Calling Jewish Counsellors

CAAGe, the Campaign Against Adult Grooming, is looking for several new counsellors/counselling psychologists for us to refer to.

We particularly want to recruit from Jewish communities who can help us make awareness and services more accessible to those Jewish communities.

Role requirements:

• Be of the Jewish faith and understand the wider context of being Jewish ie beyond their own Jewish experience (for example being black and Jewish, being an Israeli Jew, being Hasidic);
• Fully qualified and with at least two years experience;
• Capacity to take on additional counselling clients;
• Prepared to invest time in understanding why grooming requires a different approach to other types of counselling;
• A passion for involvement in CAAGe and its aims of raising awareness of, and campaigning against, adult grooming, some of which should clearly be criminalised, some of which is a case of raising awareness, and some of which is already criminal;
• Prepared to work as a team and help other team members better understand issues facing the Jewish community specifically;
• You will be prepared to help us with the direction that CAAGe takes in future.

You would be working alongside our existing counselling psychologist, Wendy Gregory.

We expect to be offering training courses for counsellors in the near future. You will be offered this training free or at a nominal cost, as well as being able to contribute should you choose. We would expect you to look at the course from a Jewish perspective.

There are some very specific issues around being groomed as a Jewish person, and the prevalence of high profile Jewish groomers such as Epstein and Weinstein. These are tough waters to navigate, and ones that deserve our attention head on.

See a sample example of the debates to be had: HERE

(Posting this doesn’t mean we agree, just that we need help to understand)

Nice to have:

• Experience of (adult) grooming or understanding of a related part of grooming – such as elder abuse, cults, modern day slavery, clergy abuse, human trafficking;
• Experience of campaigning organisations;
• Awareness of women’s rights. (We believe, based on ongoing research, that women make up 80-90% of people who have been groomed.);
• Awareness of men’s rights. (We believe that there is a degree of acceptance of grooming of men, and perhaps a reluctance to admit that they have been groomed.);
• May optionally undertake work as as a spokesperson for the organisation;
• Understanding of gender issues.

That’s a big list – and we absolutely don’t expect anyone to have it all.

How we work with counsellors

CAAGe does not take any money from counsellors in exchange for what are, effectively referrals, but ask instead that you offer us some time to guide our direction and check over materials that we are going to issue publicly.

At present we are not registered as a charity – we are primarily here to listen, signpost help, research and raise awareness.

We may decide to become a charity in future, but at the moment we have no income sources and don’t feel that adult grooming is well enough understood yet.

So we are looking at raising funds ourselves to help sponsor the counselling we offer, but at the moment must, sadly, charge victims for counselling.

This is a chance for you to become expert in a truly under-investigated but common behaviour pattern.

Register to hear more about CAAGe for Counsellors

To find out more, contact CAAGe