Welcome

Dr Celly Rowe, Chair of Trustees

• History

– 1982 WCTS set up as an Industrial and Provident Society

– 2011Registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee

– 2012Registered as a Charity

Becoming a Registered Charity

• Vital to ensure the longevity of the services offered to vulnerable women

• Vital to the organisational ability to attract wider funding and develop sustainability

Benefits

• Variety of new projects and new approaches to the services offered

• Renewed confidence and increased determination as a thriving organisation

• New partnership arrangements have been developed and existing strengthened

• An active and experienced group of trustees determined to make a difference for the organisation.

Challenges

• ‘In this process of becoming a new charity, we have all had to let go of some aspects of our past. Some aspects of the service which were familiar and comfortable for us but were no longer enabling us to move forward in our current challenging environment have had to be re-examined and re-evaluated. We’ve become a more focused organisation, more focused on our clients than ever.’

The Future

• ‘As a charity, we will plan our future actively. We continue to rely on, and appreciate, the helpful long term support of our core funders Adult Social Care: we also have to forge creative new partnerships where we can, within the voluntary sector, with the NHS, with local businesses and with grant-giving charitable trusts.’

• ‘In two years from now we will be celebrating our 30th Anniversary. We need to be envisaging in the coming year how we want to look then - and at our 50th anniversary! What changes do we need to embrace and also what values are we determined not to lose sight of. To do this we will continue to keep the needs of our clients in the forefront of our thinking and listen to what they tell us.’

Our charitable objectives

• to establish and manage centres, and to equip and staff the same, for the relief of sickness, by supplying advice and guidance, counselling and psychotherapeutic treatment for women and girls of all ages (and their families where necessary), living in West, North and South Yorkshire and Humberside, who are suffering from psychological problems and stress, and the provision of facilities and support for self help groups.

• to advance education of the general public and of psychotherapists and mental health workers in particular in the causes and effects, treatment and reduction of psychological disorders and stress in women and girls“

Presentations

• Andrea Campbell: Increasing access to LGBT women

• Stella Maden: MumsTalk Counselling

• Helen Butlin: WomenSpace

• Katie Whitehouse: The Aurora Service

• Leonie Hilliard: Group Therapy

The LGBT community as client

• A significantly higher risk of self harming and suicide

• Access to Leeds mental health services can be difficult

• Assumptions of heterosexuality and a lack of visibility

• Issues of monitoring

Meeting the challenge

• A clear focus for WCTS

• Time

• Opening Access

• Affiliate members of LGBT Consortium

Measuring change

• An exploratory, experimental and experiential process over the three years eg–monitoring and identification – our use of language

• Higher number of LGBT women in service stats

• Publication

Trans women

• Emerging Issues: –male and female roles in a patriarchal

society; where do Trans women fit?

MumsTalk Project Aims

• Positive emotional and mental health outcomes

• Addressing current problems and parenting difficulties AND unresolved trauma

• A positive social impact on intergenerational patterns of neglect, abuse, mental ill-health and violence.

Service model

• Two community-based locations, as well as the city centre WCTS therapy rooms

• Initial (taster) meeting

• Sessions begin with drawing up a therapeutic contract to guide the work.

• Term-time sessions, in initial blocks of 12 , reviewable regularly.

Therapeutic issues

• Domestic abuse is a major factor for 95% of MumsTalk clients;

• Parental separation, lone parenting and contact

•  Childhood trauma: abuse and neglect

Therapeutic work

• Work on improving parenting and parent child relationships

• Coping with crisis episodes and high stress events

• Counselling: anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, self-care and self-protection, relationships

• Psychotherapy: historic abuse (physical, emotional and sexual) and neglect

Therapeutic work (cont)

• Initial and ongoing Engagement

• Individualisation

• Cross agency communication

• Safeguarding

Measuring change

• Three scoring systems: CORE-OMS; Authenticity Scale; Pianta Child-Parent Relational Scale

• T-test to determine statistical significance, and programme effect (Small, Medium or Large)

• End of therapy client feedback form

WomenSpace

• Individualised support for women who self harm

• Helen Butlin Support Worker

Identifying Need

• Individualised support for women who use self harm as a way of coping

• Gender specific service

• Support to engage with service

• Place to explore feelings behind self harm

• Place to explore alternative ways of coping

Meeting Need Achieving Change

• Different levels of therapeutic support• individual therapy• therapeutic group work• one-to-one support

• Building relationship with client as a service

• Initial meetings

• Extended assessments

• Flexibility

Measuring change

• CORE OM

• Use of Other Services – self reporting

• Authenticity Scale

• Client and therapist reporting on changes around self harming behaviour

The first six months

• Average CORE OM score: 2.9/4 (moderate to severe mental health difficulties)

• Authenticity: scores show high levels of self-alienation and absence of authentic living

• Use of Other Services (A&E, GP, Crisi services) is regular

• Referrals from: Community Psychiatric Nurses, GP, Dial House, CAMHS Transition team, Archway, self referral.

Emerging themes

• Childhood trauma, abuse and neglect

• Difficulties regulating emotions

• Low self esteem/lack of self worth

• Guilt and shame

• Difficulty sustaining positive relationships

• Difficulty in expressing feelings/asking for help

• Isolation

The Aurora Service

• Katie Whitehouse Psychotherapist

• Refugee and asylum seeking women's service

• 3 year service funded by Comic Relief.

• Long-term therapy to address long term psychological issues

• Multiple issues, trauma, sexual and gender-based violence in their own countries

• Leeds is the UK’s third largest dispersal centre with over 1,390 refugees and asylum seekers (Leeds City Council). Refugees overall are five times more likely to have mental health needs and 61% experience serious mental distress, yet they are significantly less likely to receive mental health support than the general population (PAFRAS/Touchstone,2011/12 ).

• Refugee women are some of the most disadvantaged and at risk women in our society yet find it enormously difficult to access adequate physical and mental health.

• Importance of accessible and long-term therapy.

• Interpreters, travel and childcare costs, flexibility.

• Our knowledge of and sensitivity to of the reality of being a refugee woman.

• Partnership working with the Refugee Council and Solace.

• Service monitoring and Evaluation: CORE OM, PENN Inventory, Trust and Hope Ladder from the Mental Health Recovery Star.

• Refugee women are more affected by violence against women than any other women’s population in the world and all refugee women are at risk of rape or other forms of sexual violence

Refugee Council, 2009

• Up to 30% of refugee women have been tortured, including many who have been raped as a weapon of war

Vulnerable Women's Project, Refugee Council, 2009

• It is more dangerous to be a woman than to be a soldier right now in the DRC

UN Military Advisor, Eastern DRC, May 2008

The Transformative Experience of Groups

• Leonie Hilliard, Group Analyst

• Resonance

• Mirroring

• Parallel Process