Our Approach
Our Mission
Empowering individuals
Creating tailor-made training programmes and workshops to empower individuals by developing the skills, knowledge and confidence to keep themselves and others safe physically and emotionally.
Our Vision
We believe that everyone has the right to be safe and should live their lives free from abuse, violence and harassment.
Customer focused
We will work with you to identify your needs, then create a tailored programme delivered by Julie, our specialist trainer. We will gather feedback on all of the programmes we run and share this with you. We will work in partnership with you at all stages.
Passion
We know the impact of violence, abuse and harassment, and are passionate about empowering people to feel safe. We will work with you to deliver our bespoke training to individuals, groups and communities, so they feel safe and free to live their lives safely.
Integrity
We created Freedom Personal Safety as a community interest company because our focus was, and still is, about making a difference to people, helping them feel safer, developing new skills and knowledge and having the freedom to live their lives without violence, abuse or harassment.
Excellence
We use our skills, knowledge and experience to create and deliver high-quality programmes and training. We are trained personal safety instructors and have over 15 years experience working with children, young people, women and those who have experienced violence or abuse. We are constantly reviewing our programmes to keep them current, based on best practice and relevant.
Testimonials
"We commissioned Julie and colleagues to create a set of resources to support our awareness-raising and training for staff around the theme of sexual harassment and abuse between young people. Following an initial scoping call and some email follow-up, they produced a set of excellent materials, including a video presentation and supplementary resource pack with activities and information. Feedback from our staff was excellent. Julie was a pleasure to work with, understood our brief really well and the price was very reasonable. I would highly recommend her and her company."
Paul O’Shea, Assistant Principal Student Services, College of West Anglia
"We had very positive feedback from our training with Julie, whose manner took the discomfort out of discussing sexual harassment."
Charlotte Brandes, Reliance Precision Manufacturing Ireland
"Freedom Personal Safety have been a huge source of help whilst we have responded to the Ofsted review in to sexual abuse in schools and colleges. We had worked with them prior to the review and found them to be highly professional, personable and knowledgeable. In a recent all staff training event, the presentation was interactive and informative, addressing all of the areas we wanted training on. The resources that we received have also been used around College and at various events, providing total clarity that sexual harassment is not tolerated here."
Lee Goddard, Designated Safeguarding Lead, Huddersfield New College
"We’ve worked with Freedom Personal Safety for a number of years to help us to expand our services in the personal safety space. Julie and the team are absolutely brilliant, super well informed, current and highly adaptable, allowing us to educate people from a wide range of backgrounds, minority groups and geographies. Everybody leaves the courses feeling empowered and ready to really live their lives more safely whilst taking away strategies to help others too."
Carolyn Pearson, CEO, Maiden Voyage
"Working with Freedom Personal Safety is always a pleasure. Julie always listens carefully to our requests for training, and then creates a bespoke session in response to that. As a result, the training is relevant, well received and feedback is always great. Julie’s approach is sensitive and positive, and she ensures that people are listened to and cared for in a very safe space – vital for the type of training delivered. Julie and her team are experts in their field, and this shows. The team are organized and proficient and keep their promises, which means we have great trust in them. We have booked them multiple times and will continue to do so."
Helen Connor, University of Huddersfield
"The Freedom Personal Safety workshops were inspiring to the Wonder Woman Group. Julie made the women feel relaxed and comfortable during the sessions reminding them all how ‘amazing’ they are. The sessions were really informative with lots of practical learning for the women especially the self-defence techniques, which gave the women a strong sense of empowerment and confidence to deal with difficult situations. We will definitely be inviting Freedom Personal Safety back for refresher sessions, and I would highly recommend them to anyone working with women."
Christine Fitton, UCAN Project Officer, Bolton at Home Community Engagement Team
"Working with Julie and Elaine for the Right to the Streets project was an absolute joy! Their passion, professionalism, and support not only helped build new relationships across Greater Manchester, but also enabled the importance of bystander intervention to become a key cornerstone of the movement, and kickstart the shift in culture change in relation to attitudes towards women, girls, and other gender diverse people."
