2022-06-30-accounts - African Women's Health Group

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African Women’s Health Group 2021-22 Annual Review

Who Are We?

Set up and led by women from hard-to-reach communities who clubbed together to offer health advice, advocacy and interpreting support, signposting and information, African Women’s Health Group (AWHG) is a constituted voluntary sector charity and unincorporated association which works in the deprived ward of Darnall in Sheffield.

We are governed by an annually elected voluntary Management Committee team composed of local women who themselves have faced challenges in finding their way through life. We support isolated and disadvantaged women – particularly those of Black and Ethnic Minority heritage, refugees and asylum-seekers - in accessing much-need health advice, advocacy, training and services and aim to:

Reduce isolation, stigma towards single parenthood and discrimination by helping affected women strengthen social networks and confidence to become better integrated and active into their locality;
Reach out, empower and equip disadvantaged women with advocacy, awareness and interpreting support, health, legal and practical tools to make informed decisions and take action;
Address high levels of unemployment by providing basic skills, literacy, vocational training, childcare and homework support for a further generation of young people enabling isolated women and families who might be living in poverty with skills to achieve their full social, emotional, civic and employment potential.

Forty Years of Service!

When we first started our organisation we faced so much opposition! We didn’t give up. We were not involved in the bigger networks as it wasn’t about getting recognition. But with the number of refugees coming to Sheffield, there just wasn’t enough help to go around.

We were all volunteers. We didn’t know anything, really, but just kept on doing what we knew how to do. We managed to set up in a council-owned building rent-free and just wanted to help the women and children coming to us. It really was a self-help group and it made a lot of difference to peoples’ lives.

Our first payment ever was a very small grant to take women and children on a day trip. No one could believe that we managed to put this together by ourselves. Forty years on, people see us at public events, Zoom conferences and receiving awards. We seem to have been accepted by a wide network and a younger generation who seem very open-minded… Halima Mohamed, Chair

It All Started When … forty years ago, three mums of Somali heritage became overwhelmed by a growing flow of women knocking on their doors for help, many of whom were isolated single heads of households with limited or no English language skills, asking for advice on health, welfare, housing, family and school issues, help with reading and writing letters, interpreting for doctors’, school, benefit and court appointments, decided to take things in hand.

The flood of door-knocking continued until, in a bid to find a better way to help, Halima Mohamed, Amina Warsame and Dequa Ibrahim, first set up AWHG in 1992.

Local women, many single parents coming out of Somalia as refugees and in desperate need, found family demands, limited English language skills and, often, health problems, made it difficult for them to get out to know what is going on locally, make friends, share information and find their way around life in Sheffield.

An office space was found for one day a week where the AWHG team offered advocacy services, set up ESOL classes with the WEA (Workers Education Authority) , and, when it became evident that parents who had no experience of the British education system were struggling to support their children, parents found a tutor, a source of funding, and helped run a Homework Club for young people – all on a voluntary basis. Health talks for women who needed advice on managing conditions such as diabetes and arthritis were soon followed by fitness classes. Service have evolved as new ideas emerge to meet the need of an increasing number of disadvantaged women come to our doors seeking help. Some go on to help as volunteer interpreters or in organising and supporting our Homework Club, events and activities for other women in need.

Fast-forward and a majority of AWHG’s service-users are still from low-income households, on sickness benefits or unemployed in a district experiencing some of Britain’s highest indices of deprivation. Most are from migrant or refugee communities and of Pakistani, Yemeni, Somali, Bangladeshi, Sudanese, Syrian and Ethiopian heritage and come with below age-related educational expectations in education.

Most hear of our services by word-of-mouth. As all of us come from a position of shared experiences, we understand and support one another while each newcomer can see how other women have developed new skills and moved forward in life. In this sense, we provide ideal role models through our collective efforts.

Sometimes when women get in touch, we're later told it isn’t just to get information but because women say we are the only people they have been able to talk to about the stress and challenges they struggle to cope with and feel they’re understood. Sometimes it helps just to be heard … it help them to work out what to do next, with or without much input….

Classes, workshops, craft activities, preparations for celebrations and outings help build confidence and bond women together while establishng networks to which they can turn at times of alienation which can lead to negative outlooks on life and poor self esteem.

