IRISi joins Mental Health Awareness Week 2023 and shares the Women’s Aid “Deserve to Be Heard” campaign

IRISi is a second-tier organisation specialising in developing holistic programmes of support including training and providing a clear referral pathway for healthcare professionals to improve the identification and response to Domestic and Sexual Violence and Abuse (D&SVA). Both our programmes, IRIS and ADViSE, respectively aimed at GPs and clinicians working in sexual health clinics, highlight the intrinsic relation between D&SVA and mental health: victims and survivors often present with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and other serious symptoms. This co-relation is well documented by many studies, such as those recently highlighted by Women’s Aid in their “Deserve to be Heard” campaign. Joining Mental Health Awareness Week in 2023, IRISi will share some of the results of these reports to amplify the importance of all healthcare professionals being properly trained to identify and respond to D&SVA signals.

Farah Nazeer, Chief Executive of Women’s Aid, said: “All too often, women experiencing abuse don’t reach out for support for fear of not being believed. This is even more challenging for those struggling with their mental health because of the double taboo around domestic abuse and mental health. It is so important that healthcare professionals have specialist training to identify and respond to the signs of domestic abuse – so that when women and children do come into contact with services, they receive a response tailored to their specific needs. Women’s Aid’s Deserve To Be Heard campaign is calling for specialist, regular training to be undertaken by all healthcare professionals, including mental health practitioners – so that they have the expertise to spot the signs of abuse, and offer the meaningful support that women and children need to heal.”

For Medina Johnson, Chief Executive at IRISi, the Women’s Aid campaign is timely and 100% aligned with IRISi’s main purpose. “Our vision is a world in which gender-based violence is consistently recognised and addressed as a health issue. We work to ensure that healthcare professionals are ready and prepared to see the big picture, especially when sitting with patients who have been presenting multiple conditions, which we know for the majority will be mental health related. In our experience, when healthcare practitioners are trained and supported, GP consultations can offer a unique opportunity for victims and survivors of D&SVA to get the support they need. Sexual health clinics are equally powerful in this sense, especially because they reach patients from diverse populations and vulnerable groups”.

IRIS and ADViSE training sessions both present alarming figures on the relation between DA and Mental Health. Data collected over the last few years show that 77% of women accessing specialist-support services in the UK presented with PTSD symptoms, while 72% showed signs of depression and 70% suffered from anxiety. We also know that women who have experienced DA are 6.5 times more likely to attempt suicide.

Please click here to access the report “Are you listening? 7 Pillars for a survivor-led approach to mental health support”, launched by Women’s Aid in 2022.

You can also Watch the animation below, “Are you Listening?”, produced as part of the campaign “Deserve to Be Heard”:

Partners

AVA

AVA is an expert, groundbreaking and independent charity working across the UK.

Their vision is a world without gender based violence and abuse. They aim to inspire innovation and collaboration and encourage and enable direct service providers to help end gender based violence and abuse particularly against women and girls.AVA’s work is focused around those areas where they can make the best contribution to ending violence and abuse. They do this by making sure that survivors get the help and support they need in the here and now, through providing innovative training that has a proven direct impact on the professional practice of people supporting survivors of violence and abuse

developing a range of toolkits, e-learning and other material that supports professionals to provide effective and appropriate support to survivors of violence and abuse

using our influence and networks to ensure survivors voices are heard. We work closely with AVA in many areas including the Pathfinder project

https://avaproject.org.uk

SafeLives

SafeLives are a national charity dedicated to ending domestic abuse, for good. We combine insight from services, survivors and statistics to support people to become safe, well and rebuild their lives. Since 2005, SafeLives has worked with organisations across the country to transform the response to domestic abuse, with over 60,000 victims at highest risk of murder or serious harm now receiving co-ordinated support annually. SafeLives are members of the Pathfinder consortium.

http://www.safelives.org.uk/about-us

IMKAAN

Imkaan is a UK-based, Black feminist organisation. We are the only national second-tier women’s organisation dedicated to addressing violence against Black and minoritised women and girls i.e. women and girls which are defined in policy terms as Black and ‘Minority Ethnic’ (BME). The organisation holds nearly two decades of experience of working around issues such as domestic violence, forced marriage and ‘honour-based’ violence.

They work at local, national and international level, and in partnership with a range of organisations, to improve policy and practice responses to Black and minoritised women and girls. Imkaan works with it’s members to represent the expertise and perspectives of frontline, specialist and dedicated Black and minoritised women’s organisations that work to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. Imkaan delivers a unique package of support which includes: quality assurance; accredited training and peer education; sustainability support to frontline Black and minoritised organisations; and facilitation of space for community engagement and development. They are a part of the Pathfinder Consortium.

https://www.imkaan.org.uk

The University of Bristol CAPC

The Centre for Academic Primary Care (CAPC) is a leading centre for primary care research in the UK, one of nine forming the NIHR School for Primary Care Research. It is part of Bristol Medical School, an internationally recognised centre of excellence for population health research and teaching.

A dedicated team of researchers at the Centre work on domestic abuse projects and IRISi is a co-collaborator and partner on some of these projects including ReProvide, HERA and DRiDVA.

The Health Foundation

The Health Foundation is an independent charity committed to bringing about better health and health care for people in the UK. The Health Foundation’s Exploring Social Franchising programme aims to generate a deeper understanding of the potential of social franchising models for scaling effective health and social care interventions within the NHS.

We are one of four project teams participating in the programme to develop a social franchise to enable the sustainable spread of our intervention, the IRIS Programme. We receive funding and support from the Health Foundation, including technical expertise on social franchising, and attend programme learning events. The Health Foundation has also commissioned a programme-wide evaluation to support understanding of the use of social franchising in the UK health and care system. We and our franchisees will support the evaluation through co-designing data collection requirements, providing access to data as requested, hosting site visits and attending learning events.

https://www.health.org.uk

STADV

Standing Together Against Domestic Violence is a UK charity bringing communities together to end domestic abuse. They bring local services together to keep people safe

Most public services weren’t designed with domestic abuse in mind, and they often struggle to keep people safe. Poor communication and gaps between services put survivors at risk.

STADV aim to end domestic abuse by changing the way that local services respond to it. They do this through an approach that they pioneered, called the Coordinated Community Response. The Coordinated Community Response brings services together to ensure local systems truly keep survivors safe, hold abusers to account, and prevent domestic abuse.

Their model of a coordinated local partnership to tackle and ultimately prevent domestic violence is now widely accepted as best practice. They are also a part of the Pathfinder consortium.

http://www.standingtogether.org.uk

Spring Impact

Spring Impact is a not-for-profit social enterprise born out of the frustration of seeing social organisations constantly reinventing the wheel and wasting scarce resources. Spring Impact uses a combination of tested commercial and social principles and extensive practical expertise to support organisations to identify, design and implement the right social replication model to scale their social impact.