RCC15. Bridge Friends
Proposer: Susan Jewitt
Funding allocated: £9,859.71
The Proposal
Bridge Friends is our Christian Outreach based in Grimsby, wanting to extend our friendship and support to the most vulnerable women within our community. We exist to facilitate the rebuilding of lives that have been given up as hopeless, encourage them back into mainstream society, achieve their full potential and realise their dreams. This is achieved by building relationships through a team of dedicated volunteers and working in partnership with other agencies both locally and nationally whose commitment and concern is the welfare of those that we assist.
Our request for funding was for the following reasons
Investment into BRIDGEfriends to enhance our existing outreach service, so that we can increase our volunteer base and assist a higher number of vulnerable women.
To provide our core team with vital training so that we can record, evaluate and deliver accurate statistics to funders and for research.
To provide an office and base to work from that also offers a private consultation setting for the vulnerable women that we assist.
To raise awareness through media to the wider community of the scale of sex workers in Grimsby and vulnerable women who are at risk of entering or re-entering.
Produce durable information leaflets (discreet enough to put in pockets) to inform sex workers where we meet and of other agencies and services in the area that can help them.
Without the Change Champions Course we wouldn’t have had access to funding and support. The grant has made it possible to give things to women. You helped us to support the concept cabaret and we now have £7,000 set aside for a new vehicle.
What we spent the money on!
The funding was spent on building a local base in the East Marsh, enhancing the provision of an informal drop in, growing the number of volunteers and supporting the valuable outreach in the community.
What we achieved!
The Project has been in existence now for 18 months.
The Change Champion programme took us from running this from home to having safe and secure haven for the women. This gave us the ability to tell people we existed. Key in advertising us to offer partners you put us on the map!
We were able to develop the little green leaflets, provide alarms and change lives. Meeting women at their worst and seeing their likes change is incredibly rewarding for the volunteers.
OFFICE – The Digital & Business Hub, Freeman Street Market DN32 7DS
A BASE FOR OUR VOLUNTEERS & FOR BENEFICIARIES – ENABLES COUNSELLING PRIVACY, ADVICE & GUIDANCE & ONE TO ONE TRAINING / DROP IN SERVICE
Moving into our office has had a significant impact to BRIDGEfriends, our service users and partner agencies. We have been able to meet with and assist a number of sex workers and vulnerable women by providing a drop in and appointment service 2 days a week and have seen increased number of service users in our office. We have received donations of office furniture, and 3 computers from local stakeholders and businesses. We have set up a bay for volunteers and have begun weekly computer training sessions with one of our beneficiaries, she is learning Excel, Word and how to use emails, and we have already seen a marked improvement in her confidence and self-esteem.
BROCHURES VITAL INFORMATION FOR BENEFICIARIES & OTHER STAKEHOLDERS
Funded brochures containing vital information on we had designed to be waterproof, have helped us to engage with sex workers, trafficked and vulnerable women who we meet through our evening outreach. A Romanian lady who had been trafficked after she took a BRIDGEfriends handout and contacted us a week after we had seen her on our evening outreach, we will write about her in one of our caseworker studies to demonstrate the level of assistance that was given to her through our daytime outreach. The brochures have helped raise public awareness and the profile of BRIDGEfriends as well as providing key stakeholders, other agencies and businesses with our details and overview of our services for referral. We have already given out a number of handouts containing vital information
SYSTEMS TRAINING TO SUPPORT VITAL LOCAL & NATIONAL RESEARCH IN IMPROVING LIVES OF SEX WORKERS
The funding has allowed us to complete Access Training and our database has been developed to a level where we can transfer the information from our online diary, and excel sheet containing detail of beneficiaries assisted. This will be a huge benefit to us as we are currently extracting information from excel sheets manually, which has proved to be time consuming. Our goal is to be able to extract statistical details of age ranges, drug use, etc., easily, not just for our own research, but for other partner agencies who may find these details useful.
VOLUNTEER TRAINING EVENING INCREASED NUMBERS OF SUPPORT WORKERS
BRIDGEfriends provided an in-house training evening in November where 9 attended, including 3 beneficiaries. Our volunteer base has increased from 5 to 12. With 2 waiting to train. Key skills of new volunteers include: Legal expertise in family law and immigration, counselling, social care and family, nursing, public relations and special needs expertise. Our additional volunteers have enhanced our existing services greatly; especially the legal input which has benefitted 2 of our service users since October!