Better peer networks also make the experience more sociable as learners meet others in similar circumstances, break down taboos and pick themselves up to rebuild new lives in an environment very unlike the world in which they thought they would live as adults. It is a credit to our approach that women say they have felt safe to ask for help for the first time in a wider community.

Our Team

As we are a self-help group, our Management Committee is made up of local women, some of who first came to find us as service-users and volunteers.

When we finally emerged from Covid lockdown last June, we were also able to catch our breath and identify new recruits for our Management Committee who meet quarterly for updates and feedback on our services, finances and gaps in our own and other local services to meet emerging needs.

Nearly forty years on, thanks to the efforts of our Acting Chairperson, Halima Mohamed, our newly elected Secretary, Marium Mohammed and Treasurer Rima Al-Khayat are joined by newcomer Corrie Moss and Iram Al-Khasadi, women of local Somali, Black, Syrian and Yemeni heritage. Welcome and thanks to all!

Our Chair, Secretary and Treasurer are responsible for the day-today running of AWHG, supervising and supporting our team of workers, tutors and volunteers while encouraging former serviceusers to join in and help others. We also meet monthly and invite newcomers to join us in reviewing the progress of our projects and making sure we provide a good standard of service and keep within

budgets. We also discuss further local needs for services based on feedback from families coming to our services, staff, tutors and partner organisations such as Sheffield College team who jointly facilitate and fund our programmes.

Staff

It’s been a challenging year. Our 4-days-a-week Project Manager and a part-time English, Arabic, Somali (and Dutch!) speaking 3days-a-week Outreach Advocate have worked flat out to support and help advocate for isolated women, refugees and families. As women come in crisis we are finding that we are not only working full-time but also working overtime as we try to keep up.

Sometimes we struggle to keep up with our paperwork on the weekends as weekdays are filled with signposting, administering and monitoring women desperate for help. Some ask for jobs or simply join vocational training at our centre – in some cases the women are told their welfare benefits will be cut off if they do not join. It’s heartbreaking.

While providing logistical support for family activities including termtime ESOL classes run four days-a-week, Digital Drop-ins, vocational training, Advocacy, a Health & Wellbeing programme and our Home Work Club, our Chair also sits on strategic community panels including and South Yorkshire Community Foundation’s grants panel to share insights into BAME women’s needs and reflect upon intersecting social issues. While learning about wider resources available to support Sheffield’s diverse demographic communities, attending meetings also means we are now getting recognition that we never had before.

Face-to-face advice has completely disappeared just as women are struggling to pay bills and make themselves understood by telephone. It means we are simply not able to keep up with women showing up in crisis. Letters and letters and letters. Women are coming with letters every day. They cannot afford to pay gas bills, they cannot afford to buy food. Last week a woman was given a £500 gas bill and asked whether she should pay that or her rent? She couldn’t pay both. There are so many women on anti-depressants now …

While some clients are able to negotiate issues with a bit of signposting, advice and encouragement, many don’t have a good enough English to understand what they have to do, where to go and what to say. This means our work is never simple and unexpected things come up ever day.

Sometimes we find older women have simply not opened letters and have miss crucial deadlines to complete paperwork for ‘Settled Status’ in Britain after decades of living in the U.K. We spend hours trying to get help for such women as these sorts of matters cannot wait.

Some have received scam calls asking for their National Insurance numbers and are told they would be referred to the police or sent to jail if they don’t act so staff and volunteers might spend hours helping to block payments.

Highlights this year included our participation in an online panel facilitated by the Rowntree Trust to share learning about the needs of very disenfranchised BAME residents as we collaborate to help share learning with wider partnerships as we emerge from the pandemic. over and beyond the requirements as paid community activists. Thanks is due to our formidable team members for sustaining our collective passion for helping and meeting wider need in times of trouble.

