Our Senior BME Specialist Worker Sharon shares her reflections on the work the Doncaster Women's Centre and Community Hub does during Race Equality Week 2025.
At Changing Lives Doncaster Women’s Centre and Community Hub we run a full timetable throughout the week to support Black and Ethnic minority women in the women’s centre and Men seeking Asylum who reside in hotel provision.
Our Team face many daily challenges and work hard to address inequalities within primary healthcare services, public sector services, mental health, and wellbeing support. We do this through education and a package of support including accredited ESOL and core skills classes, added value group work, a bespoke early year’s delivery team and community outreach.
With the extensive knowledge, lived experience and training of our team we also sit on local strategy teams, attend multiple public and private sector meeting to share our work and the voices of the people we work with through advocacy and allyship.
But what we truly do is listen, we listen to the people we work with, we go out into the community together and share experiences. There is such a wealth of knowledge to be shared around culture, religion, and people’s journeys to the UK. Some of the journeys of the people we support are inconceivable. Our team are trained in the effects of trauma, and the way we work reflects our training.
Understanding the need to react differently to each person we support, signpost and often challenge barriers faced to accessing help. Through our ethos of working together and the feedback we have received, we understand the impact engagement has on positive mental health. All of our community work prioritises positive mental health outcomes.
The foundation of the work we deliver is built on trust, and because of this, our engagement is high. We currently work with two hundred and fifty men, one hundred and twenty women and eighty children directly. Indirectly and on special occasions and events in the community, I couldn’t even count. We largely don’t advertise our services as the people attend through word of mouth, through friends and family and our numbers grow each week, our largest class has 52 women. The people we work with represent over thirty countries.
At Changing Lives, although we focus on our primary outcomes and focussed support work, this level of engagement gives us an opportunity to celebrate a lot! We celebrate all festivals, cultures, fashion, art and of course food! As a team we like to be active and spend many days in Green spaces, introducing community spaces and activities and through initial supported access aim to empower people to move onto independently exploring what the city has to offer.
The key I feel to having successful engagement is listening to the people you work with, continuing to learn everyday and understand we do not always get it right. The world continues to change and the racial unrest taught us in 2024 we need to stand together, find space to celebrate our cultures and continue to grow through our resilience and strength.
