Team Leader, Glasgow Health & Social Care Partnership, Tomorrow’s Women
“We are the scaffolding that help women reduce the chaos in their lives, build their confidence and self-esteem and enable them to have a better quality of life and ultimately cease offending.”
Along with being involved with the exciting new developments of the Women’s Problem-Solving Court and the Community Custody Units – you can read all about these in our articles:
- Tomorrow’s Women Glasgow & Women’s Problem-Solving Court
- Tomorrow’s Women Building Relationships for Better Outcomes
there have been many changes within Tomorrow’s Women Glasgow since March 2022. We have recruited a new Team Leader, two new Social Care Workers and two new Senior Mental Health Practitioners. Due to funding restraint we have however, unfortunately lost our worker who was seconded from Wheatley Group Housing Service. We work with some of the most vulnerable women who come into contact with the justice system – women who have many complex support needs and past trauma to deal with. You can CLICK ON THE VIDEO LINK or SCAN THE QR CODE below to hear first-hand from one women, who is very typical of those that we support.
Tomorrow’s Women referral criteria is as follows:
- Open case to Justice Social Work
- Prison Throughcare
- Drug Treatment & Testing Order (DTTO)
- Community Payback Order (CPO)
- Structured Deferred Sentence (SDS) and
- will consider referral via Diversion from Prosecution team and/or work with short term prisoners if criteria below is met.
- The woman has difficulties related to complex trauma and has multiple and complex social and welfare needs.
- The woman is at risk of further offending and requires safety and stabilisation intervention.
The women that we work with have multiple and complex needs. They tend to have a mistrust of services or have previously been excluded from services. They may have already lost custody of their children and have problems with drugs and or alcohol. They often have experienced trauma in childhood and this trauma continues into adulthood. They have often been victim to physical and sexual abuse including all aspects of domestic violence. They tend to have poor physical and mental health that impacts on their daily function. They will have previous convictions and pending matters waiting to come to court. Many of our women have financial problems and do not have safe secure accommodation. Many women are isolated with little support from family or friends.
Our nurses have worked to improve the referral processes for women to access Mental Health input, including interfacing with Community Mental Health Teams (CMHT) and developing a pathway with Turning Point Scotland’s 218 project where we attend their weekly multidisciplinary team meetings to ease transition of care and promote continuation of work with women who are leaving the 218 project. All women who enter 218 are referred to Tomorrow’s Women and allocated a worker to support them through their recovery journey but especially with re-integration back into their communities when they are most vulnerable.
Our nurses have delivered psychoeducation groups and the Self Esteem Group was well received and attended. Our Self Esteem group explores:
- what is low self-esteem
- how self-esteem develops and
- ways to improve self-esteem.
The group is interactive and the women have been so immersed in the activities. The evaluations from the initial group have been excellent and show a great value in what we have delivered. One participant stated that this has really helped her to change her thinking and behaviours, she provided an example of receiving difficult news from her children and families Social Worker, and was able to employ more helpful coping strategies to manage this outcome. This service user was previously incredibly guarded around the idea of working with Mental Health nurses, but she is now more open and receptive. The feedback from the Self Esteem Group is that they have requested more groups. We are running additional cohorts throughout July and August while we explore other groups and workshops which may be of benefit.
Service users can have their mental health assessed, and are offered one-to-one low intensity psychological intervention, including phase 1 safety and stabilisation, anxiety management, mood management, emotional coping skills, dialectical behavioural therapy, compassion focussed therapy, behavioural activation, harm reduction and safety planning. Nurses also offer dry blood spot testing for Blood Borne Viruses Hepatitis A, B, C and HIV and can provide support and signposting for treatment.
Most of the women we work with, are not stable enough to attend groups due to their complex needs and mistrust of services. We understand that women who have experienced trauma are understandably distrustful, so we take the time to build relationships. Achieving stability involves a lot of commitment to flexible outreach from workers who work hard to encourage women towards supports.
We also encourage service users to comply with the conditions of their orders Community Payback Orders (CPO), Structured Deferred Sentences (SDS), Parole and Life Licence with the aim of avoiding breach of said orders. We also accompany women attend court and other services.
We use the Justice Outcome Star to evaluate outcomes for our service users. Service users are encouraged to identify problem areas of their lives and set realistic goals and actions to improve them. Once problem areas are improved it is expected that it is easier to live a crime free life. The Outcome Star provides service users with control over their care plan and a visual aid to identify problem areas and map progress towards their goals.
Between 1st April 2022 and 31st March 2023 we have received 109 referrals. There is no time limit to how long we work with service users as it can take time to build trust and confidence to enable women to overcome their problems.
One worker has said that she feels that:
“We are the scaffolding that help women reduce the chaos in their lives, build their confidence and self-esteem and enable them to have a better quality of life and ultimately cease offending.”
Working with this client group, often results in our workers experiencing vicarious trauma and our nurses have developed Boundaries Awareness training to help staff cope with this. This training was piloted to some of Glasgow Justice staff, and evaluations showed a marked improvement in awareness and understanding of professional boundaries and how to establish and maintain them. We have since agreed that Tomorrow’s Women nurses will roll out this training across all of Glasgow’s Justice staff as part of our commitment to improving trauma informed practice whilst supporting workers to cope with this work.
Sandyford Outreach Service now delivers a specialist sexual health service within Tomorrow’s Women, and they have said that we are their most successful outreach clinic. They have managed to build trust with our service users by coming in regularly during groupwork sessions which has help build relationships and increase trust. This has encouraged women who would have previously avoided or been excluded from sexual health services to feel safe enough to speak to a nurse.
Another new development within Tomorrow’s Women is that we have offered our space to the Drug Treatment and Testing Order Team (DTTO) so they can use our facilities and meet their female service users in a more relaxed trauma informed environment. This has increased referrals to Tomorrow’s Women, and DTTO staff have noted that this has improved attendance of their female service users who were at risk of breaching their order.
Tomorrow’s Women are now beginning to get a larger turnout for groupwork after struggling slightly after lockdown and a change in the age-group/needs of our service users. Our groups aim to provide structure and routine along with positive social opportunities, as well as upskill and increase the confidence of the women we support. Wednesday cooking class and Acudetox sessions several times per week are particularly well attended and receive positive feedback from participants. With the return of the Citizens Theatre in the autumn we hope to build a creative programme for our service users. There are ongoing discussions around other potential groupwork opportunities, and we hold regular focus groups with our service users to determine the needs and interests of the women we support.
Lastly, we are in the process of getting a revamp as we have not been decorated since we opened 10 years ago. We are looking forward to this process being completed and hope to welcome everyone back to shiny new premises with a soft re-launch in the late Autumn.