Volunteers

As we returned to face-to-face activities, Sheffield Skills for Life offered us a rare opportunity to run a six-week Volunteer Training course leading to a ‘Volunteer Passport’ showcasing skills and learning gained. Outreach and community engagement skills, nationally-recognised First Aid, Health and Safety training, in-house Safeguarding training and DBS safety checks help us facilitate safe, effective and caring support to each BAME woman visiting our centre in their own mother tongues so as to unravel the complexities of often dire situations and help each take first steps towards understanding routes and empowering them with basic skills to make informed decisions on critical issues affecting their own and their children’s futures. Each volunteer, in turn, is supported in gaining national recognition and accreditation as a complement to existing life skills and lived experiences. Many thanks and recognition is due to each and all.

From formally or informally helping as interpreters supporting ESOL learners in Arabic, Somali, Kurdish, Urdu and Bengali community languages, to name a few, outreach to help vulnerable residents and help with ESOL learners’ registration and, later in the year, assessments, signposting and advocacy support as well as assistance with our sewing classes, our Homework Club and outings.

Volunteers also take class registers, photocopy learning materials and preparing refreshments for break times. Some even help as teaching assistants when individuals in large classes need a bit of extra help while Childcare trainees help with our crèche and young people training as teachers support our Homework Club team.

Over the Covid period, in particular, we could not have reached and supported as wide a rang of really vulnerable service-users over the lockdown period if it hadn’t been for their help in fetching and

delivering food, medication and shopping for isolated and shielding older BAME women and families.

Each, in turn, becomes a role model for peers and neighbours searching for confidence to take first steps out of home. In this sense, our services helps women take small but important steps to gain skills, confidence and experience to lead informed, independent and fulfilling lives.

We value each and every volunteer coming through our doors and celebrate their every achievement. Without them, our overstretched core team of two part-time workers and voluntary Management Committee members would struggle to identify and support a diversity of hidden needs amongst some of Britain’s most disenfranchised and impoverished BAME women and refugees on a shoestring grassroots budget!

Our Activities

English as a Second Language Classes (ESOL) Three Celta-qualified English as a Second Language (ESOL) teachers normally run classes five days a week but funding cuts means we have had to combine our Pre-entry and Level 1 classes to create four twice-weekly classes, morning and afternoons, from Monday to Thursday during term time which also include ESOL Level 1, 2 and 3. Funding cuts to other local centres also means our centre has been overwhelmed by requests for places, with more than 25 women on our waiting lists and women asking every single day.

Our 80 existing learners, most of who between the ages of 25-60, are of Pakistani, Libyan, Somali, Sudanese, Bangladeshi, Yemeni, Syrian, Eritrean, Ethiopian, Afghani, Iraqi and Turkish heritage have also been joined by a new influx of women of Kurdish heritage. While improving English skills to initially, fill forms, speak with GPs, teachers and neighbours before gaining confidence and skills for volunteering and vocational training for employment, learners say classes also offer a unique chance to get out of home and meet others! Such bonds help knit together a community of women who often go on to help one another out in times of challenge.

While Sheffield College provides funds to cover costs of venue hire and tutors who we recruit, AWHG starts recruiting, interviewing and registering learners for each new academic year. Starting in the month of July, we ferry women to and from Sheffield College several times a day or each week, helping with form filling, translations and follow-ups to ensure each woman’s papers are processed.

At the end of each year we help video an average of 80 women over a two-week period as our tutors assess learners’ English listening and speaking skills while coordinating reading and writing exams for a final City & Guilds certificate award.

Badges gained as Sheffield College students also fills some women with pride. ‘My children had better watch out,’ one woman chanted, ‘because I am finally a college student too!’

Celebrating our achievements also offer a chance to look back on how each of us has progressed so we all come together each July to mark another giant collective step taken. Given that for some learners, this might represent their first ever accreditation award in their lives, these small steps are bigger than they might seem.

IT Classes

At long last, we finally have enough laptops to start our longawaited IT classes for digitally marginalized women!

As Socially-economically marginalized BAME women are more likely to lack digital technology and equipment, finances for Wifi access and digital skills which further isolate them, we hope to empower a wider community of women to become more self-sufficient and better manage their own lives as they learn to send emails, manage GP appointments and gain skills to gain work.

Ten beginners join us in the morning and ten more advanced learners in the afternoon twice weekly with one weekly session funded by Sheffield City Council and our second one by Big Lottery. It's very popular as everyone wants to learn so our waiting list keeps growing….

