London Centre for Personal Safety

London Centre for Personal Safety

The London Centre for Personal Safety (LCPS) is a charity which works to promote resistance to violence, and encourages positive and pro-active responses. We aim to prevent violence, reduce the fear of violence, and develop individuals self-confidence and ability to respond positively to threats to their safety.

We provide personal safety and self-defence training, a Consultancy service, information, advice and resources on a number of safety issues.

We are pioneers in our field and have conducted Women's Safety Programmes for thousands of local area residents and workers, in a series of projects across Greater London, in partnership with local authority and regeneration bodies.

The bulk of our clients are women and children from the most
marginalised communities. Other users include people with disabilities, older people, women in the sex industry frontline workers in the statutory and voluntary sector, and minority ethnic groups.

We are an independently evaluated project. Our work is acknowledged as an example of best practice and effective prevention, in the The Home Office document 'Tackling Sexual Violence: a guidance for local partnerships" (2006), The Lillith Project (2005), the Home Office and Cabinet Office Women's Unit in ' Living Without Fear' (2000).

LCPS and Women's Self-Defence

Women's self-defence challenges the stereotype of women and girls being passive victims, who do not and cannot resist harassment and physical assaults. It both recognises and validates women's active resistance, expands their options for action whilst reinforcing a sense of entitlement, that women have the right to defend themselves. (Corinna Seith & Liz Kelly, 2003)

Women's Self Defence (WSD) is not a martial art or sport. It is a gender aware and comprehensive provision, drawing its practice from feminist theory, bringing together physical, social, cognitive and emotional dimensions. We campaign to promote self-defence for women and to counteract ill-informed and stereotypical views of WSD, which continue to be a barrier to women and girls access to the provision.

It is important that policy makers, funders and women's organisations are aware of the powerful contribution that WSD makes to the goal of ending violence against women,and of the evidence that challenges misrepresentations of WSD.

IMPACT

LCPS is also the home of IMPACT UK, offering cutting edge, single-sex self-defence. IMPACT is a unique form of self-defence, which allows students to practice verbal and full-force physical skills in realistic "adrenalised" scenarios, on specially trained male instructors wearing protective suits. Women instructors lead all training, demonstrating and teaching the techniques.