WOMEN affected by rape across the West of Scotland are facing longer waits for one-to-one support after funding was axed from a Glasgow service.

Rape Crisis Glasgow has lost a £35,000 annual grant from BBC Children in Need it has held for several years which funded staff specially trained to counsel teenage girls and young women.

Centre managers say they were told the application was turned down this year because the service was not providing adequate support for male survivors. Children in Need has denied this was a factor in its decision.

The service already has 150 women on the waiting list, with some facing a 9-month delay for support and the charity has now been forced to suspend it, ‘indefinitely.’

However, the decision has been criticised by White Ribbon Campaign Scotland, a global movement of men, campaigning to end violence against women who said 90% of attacks were targeted at females.

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Isabelle Kerr, Centre Manager, said: “The verbal feedback we got was that they were concerned that we didn’t do enough for male survivors.

“We were quite clear that we also support young men at the point of contact and then refer them on to other services.

“But they didn’t feel that this was enough, even though it’s exactly what we have told them over the past six years.

“ I’m not sure what else we could do.

“We’ve lost one and half posts. One of the workers was specially trained in counselling younger women so that’s been lost.

“We can’t replace her so her caseload had to be spread out amongst other workers so it has further reduced their capacity to pick up new cases.

“At the moment we have 150 women on the list and we felt we couldn’t keep adding to it indefinitely because at the moment, the last women on that list are facing a wait of 9 months.

“It’s one-to-one support and we know that when women come to us they are ready for that support.

“We have 15 staff who carry out support work but we don’t just work in Glasgow, we’ve got that huge area of six local authorities.

“We are pretty much swamped at the minute. The staff are under huge pressure and are worried about being in a position where they have to finish up women when they aren’t ready.

“Having to say to them, we’ve got this big long waiting list, it’s horrible.”

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In a statement, White Ribbon Campaign Scotland said: “”Given that more than 90% of all reported rapes are committed against women it would seem more appropriate for Children in Need to consider providing funding to services geared up for male survivors rather than withdrawing this award.

Isabelle said the centre is now relying on the public to raise the cash which will allow them to re-open the waiting list.

She said: “We’ve basically spent the whole of July really trying to find a solution and we have now exhausted all avenues.

“One of the things we would like to do it to ask the public to donate a couple of pounds a month. All the big charities do it.

“We’ve been told we can re-apply in January but if we re-apply we are talking about this time next year before we get that decision.”

A spokesman for BBC Children in Need said: "This decision was in no way connected to the support of male victims, we award grants to charities regardless of gender.

“Although the public are extremely generous in their support each year, we simply don’t have the money to fund all of the projects that apply to us for grants and we have to make some really difficult decisions.

"We currently fund 313 projects to a value of £18.8 million in Scotland and receive thousands of funding applications every year from projects across the UK helping to change young lives.”

To make a donation, go to www.glasgowclyderapecrisis.org.uk/content/donate