Health & Social Care

Thanks to funding from Sheffield Skills for Life, September 2022 saw our launch of three yearly 12-week Health & Social Care courses supporting 10 women in each to gain nationally-recognised accreditation for employment!

Of thirty programme participants, two have gained work in nurseries while ten have gone on to work in social care. Others attending training say our courses also offers a step on the ladder as each searches, with support from a visiting Employability sessional worker, to find work which fits with their skills, timetables and sustainable employment goals.

Employability

A waiting list has grown for the monthly visits from an Employability Worker from the Centre for Refugees and Asylum-seekers who comes to support women in creating CVs and undertaking job searches to find work which matches their needs.

Childcare

Our National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) Level 1 Childcare training in partnership with Red Tape, Sheffield Council’s Skills for Life tutor Helen Haythorne started up again once more in September 2022 with three 12-week cycles offering women a chance to gain work experience with Darnell Community Nursery or to go on to join Red Tape to gain Level 2 Childcare diplomas for employment in community and statutory nurseries.

Health Awareness Programme

Friday Fitness

When women come to join our exercise classes on a Friday they say it offers a rare chance to become fit and maintain good health, while keeping worries at briefly at bay. While finding peace of mind, classes offer a rare chance to socialise and enjoy.

So when some 20-30 women join us each Friday morning for an hour of gentle exercise, chances are a visitor will hear laughter and fun!

Counselling Sessions

Mainstream mental health services are rarely available in community languages and often lack insights into the cultures, social expectations and needs of women from marginalised cultural communities.

The word ‘depression’ does not, for instance, exist in Somali – meaning that language to explore poor mental health is very limited. One woman, for instance, regularly visits us to silently cry without saying a word.

As more and more women struggle to keep families afloat, we noted a similar number reporting their GPs have given them prescriptions for anti-depressants. In the face of this, thanks to our three-year funding from the Big Lottery, we have managed to source a sessional counselor offering group and one-to-one counseling sessions Friday mornings as part of our Health & Wellbeing programme.

A shortage of space and resources limits our offering but feedback suggests that coming together to reflect, share trauma and solutions, while offering women with deeper personal needs space to further explore, results in collective strategies to brighter future outlooks at times of financial and emotional crisis.

Food Sharing

25 food packs donated by local warehouses and sorted by Food Hall Project, a charity run by volunteers, means we typically share out up to 30 food packs with women joining Friday Fitness classes. As energy costs and food prices soar, so too has demand for food support. Such is competition that we re-package and share smaller packages amongst a greater number of households or alternate distribution so that each households gets a package once a fortnight rather than weekly. It's the best we can do.

Lightweight Weight-Loss Initiative:

A two-day NHS-funded training delivered by Zest , a local social enterprise, was launched in September 2022 to train BAME community workers and volunteers to facilitate a programme called Lightweight.

While equipping BAME teams with a new strategy to help women manage eating and explore new approaches to weight loss, the programme has connected weight-loss trainers with BAME communities they struggled to engage with through mainstream services. It’s a win-win situation!

Rather than eating less and exercising more, participants were encouraged to look at the food they ate, consider what was in their plates and what sort of protein/carbohydrate/vegetable balance each meal offered. Counting calories, taking time to eat slowly and chew so as to improve digestion were also key. As poor sleep leads us to being tense and, as a consequence, hold onto weight through emotional eating and other coping strategies, we were also advised to avoid television and digital screens before bed and avoid eating an hour before going to bed as this disrupts sleep. Simply getting 10 minutes of exercise, indoors or outdoors, is enough.

Such tips were shared with a further 30 BAME women who joined us weekly over as we checked and recorded their height, weight at the start of the programme and monitored and see whether they lost weight. Participants then shared achievements and helped motivate one another to meet their weight loss targets in this incredibly popular programme which we hope to repeat in future!

Sessional Advocacy Support

While the process of teaching and empowering service-users with a range of new skills we previously thought were impossible to achieve in a short space of capacity-building time, the number of women facing language, digital and confidence barriers to accessing advocacy support also doubled over the lockdown period.