EVENING OUTREACH FACILITY HAS BEEN INCREASED
Our evening outreach has increased from monthly to bi-monthly (weekly during December) and we have been able to issue personal alarms to some of our most vulnerable service users. We have met with and assisted an increased number of sex workers, trafficked women and other non UK sex workers in Grimsby. We have recorded and detailed accounts
of encounters and assistance given to our service users on our online diary, and have extracted the statistical information to Excel sheets.
FUNDRAISER CABERET EVENING RAISED £4,200, ATTENDED BY 130+ PEOPLE
Our cabaret event was a success and raised just over £4200, which has been ‘ring fenced’ towards a new outreach vehicle to replace our very tired ford galaxy people carrier. There were 130+ in attendance, including the Mayor, dignitaries, councillors, stakeholders, other agencies, friends and supporters from local churches attended. During the evening did a presentation of the work of BRIDGEfriends and were able to speak about the impact that the NELC.RCC funding has already had on the local community. Questionnaires were filled out during the evening, with excellent feedback and due to its success we are planning another similar cabaret event at the Humber Royal in October 2016.
COMMUNITY PARTNERSHIPS
We have forged some strong working relationships with several existing stakeholders; one in particular is CAP (Christians Against Poverty), who we worked alongside with one of our service users until she became debt free. We have also strengthened our connection with Women’s Aid by forging a partnership in the following way:
This has been a fruitful connection as we now refer our service users directly to Women’s Aid so that they select warm clothing that fits them. We have also referred one of our service users (A.) to volunteer in the WA shop, her confidence and self-esteem has increased significantly and as well as volunteering for BRIDGEfriends, A. has secured part time paid employment in the time that we have been assisting her. After recently completing a questionnaire, A. stated in her own handwritten words “they have been amazing they got me counselling for grief. I’ve met true honest people that don’t judge. My confidence is good now and self-esteem. I can talk to people, and help people I help with the outreach, help in woman’s aid shop which before the bridge friends wouldn’t have done any of this.”
Numbers of Vulnerable Women & Ways We Support
Approximately 50 to 92 sex workers have been engaged and supported on a monthly basis. We maintain exact and careful records of our support work. At March 2016 it was reported that approximately 134 vulnerable women are supported in 1 year. They are supported with welfare and social support and removed from harm and emergency.
Some of the ways we have been able to support local known and unknown sex and trafficked workers are as follows:
Hot food, warm clothing, advice and guidance and leaflet information is provided at initial engagement in our vehicle. Assistance to relocate from violent relationship, provided van and driver. Worked alongside with CAP to address debt problems. Assisted with form filling and other practical needs during a sex workers major heart surgery. One sex worker was given a Christmas bag and 3 sessions at Women’s Aid Freedom Programme which she attended. We have also provided a worker with 3 Bereavement sessions. One was given a mobile phone.
Another trafficked sex worker was given a Christmas bag, Personal alarm, support and interview with Hope for Justice investigation team, clothing, and transport to the Job centre to initiate application of NI number, referral to Home Options team, sleeping bag, meal vouchers and a carvery meal for 2.
A single mum on benefits was helped to prepare for a court case hearing for custody of her son. We represented her in Hull Combined Court. Introduced her to a local church where she was able to make new friends and socialise in a non-threatening environment.
Transport and support provided to visit a residential rehabilitation centre.
BRIDGEfriends in-house training sessions. We supported contact with family provided through mediation service by BRIDGEfriends.
We have managed to get a few women into rehabilitation which is not easy locally we often have to go out of area to organise it via Christian charities. Lots of women benefited from the outreach and we have supported some back in work and off the streets. One lady we helped wants to give something back and offer dancing to vulnerable ladies for free
Goals and Sustainability
Our goal for the future is to be able to give further detail about our sex workers, such as, Victims of Rape, Victims of Abuse, Victims of Self Harm, Victims of Homelessness, Suicide Attempts, and other information such as drug and alcohol intake. Our system does contain information about some of these instances, but we know by encountering sex workers that there are many more than we have not recorded, for example most of the sex workers that speak to have been raped, but we have not recorded this information, unless we have had assisted them through this crisis. We have already included these categories on our core stat sheets and have included figures from the data that we already hold.
We are reviewing the skills of existing volunteers to see what other services the volunteers can offer vulnerable women. We are also planning how we can link with sexual health outreach services that only work for one day per week, so that we can offer condom distribution and sexual transmitted infections screening across the rest of the week.
