Judges’ Award 2026 Bronze Longform £500,000 - 5Million
This is a powerful and thought-provoking short film that follows a survivor’s journey through East Surrey Domestic Abuse Services (ESDAS) from fear and uncertainty into healing and hope.
Through this film, we aim to break down barriers and demystify the process of reaching out for help. This film will also shed light on the vital role that support services play in the safety and recovery through connection and validation.
ESDAS was established as a multi-agency forum in 1993 and began delivering services in East Surrey in 1998. Our purpose has always been the relief of hardship, need and distress of those who are experiencing or have experienced domestic abuse (DA) including any associated children.
We are proud to have developed one of the first community (non-refuge based) Outreach services in the country which to this day operates on a needs-led survivor focused basis and continues to be a model of replication and best practice both locally and nationally.
ESDAS was created in partnership with survivors and the local community in response to the injustice many adult and child survivors experienced particularly in having to flee their homes to escape abuse and therefore losing their networks. ESDAS provides specialist Outreach Services, Independent Domestic Violence Advisor support, a holistic programme of group work for women and children, counselling, and a volunteering project dedicated at harnessing the experiences and skills of those with lived experienced of abuse to support others. ESDAS takes a strengths-based, needs-led, trauma-informed approach for supporting women to build resilience and foster independence. We recognises risk as a safety need, but also considers the wider array of needs and resources of women. We aim to provide holistic services to avoid survivors and their children being re-traumatised by repeating their experiences to multiple professionals. Many of our staff, volunteer and Trustee team are experts by experience and all are driven by the belief that abuse is not and should not be accepted as inevitable
Founded in 1993 ESDAS has a proven track record of delivering high quality life-saving services to survivors and our work has achieved both local and national recognition including;
Our proudest achievement however is ensuring that survivors of DA and their children remain central to the services we offer and that they have a voice locally so their experiences inform future services
We align with the following UN Sustainable Development Goals:
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