A lack of accountability is growing as face-to-face services disappear increasingly women who do speak English say they have spent hours on the phone, calling and calling again for services which then cuts them off after 45 minutes.

‘One-size-fits-all’ online service-formats do not always apply to individual circumstances or allow for further clarification needed where residents are seeking help. As they additionally require a level of confidence, administrative, English language and digital skills which exclude some of Britain’s most socio-economically and culturally marginalised communities, statutory and voluntary sector drives to cut costs are further excluding those for whom the services are purportedly designed.

Some sent to find private accommodations are finding themselves charged more than they should for housing while paying the balance of what Universal Credit will contribute with money set aside for utility, family food and care bills.

While women lacking literacy and digital skills often miss deadlines and opportunities to claim much-needed entitlements, an absence of face-to-face and ‘one-stop-shops’ support means clients have nowhere to turn for personalised reviews of to help unpick complex circumstances in times of change and distress.

As Britain’s spiraling cost-of-living crisis has set in, funding from the Big Lottery has enabled us to employ a sessional Advice Worker who visits once a fortnight to help us address a flood of urgent requests for help.

Sewing Sessions

Given demand for the re-opening of this very popular activity, we look forward to starting sessions again when space and time is available to enable women to re-join make-and-mend activities, sewing skills and a chance to get out and meet others to share and learn together.

Crafts and Family Activities

Craft sessions have similarly been put on hold as fitness, counseling, food bank and advice sessions take over the space. Once the weather improves we look forward to taking women out again with Management Committee and Sacma Community Support Worker, Corrie Moss, inviting women and children to visit Darnall Community Allotments on a Wednesday afternoon and share in the growing of fresh produce while taking seeds home which can only help improve diets, physical activity and household finances!

Outings: Exploring Local Public Resources

Sometimes we get calls from young people saying their mothers are seriously depressed, asking us to come visit, take them out or help shift them into a more positive mood. Several young people have also committed suicide as we came out of lockdown.

As we have listened, supported, encouraged women who sometimes feel to be on the edge of a breakdown – particularly where they have previously faced trauma and displacement which studies confirm makes people more vulnerable in times of strife and isolation – and invited them to their first ever outings to the Peak District with our team. These outings are really special because most of the women coming to us don’t have the transport, resources or knowledge of what resources exist for them to join. We walk, picnic and are often greeted by fellow walkers calling out to ask how we are, cheering us on and making us feel welcome.

Several women have said these outings have been the best thing they’ve done in ages and feel like a cloud has been lifted.

As the weather improves, we are also planning to take women and children swimming, for walks, exercise in the park and outdoors activities to help get them going again. We look forward to encouraging further walks, learning about horticulture and, if

possible, encourage women from different communities to share experiences to learn from one another!

Sharing Health Information with Wider Networks

We are often approached by women who don't know how to get to their required destinations for medical appointments so we help them navigate to their destinations and, while sometimes signposting clients to telephone translators for GPs or asking volunteers to help make sure they receive critical support they need, we also accompany them in person.

Most visitors lack confidence and English communication skills which create further barrier to their accessing online information about civic, health and public awareness issues. So when we were asked to join fortnightly Zoom meetings with a CCG team, the BAME Health Network and Greg Fell, Director of Public Health over the Covid period to share data on vaccination take-up, hospitalisation, demographics, geographic an time charts alongside case studies and information about Covid vaccination trends, we signed up.

While our Outreach Advocate engaged with women at school gates, shopping centres and in parks to learn from some of Britain’s hardest-to-reach BAME women of Arab, Somali, Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage about whether they had been vaccinated, if not why, and helped inform Sheffield’s Community Consultation Group (CCG) about reservations people might have about being vaccinated, feedback on health perceptions and barriers to accessing mainstream services.

Thanks to bonds of trust, we were able to act as a two-way channel sharing information with hard-to-reach women face-to-face while helping inform mainstream agencies’ strategies working to reach isolated women and families.

Feedback from participants highlighted the benefits of offering primary health services close to home where single heads of households juggle work, caring and household responsibilities and where services in geographic area which are familiar mean some of the most disenfranchised heads of households physically know where to go. More crucially, challenges in getting GP appointments, even when faced with critical health issues, means women often find no alternative to showing up at emergency services for help for themselves and their children.

