Lambeth Lifted Voices is a community project led by Surviving Universal UK (SUUK) and funded by the London Community Foundation through the Lambeth Mental Health Inequities Fund.

This project was created to bridge the gap between survivors of trauma and the mental-health systems meant to support them.

 

While there are several brilliant Black-led wellbeing initiatives in Lambeth, Lifted Voices focuses specifically on Black and Brown survivors of trauma, abuse, and coercion — those living with the long-term impact of harm and too often left unseen or unsupported.

 

For many in our communities, engaging with statutory mental-health services can feel like taking a risk — never knowing whether you’ll be understood or retraumatised. Racial bias, cultural misunderstanding, and a lack of trauma-informed awareness continue to create barriers that silence survivors when they most need care.

 

Through Lambeth Lifted Voices, we’re building safe, survivor-centred spaces designed around real experiences and healing needs — spaces where Black and Brown survivors can come together, share, and be met with understanding rather than judgement. The project explores how trauma intersects with race, culture, faith, and identity, and what true trauma-informed care could look like at community level.

 

The work is led by Surviving Universal UK (SUUK) — the UK’s only Black-led organisation founded by and for survivors of cultic and spiritual abuse.

 

Our expertise lies in understanding complex abuse and coercive control within faith and community contexts, and how these experiences compound trauma for Black and Brown people navigating systems not built for them. This makes SUUK uniquely positioned to lead Lambeth Lifted Voices — ensuring the project is grounded in both lived experience and professional safeguarding knowledge.

 

A key part of this work is the Lambeth Lifted Voices Survey — a short, anonymous survey for Black and Brown residents of Lambeth to share their experiences, challenges, and hopes for change.
The findings will guide the creation of new, healing-centred community spaces across Lambeth, built by and for survivors themselves.

 

Your voice matters. Help shape the future of survivor-led healing in Lambeth by taking the Lambeth Lifted Voices Survey today.