It hasn’t all been plain sailing and we experience difficulties when boundaries are crossed. Team members meaning well get into issues they have difficulty coping with. This is dealt with by the volunteer and lone working policies and guidance we have in post. Lone working with this group is risky and we suffer challenge and abuse from pimps and the people who offer the sex workers services for monetary gain.
It takes time to build trust and relationships other 3rd sector groups don’t understand how BRIDGEfriends works and we still have to deal with people who wrongly assume that we exist to ‘save fallen women’ and recruit to a faith group.
Our fears for the future include not being able to cope with the demand. We see new faces all the time and the problem is clearly escalating.
Volunteer professional and former beneficiaries
Establishing our office, increasing the number of evening outreach sessions and the growth of our volunteer base from 5 – 12, have all contributed to BRIDGEfriends delivering an effective and enhanced service to those that we assist. We are so delighted and proud to have a PhD Qualified Counsellor on board our volunteer team.
When our Access training is complete and our database has been finalised, we are confident that we will be able to collate a wider range of figures and facts to those that we assist on our evening and daytime outreach, through the use of qualitative research containing specific questions.
We have included our key core stats sheets and a case study, our greatest reward is seeing positive change in the lives of those that we are passionate about reaching.
Following the success of the cabaret evening, 2 volunteers arranged to do a 10 hour sponsored silence at the Warehouse in Freeman Street, with over £500 pledged from the start! Another volunteer has advertised a coffee morning event in the community room of Tesco in Cleethorpes; we are hoping to raise awareness by talking to locals about BRIDGEfriends as well as raising money from the sale of refreshments.
Did anything happen that you didn’t plan for such as – you added in something or you spread to a different topic or different area?
Use of £2000 originally intended for First Aid training and mobile phone contracts to be used for office rent for 1 year, as discussed with John Mooney and outlined above.
We receive clothing donations that are not always suitable for our service users (due to their typically small size) and our lack of storage space. We agreed to donate everything that we receive so that they can retail these donations in charity shop, and in return Women’s Aid donates warm clothes to our service users when they are in desperate need.
We purchased a capital item for the office (printer/fax/copier); this was discussed with Linda Henry, and agreed on the proviso that it benefits our service users. We have already used this to print out CV’s, applications, court material, letter writing and our general correspondence have already been an added benefit to those that we assist.
The Health and Nutrition training course will benefit those that we assist in the long term as our core team will gain diplomas in detoxification. When the long term vision of BRIDGEfriends is attained we have established a re-habilitation centre in Grimsby, nutrition will be significant to our service users recovery.
Collating statistical data has been time consuming as we have been extracting this information from our on-line diary to an excel spread sheet (assistance given form) then to the excel core stats sheet. Through investing this time and method of data recording, we can guarantee the accuracy of the above figures, our training access training, has identified many shortcuts already and we are excited about the benefits of ‘moving over’ to our access database in the near future, thanks to NELC RCC funding.
www.bridgefriends.org.uk
We have successfully applied to and received additional funding from the YMCA, and £2,000 for first aid and health and safety training. We also received a 2-years rent grant from the Police Tribune Trust, £500 from the Jonathan Ross Fund, £680 from the Freemen of Grimsby, and £500 from the Rotary Club and raised £7,000 from fundraising at the cabaret.
We have developed partnerships with the Police Tribune Trust, Mental Health Immingham, Christians against poverty, skin restoration and tattoo removal services in the community for women free of drugs after rehabilitation, YMCA and Harbour place have been able to provide ‘Crash Pads’ for women needing immediate removal from dangerous circumstances.
For the future of the service we would value a full time manager and a new vehicle and we are fundraising to see if we can achieve this over the next year. Our service is wholly volunteer run at the moment and as it is growing it makes it difficult to manage with increasing demands on volunteers. Our vehicle is struggling and needs to be replaced as a matter of urgency as without it we couldn’t do our valuable outreach.
We would value additional training and support in drug and alcohol awareness and mental health first aid for the volunteers as we come across these issues every day. We will take advantage of the Susie Lamplugh lone worker training course in 2016.
If the project disappeared it would be tragic as there would be real disappointment in the community with no one going out regularly on the street. There would be no one to pick up the pieces. Some would just give up. E.G if we hadn’t been there and a situation had been handled differently a woman would have had a custodial sentence. She is now debt free and working