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Advice, Advocacy, Education, Support
REPORT OF ACTION MENOPAUSE WARWICKSHIRE TO THE CHARITY COMMISSION – 01/04/2024 – 31/03/2025
Charity Registration Number 1204358
OBJECTIVES
Our objectives are “To preserve and protect the physical and mental health of women in (but not solely) Warwickshire who are experiencing a difficult perimenopause and menopause, through the provision of practical support, advice and education to raise awareness about the effects and impacts of the, often debilitating, symptoms that affect many women at this time.”
INTRODUCTION
Early in the year we undertook a review of our strategy and It was decided that our priorities for 2024/25 would be to:
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Continue to provide our bi-monthly peer support group meetings • Explore ways of supporting men so that they can support the women in their lives
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Support workplaces (including the NHS) with menopause information .
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• Continue with the development of a website designed to meet the needs of our local women
COLLABORATION
We provided evidence to the Task and Finish Group set up by Warwickshire County Council’s Adult Social Care and Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee to look at the provision of menopause services in the County. We were subsequently invited to contribute to the meeting of the Social Care and Health Committee where the findings of the Task and Finish Group were discussed. One of their priorities was to find a way of helping men to support the women in their lives.
- a) We subsequently collaborated with Healthwatch Warwickshire to develop a questionnaire survey of women to find out what help they would like from the men in their lives. From the results of this we set up a Focus Group run by a professional facilitator to share the findings with men and find out what help and support they would need to provide support for the women in their lives and how they would like to receive this. The report from this was shared with the County Council. We’ve learned a lot about what support women want
from men and what help men feel they need in order to provide that support. While we are not in currently in a position to take this forward ourselves, we are hopeful that one of our collaboration partners will be able to make good progress in this area.
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b) Our Chair spent a day at Jaguar Landrover supporting their menopause awareness day for their employees.
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c) Our Founder and Chair contributed to the NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership Menopause Task and Finish Group considering action to be taken following a survey undertaken to identify the support, education and training that may be needed by those going through, or affected by, the menopause working within general practice in Coventry and Warwickshire. Further action regarding this is awaited from the Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership.
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d) Our Chair participated in meetings set up by the Programme Manager for Women’s Health for the NHS Coventry and Warwickshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) to consider ways of improving women’s health in Coventry and Warwickshire to share information, identify gaps and avoid duplication.
MAIN ACHIEVEMENTS DURING 2024/2025
We feel we have achieved a lot with regard to our supporting men and workplace support priorities via our collaborative work described above.
In addition, we have achieved the following:
Peer Support Group Meetings
We held 6 Peer Support Group Meetings during the year which were attended by approximately 180 women. These meetings allow women to share their perimenopause/menopause experiences with each other, obtain expert information from speakers and experience therapies on a wide range of menopause issues known to have helped women with menopause symptoms and to get their questions answered by our clinical team. Topics covered by our speakers this year were:
Lifestyle changes that can help with menopause symptoms, Clinical Hypnotherapy, The breath in yoga, Experience of a mini-sound bath, Mind and body treatments and a Q and A session with a gynaecologist who has been involved with menopause research and teaching for 50 years and was the founding Chairman of the British Menopause Society
A questionnaire evaluation of these meetings was undertaken towards the end of the year, and the responses were extremely positive showing that the objectives set for these meetings were being achieved.
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT
A professional facilitator ran a session at one of our Peer Support Group Meetings to identify what local women would like to obtain from our website. The findings from this have been passed to our website developer and work with this is progressing.
FUND RAISING/DONATIONS
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a) A Fashion Show run by a local fashion store and in collaboration with another charity raised £1,361.14.
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b) Self-Care Forum Award – we were runners up in this award and received the sum of £100.
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c) We were awarded a grant of £320 by Leamington Council Cultural and Community Committee to cover the cost of our Peer Support Group venue for a year.
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d) Attendees at our peer support meetings also donate voluntarily during the year via our donation box.
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e) We received a donation of £502 from a cousin of our founder’s husband who lives in the USA and had heard of the work we were doing and wished to support us.
We continue to operate with very low overheads. Our main venue got behind with invoicing us in 2024/25 and the majority of our venue expenses rolled over to the 2025/2026 financial year.
Report ends 26.01.26
Annual Report 2024-2025_final
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