Imogen Halls, Project Lead, Health, GM Moving
"Julie is a fantastic trainer and managed to make a very difficult topic easy to navigate and talk about. The Active Bystander training was not only thought provoking but practical and useful in both our every day and working lives. It was very interesting to learn how little actions can make such a big difference without the need for confrontation or escalation. We are hoping to roll out more of this training to our frontline staff at Transport for Greater Manchester as we feel learning the 5 D’s will be an extremely useful tool for our staff on our Bus Stations and Interchanges. "
Nicole Zanchetti, Assistant Duty Manager, Transport for Greater Manchester
"Working with Freedom Personal Safety is always energising, empowering and great value for money. The expertise, care and attention to detail Julie brings to every workshop, training or event is truly exceptional. Over the past 10 years we have developed a number of projects together, working with a wide range of audiences from children to teens to women from across the world, each one uniquely tailored to the needs of the group. Julie and Elaine always deliver on time, communication is easy and direct, apply for funding for new ideas and collate all necessary paperwork, monitoring and reports."
Caroline Tosal-Suprun, Community Development Officer, Bolton at Home
"We arranged for Freedom Personal Safety to deliver ‘How to be an Active Bystander sessions’ for our employees at Lancashire Cricket and Lancashire Cricket Foundation. The sessions were so well received by all members and staff. Julie was engaging, relevant and extremely informative. We got amazing feedback from all attendees who commented how interactive, thought provoking and enlightening the sessions were. I would highly recommend using Freedom Personal Safety and would love to work with Julie and the team again."
Alex Bullough, Learning and Development Manager, Lancashire Cricket
"Freedom Personal Safety has worked with a number of children in our school. Working with complete confidentiality, professionalism and a real passion to support the health and wellbeing of our children, their work has made a tremendous impact on the lives of our young people. Detailed planning and discussion with staff in school has ensured that individual children are supported in a friendly, interesting and positive way. "
Elaine Bradley, Head, Slaithwaite CofE Primary School, Huddersfield
"Across the two Active Bystander sessions ran in our Greater Manchester offices, Freedom Personal Safety were brilliant in communicating the expectations, aims and contents of the course and helped compress the material into a time frame that suited our colleagues. By setting scenarios in a very real way, colleagues felt the real impact of situations people find themselves in when a victim of harassment, but also learnt the methods to challenge this and feel empowered to take action either in the moment or afterwards, to safeguard and support victims. The training was invaluable and will help our staff not only in their personal lives, but in the considerations taken when delivering our work."
Samuel Seabrook, Engineer, Mott Macdonald
"I've been lucky enough to have worked with Julie and Freedom Personal Safety a number of times now. The projects are always of a really high quality, well thought out and engaging. Students love the sessions and find them beneficial. The themes tie in really well with 'Keeping children safe in education' and help us greatly in delivering safeguarding education in an enjoyable and interactive way. Some great products and resources have come out of the projects - we've got sexual harassment posters that we'll be using for years to come. One of the projects we collaborated on won a local community award which was a great accolade for the school. We can't wait to work with Julie again."
Nic Holmes, Designated Safeguarding Lead
"Julie is organised and clear in what it is that she delivers and has been flexible to the needs of the participants attending. She created a warm and safe environment for the women to feel strong, heard and confident. Julie brings such passion that it feels like we can share, whilst also have a bit of fun. The learning from the sessions has been transformative for many…including myself. "
Sarah Taylor, Community Development Officer, Arcon Housing Association
"Freedom Personal Safety always goes above and beyond with the work they do with Endeavour clients, we have always received positive feedback and clients often ask if they can attend more courses with them in the future."
Linda Charnock, Operations Director, Endeavour Domestic Abuse Services
"Manchester United Foundation thoroughly enjoyed the training session with Freedom Personal Safety, Julie and Elaine provided us with a lot of really important take away messages. All the staff learnt a lot from the session and Julie and Elaine made a difficult topic very engaging and interactive. The Foundation and staff were really keen to do more work with Freedom Personal Safety and put more sessions on with our participants after they had such a good experience themselves. I cannot thank Julie and Elaine enough for their support and being such great people to work with. "
Hannah Mitchell, Female Development Officer, Manchester United Foundation
"The ‘How To Be An Active Bystander’ sessions were brilliant! They were delivered with expertise and were fun as well as educational. The sessions highlighted for many just how much they didn’t know about harassment and in particular what ‘sexual harassment’ meant. Being taught how to help others being given unwanted attention was so useful. I would highly recommend the training to anyone who might want to be an active bystander in tricky situations. The training would give them confidence not to walk away, but to stay and support using techniques taught during the session to protect others. "
Christine Aspinall, Manager St Johns Centre, Old Trafford