Our Story

Bristol Crisis Service for Women was created by members of the feminist collective Bristol Women and Mental Health, who were determined to transform mental health support in their community.

It's groundbreaking research and training helped change how women using self injury were viewed and supported, not just in Bristol but across the UK.

A period of major growth as we move into our first office in central Bristol, and hire our first paid staff!

We launch our first in-person support group for women who have experienced adverse childhood experiences, offering a safe and empowering space to connect and be heard.

Driven to reach more people, we launch our first website in 1997, expanding our support beyond local boundaries.

We’re taking a bold step forward and become a charitable company limited by guarantee so we can protect our work, strengthen our foundations, and scale our impact. This structure gives us the legal backbone to grow our services, reach more people, and drive the change that self-harm support urgently deserves.

We deepen our focus on intersectional experiences of self-harm, publishing the Rainbow Journal and releasing multilingual self-help resources for Black and Minority Ethnic women.

We publish The Pain Inside a groundbreaking resource for women in prisons who self-harm.

The beginning of Hidden Pain, a three year UK-wide research project to better understand self-injury among people with learning disabilities.

We launch TESS - our Text and Email Support Service - for women under 25, using new communication tools to reach more people where they are.

A milestone moment - our work is recognised with the Queen’s Medal for Voluntary Service at Buckingham Palace, celebrating our impact working with women and girls who self-harm.

We expand training to include workshops about people with Borderline Personality Disorder, working with young people and people with learning disabilities who self injure 

A pivotal moment: Bristol Crisis Service takes a defining step to rebrand to Self Injury Support, actively exploring names that fully represent the work we do and the people we support.

Reflecting our commitment to responding to changing needs, we pilot a WebChat service as an innovative way of broadening our support and exploring how digital access can reach more people.

We launch a pioneering Lived Experience A&E Follow-Up Service for self harm - the first of its kind.
Anyone attending A&E after self-harm can be referred to our confidential peer support service. This marks the first service open to all genders.

Gentle Activism is a podcast amplifying oral histories gathered through the Women Listening to Women project and traces the radical roots of Bristol Crisis Service for Women. It champions empathy and listening as radical acts of resistance, care and social change. 

In response to service user demand  and toward equity and inclusion, we take a transformative step: expanding beyond women-only support and opening our services to all genders, still protecting women-only spaces, while ensuring that everyone affected by self-harm can access the help they deserve.

From SIS to SIFT. A name change to improve accessibility and better reflect the breadth of our work: sifting out stigma around self-harm, providing evidence-based support, and centring lived-experience voices in everything we do.