothy Hodgkinson and Tayba Azim came in.
Dorothy is a freelance strategy and development consultant to the voluntary sector, with over a decade’s experience as an Independent Advocate. She has supported many clients through the specific and painful terrain where histories of domestic and sexual abuse intersect with legal proceedings, including cases involving parental capability hearings. She brought to the group a systems-level clarity about how evidence is used, how survivors are positioned within legal frameworks, and where the architecture of those frameworks lets people down.
Tayba Azim is an Integrative Psychotherapist and Mizan Practitioner, whose specialisms include trauma and a wealth of knowledge on women’s rights in Islam, including the critical work of separating cultural practice and spiritual abuse from what the Quran actually states. Her presence in the group was not incidental. The guidelines the group was challenging had failed, in part, because they were built around a default survivor: white, cisgender, secular, non-disabled, heterosexual. Tayba’s expertise and lived professional knowledge made certain that the group’s response could speak to the survivors those guidelines had never seen.
The legal dimension
The group also drew on the expertise of Stephen Littlewood, a Barrister practising in Crime on the North Eastern Circuit, a Grade 3 Prosecutor and member of the panel for dealing with rape and serious sexual offences (RASSO panel). Stephen appears daily in the Crown Court prosecuting and defending cases that frequently involve serious sexual offences and domestic violence. Through that work he has built close professional relationships with victims, their families, the police, and the CPS. His understanding of how the pre-trial therapy guidelines operate in practice, at the sharp end of live criminal proceedings, gave the group’s response a grounding in courtroom reality that strengthened its credibility and its specificity.
Writing the response
The group liaised with legal professionals, therapists, and survivors before shaping their submission. The aim was not simply to critique the guidelines but to make a case that was legally literate, clinically grounded, and human in its orientation. There is work to be done on both sides, and collaboratively, within both systems. Without it, the intersection of the criminal justice and mental health systems would remain another societal gap that survivors fall through.
Their response also named, directly, who the guidelines were leaving behind. The criminal justice system will continue to be predominantly accessible to white, cisgender, secular, non-disabled, and heterosexual survivors. So will the mental health system, despite the work being done at multiple levels to address this. Naming that was not a rhetorical gesture. It was the analytical core of the argument.
The formal response was submitted to the CPS public consultation in November 2020. By that point, the context had shifted in ways none of them had anticipated when the group first formed. The Covid-19 pandemic had driven enormous spikes in domestic violence across the UK, accompanied by a surge in police reporting and a nationwide crisis in mental health provision. Both systems were more overloaded than at any point in recent history, and the survivors navigating both at once were doing so with fewer resources and greater vulnerability than ever. The pandemic did not create the problem the group was addressing. It made it impossible to look away from.
What the 2022 revisions changed, and what they did not
In May 2022, the CPS issued new pre-trial therapy guidance to replace the 2002 framework. The clause preventing survivors from speaking about their experiences in therapy was removed. The updated guidance stated explicitly that there are no circumstances in which access to therapy should be delayed for someone in need of support. That was meaningful, hard-won progress, and it matters.
The 2022 revisions also tightened the provisions around requests for therapy notes, requiring that any request constitute a reasonable line of inquiry rather than a speculative one, and that a survivor’s views be properly considered before any material is shared with investigators.
However, therapy notes can still be requested and in some circumstances released. Therapists remain at risk of being called as court witnesses, including where a first disclosure was made in a therapeutic context. The fundamental tension between therapeutic confidentiality and legal disclosure has not been resolved; it has been reframed with more careful language. For survivors from communities that already carry a well-founded wariness of statutory systems, including those with experience of institutional racism, religious discrimination, or disability-related barriers, this tension is not abstract. It continues to determine whether they seek help at all.
The absence of standardised, mandatory training for therapists working pre-trial also remains unaddressed. The inconsistency that results means survivors cannot reliably expect their therapist to understand the legal context they are both operating within. That gap costs people.
The group’s work is not finished.
What the collaboration became
Something else happened alongside the policy work, which is harder to quantify and more important than it might appear in a case study.
The steering group became a circle of genuine mutual support. During personal crises, including serious illness affecting people close to me, Dorothy, Tayba, and Erene were a source of real strength. The trust built through doing difficult, values-driven work together translated directly into the kind of friendship that shows up when it matters.
Tayba reflects on what the collaboration has meant: “What began as a task has become a circle of friendship and collective action. This partnership has also expanded my own path, giving me the confidence to speak at conferences and to train other organisations.”
Dorothy describes the quality of the work itself: “I have valued being able to address complex and heartrending issues within the safety of a collaboration that has become close, supportive friendship. Bearing witness to the very varied experiences we each brought to this work was emotionally challenging but so worthwhile, enabling us to present a detailed, coherent case for change.”
And Erene, whose insight opened this whole conversation all those years ago: “Collaboration is proof that the right people are out there, you just need to be brave and go looking for them. I’ve valued the experience of holding each other up when pushing for change is intimidating, along with sharing expertise.”
What this means for you
If you are reading this as an IWC member, this story is not offered as an exceptional case. It is offered as evidence of what is already possible within this community, when people decide to look for each other.
The right collaborator for your next piece of work may already be here. They may have expertise that fills a gap in yours. They may have a perspective that changes how you frame the problem. They may, in time, become someone who holds you up when the work gets hard.
The first step is the brave one. Everything else follows.
Dorothy Hodgkinson is a freelance strategy and development consultant to the voluntary sector with over a decade’s experience as an Independent Advocate. Erene Hadjiioannou is an Integrative Psychotherapist, author, speaker, trainer, and activist with specialist skills in supporting survivors of sexual violence of all genders. Tayba Azim is an Integrative Psychotherapist and Mizan Practitioner, specialising in trauma with expertise in women’s rights in Islam. Stephen Littlewood is a Barrister on the North Eastern Circuit, Grade 3 Prosecutor, and RASSO panel member.
