Our impact

Improving the wellbeing of people using our services

Satisfaction and outcomes are consistently high, with 87% of clients stating that the service helped them to manage their appearance-related concerns, and 97% of clients reporting that they were satisfied with the service they received.

We use the Short Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale to measure the impact of our counselling, Peer Group Chat, and Skin Camouflage Services. Comparing the wellbeing scores before and after support showed a positive shift in wellbeing from an average metric score of 20.8 at the ‘pre’ stage to 22.3 at the ‘post’ stage (shift of 1.5).

The level of wellbeing indicated by the scores suggests that, on average, clients from from a lower-to-mid level of wellbeing before their sessions to a mid-level afterwards.

We’ve highlighted the experiences of some of our previous clients below. For more examples, please see our real stories.

Who are we reaching?

We monitor the demographics of our clients to understand who we’re currently reaching and who might potentially be underrepresented.

• Gender: 79.5% of clients identified as female, with 19.8% male and 0.1% self-identifying.
• Disability: 18% of clients identified as being disabled.
• Age range: The majority of our clients (80%) were aged 25+, with 20% of the clients we saw were children and young people (aged under 25). 
  • The most represented groups, by age, were those aged 30-39 (21.4%), 40-49 (20.8%) and 20-29 (18.4%).
  • Only 8.1% of our clients were aged 65+, and only 7.8% under 16.
• Ethnicity: 59% of clients identified as White (British or other), 20% as Asian/Asian British and 8% as Black/African/Caribbean/Black British.
• Type of visible difference: While clients may have more than one condition, the main conditions seen were skin conditions at 46% (of which, Vitiligo was the most prevalent) scarring at 29%, burns at 4%, and cancer-related conditions at 4%.

Increase understanding

Our second strategic goal is to increase the understanding and acceptance of visible difference and disfigurement, whilst reducing prejudice and discrimination.

Some of the ways we measure this are through the reach of published stories and media coverage containing the experiences of those with visible differences.

Awareness raising in numbers

The impact of our campaigns

In 2023/24 our campaigns aimed to raise awareness of the impact that negative behaviours can have on people with a visible difference.

• Our annual Face Equality Week was a celebration of those with visible differences for who they are, their passions and centred some stories of creativity. “People with a visible difference deserve to be recognised for their talents instead of being judged and underestimated because of the way they look.” – Bronwen, Campaigner.
• For Halloween 2023, we built on our I Am Not Your Villain campaign by sending an open letter to UK streaming platforms, asking them to consider the impact of the negative stereotypes the films they stream perpetuate for people with visible differences, particularly around Halloween. 46 articles and international syndicated pieces were generated from the campaign, reaching 135 million people.
• In total, we reached over 315 million people through 492 media hits. Of these, 380 included quotes or stories from someone with a visible difference, reaching 258 million people.

Our education work

We continue to work with teachers and health professionals, both of whom have an important role in supporting people with a visible difference. Our education resources were downloaded 3,333 times, with our PSHE-accredited A World of Difference resources accounting for 78% of these.