Homework Club

Staff noted a big differences in young peoples' behaviour as they build confidence to speak about their needs and as they do better, academically and socially, at school.

It takes them a while to make friends with peers and come to trust our team but when they do finally talk about what might be troubling them and learn to work as a team to address each challenge, they transform from initially being shy and afraid, putting their names down and quickly going to seats at the back, they now come in with a smile and stop to chat.

Opening up is a really important step to young people who sit in groups during breaks when we run face-to-face sessions and talk about what is happening to them at school where they didn't dare to speak about bad experiences when they first joined our club. Those peer networks are really important to building confidence too as well as sharing information which makes all the difference to young people's ability to aspire to achieve things their parents never dreamt of.

Led by two qualified tutors and two teaching assistants supporting 40 young people aged 11-16 with an hour each of GCSE-level Maths, English and Science, the programme is particularly helpful to households where parents have limited English language, educational experiences and resources to support children struggling at school. Our teachers’ assistants also come in during the week to photocopy, help us keep up with administrative tasks and support teachers throughout.

We provide refreshments at the start, break-time and at the end of each club session to give learners a break and helps make learning more sociable and breaks down stigmas amongst students who might feel embarrassed by school failure and afraid ask for help. Attempts to address poor academic achievements otherwise come late and parents, lacking skills and financial resources to find help, feel helpless. Those left behind by age 11 have a mountain to climb, do not know where to turn for help and often feel they are failures.

Older siblings, parents and neighbours are our best publicity routes as stories of former students, now working as lab technicians in local hospitals, in IT and analytical sciences, have become models for a further generation of young people who come with low educational attainment levels hoping we can help.

We interview each young person joining our group and listen to their personal, academic, emotional and home experiences as we try to gauge how best to help. Volunteers who themselves have attended our homework club are available to spend more time with individuals in need of additional help.

Our approach to teaching is shaped by each child’s needs. As time goes by, we learn through class feedback, parents and one-to-one conversations arising at breaks about further hidden needs which

young people are embarrassed to talk about. We also ask young people about additional workshop topics they would like to explore.

Young people are working hard right now and doing well on mock exams and building confidence where they once struggled with schoolwork and felt ashamed to talk about it. Special credit is also due to our new intake of young refugees who joined us from India during lockdown with barely a word of spoken English to help them get by at their new schools. Each has worked so hard and have achieved magnificent results to testify to their effort and determination!

Celebrations are part and parcel of recognising each learner’s achievements; as such a reading comprehension competition was run at the end of our 2021-22 with 20 well-deserved tablets awarded to our hard-working young people!

What the kids say:

One student told us that he never had any help at home until his mother brought him to our group. When he first came, he didn’t know if he was going to like it but now he doesn’t want to miss a single Sunday. He says it’s friendly, he learns so much and he always looks forward to coming!

More than just Academics …. our Club is also about positively improving communication, social networks and outlooks. Newcomers often hear about us from other children-a high recommendation indeed!

Even as we build trust with young people who might have no one to confide in at times of distress, stories of bullying often emerge. After years of shame, fear, low self-esteem and isolation, some discover others who’ve shared similar negative experiences and visibly become more confident, speaking and sharing with peers where they initially appear to be withdrawn and unmotivated. An active interest in learning is often unleashed and grows.

While inspiring younger generations who’s parents have often not completed secondary school to aim high, we continue to share learning through peer role modeling, with our own staff team, volunteers and Management members often demonstrating how each of us can take small steps and keep going until we do things we never imagined possible ourselves!

Talks from older peers who are first in their families to find their way through educational systems are reported as inspirational as young learners start believing that they too can go on to gain degrees and

work in their own areas of interest.

Case Study:

Three refugee families, Somali heritage single heads of households, arrived in Britain in June 2020 from a UN Refugee Camp in India. After 6-7 years of learning Hindi and finding their feet, they didn't know anyone in Britain and found themselves surrounded by fear and confusion in a global health lockdown crisis.

