The Rape Crisis Centre in Letterkenny provides a free support and counselling service to both female and male survivors of rape and sexual violence across Donegal.

The Donegal Sexual Abuse and Rape Crisis Centre was established in 1997, and has a team of fully accredited counsellors and psychotherapists to provide comprehensive support to survivors.

As part from the review, the centre also wants to ensure that the wider community is aware of the nature and extent of sexual abuse and violence.

A survey has been launched for the public to fill in, while a separate survey for current or past Centre users is available.

Centre Manager Marina Porter has encouraged people to fill in the survey and help the improve the centre so it is providing the correct support that is needed in the county.

Speaking to the Donegal News, Ms Poreter said: “We are doing an organisational review and working on a strategic plan so in order for us to do this, we need people to fill in the survey.

“We want to identify if there are gaps in the service, what we could do better, what works and what doesn’t. There is always room for improvement so we want to get a wider view from people all over the county.

“We want to reach the people who do not know anything about the centre or the support that is available to them, men and those who might be scared to come to us.”

She said there were some people in the county who have never even heard of the service.

The centre currently works with 14 year olds and up, however, in the coming weeks, twelve-year olds will also be able to avail of the service for one year following the allocation of funding from the Late Late Toy Show.

The survey is completely anonymous and should be completed by July 31.

To complete the survey visit https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/CommunitySurveyDonegalSARCC2021 while centre users are asked to complete a different survey which can be found at https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/DonegalSARCCClients2021 using the password Donegal2021.

The Donegal Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse helpline number is 1 800 44 88 44 and the national 24 hour helpline is 1 800 77 88 88.