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Good practice Imported

St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) — the UK's First, Manchester

United Kingdom · Manchester · See the United Kingdom profile · See the Manchester profile

Evidence: Observational / pre–post Top 32% 78/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Opened in 1986 as the UK's first Sexual Assault Referral Centre, St Mary's in Manchester gives free forensic exams, health care and counselling on one site; it served 4,491 children and adults in 2022/23 and created the now UK-wide Independent Sexual Violence Advisor role.

2,831 referrals
Adult referrals (2022/23)
1,660 referrals
Child referrals (2022/23)
4,491
Total people referred (2022/23)

Details

Maturity
Established
Promoter
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust — St Mary's Hospital
Period
1986–present
Keywords
health, hospital-based services, gender-based violence, forensic medicine, criminal justice

Context

St Mary's Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC) opened in 1986 at the old St Mary's Hospital in Manchester as the first centre of its kind in the UK, combining forensic medical examination, sexual health care, emergency contraception and counselling on one site, free of charge and accessible with or without a police report. Its team created the Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA) role, since adopted across the UK's national SARC network.

Results

Published Trust figures for 2022/23 show the centre handling 2,831 adult referrals (1,898 new, 963 repeat) and 1,660 child referrals (1,043 new, 616 repeat) — roughly 4,491 people in a single year. Peer-reviewed evaluations, including a multi-year analysis of client feedback forms, found a large majority of clients reporting they were 'very satisfied' with the crisis worker, forensic physician and police involved in their case; a separate ethnicity audit found South Asian and Chinese clients under-represented relative to the local population, tracked across repeated audits (2001, 2003 and 2019).

Implementation
Indicative cost
High (€500k–€5M)
Time to results
Long (> 3 years)
Staffing & skills
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust — St Mary's Hospital, crisis workers, forensic physicians, Independent Sexual Violence Advisors (ISVAs), police

Conditions for success

  • free access with or without a police report
  • on-site forensic, health and counselling services combined
  • creation of the ISVA advocate role, later adopted UK-wide

Common failure modes

  • repeated ethnicity audits (2001, 2003, 2019) found South Asian and Chinese clients under-represented relative to the local population

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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