One had a severely disabled teenager who struggled with the layout at home, didn't know how to turn on the heat or affordable shopping for basic family needs. She finally spied a visibly Somali heritage woman passing her door, pleaded for help and was signposted to us for help. Through her, we also met the others dropped in Sheffield from the Indian refugee camps and helped them throughout the pandemic with paperwork, registering kids for school, appropriate warm clothes and basic items like kitchenware and food.

The older children were put in classes with their age group though the spoke very little English. We asked the schools whether they could provide additional support for these bewildered students, we were told such services no longer existed locally.

It soon became clear that these young people were frightened, unclear of what was going on and simply didn't know what to do. Testing suggested their academic level were lagging so our English tutor asked to run an additional 1/2 'private' session for 5 young refugees joining our Homework Club.

Two years on, these students who were initially unable to understand what was being said are excelling at school in spite of one family being made homeless when the ceiling in their house, so damp that carpets were soaked and family members were prescribed ventilators because of resultant breathing problems, with the Homeless Department insisting they return until, after three days of sitting in the office with AWHG’s Project Manager and refusing to return, they were finally temporarily housed in a hotel far from school. We feel immensely relieved that each young person concerned has been able to demonstrate resilience and courage in the face of inhumane conditions…

Partnerships

Outside of formal partnerships with Sheffield College, Skills for Life, Red Tape who provide Childcare training, the Subud Centre and Darnall Children’s Centre who offer work experience placements to our Childcare students and Voluntary Action Sheffield continues to facilitate key information-sharing hubs where we learn and share learning about the experiences of some of Britain’s hardest-to-reach BAME communities. Our Chair has continued to represent excluded

voices via Sheffield Partnership Board and with the CCG’s BAME Health Network.

Thanks is also due to the Centre for Refugees and Asylum-seekers for sending an Employability Worker each month to support women in learning to create CVs and search for work online just as the volunteer-led Food Hall Project provides food packs for households simply unable to make ends meet.

Cross-referral networks are also key to helping service-users to access services at a time of shrinking funds for services including the CAB, which sadly no longer facilitates face-to-face appointments and is getting harder to reach by telephone, well as Asiana, which supports women facing domestic abuse, local schools in Darnall, Attercliffe and Tinsley, GP surgeries, hospitals and our local allotments in Darnall which have offered fresh produce, seeds, growing tips and hope! Many thanks to them all…

Thank You

Many thanks to our funders including the Big Lottery’s Reaching Communities programme, BBC Children in Need, Sheffield City Council, the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), South Yorkshire Community Foundation, and the Subud Centre who’s venue we use, supporters and volunteers who enable us to provide services at a time when cuts to public services and welfare have put vulnerable women and families at higher risk than ever.

Special thanks also to Sheffield College for funding our ESOL classes and Sheffield City Council’s Skills for Life who funded our Volunteering, Childcare Training and Health & Social Care for providing resources and tutors to help local women believe and achieve improvements to their lives!

CCOUNTANT'S REPORT In connection wth my examination, no material matters have come to my attention whlch gives me cause to believe that in any material respect the accountlng records were not keo in accordance with Section 130 of the Charities Act or the accounts did not acGord wlth the accounting records or accounts did not comply wtth the applicable r8quiremerrt8 conceming the fomi and content of accounts Set out in the Charities Regulationg 2008 other than any requlremenl that the accounts giv8 a true and fair wew vthich is not a matter Gonsidered as Part of an indepondent examinatlon. I have come across no other m be drawn in order to enable in connection with the examination to thich attentlon 8hould r urKlerstanding of the accounts to be reached. Azim & Ch•rttred Certifjed Aero 537 Abbeydale Rood Sheffield S7 IFU CrS APPROVAL l appn)v¢ these financi statements and confirni that I have made available all relevant records and inforniation for their preparation. Comwltte member_ -.D•ted..3LAL-L Cothmttte mtmber

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AFRICAN WOMEN'S HEALTH GROUP FINANCIAL sTATEmEs FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30th AZIM & WAKAS CHARTERED CFR TIFIED ACCOUNTANTS 537 ABBEYDALE ROAD SHEFFIELD S7 IFU TEL 0114 2588067