SLOVENIA - HOMELESS MOTHERS AND THEIR CHILDREN
The first joint training session of our project took place in Ljubljana between May 15-17. We visited a woman and her baby in supported accommodation, to hear about her life and experience. We also exchanged challenges as well as good practices and experiences about the special needs of homeless women who become pregnant, who live in a situation of homelessness or severe housing deprivation, or who might have been separarated from their child(ren). The presentations of the meeting are available here:
Finland - HOMELESS WOMEN AND HEALTH
The second transnational workshop took place in Helsinki, between September 4-6. The topic was health issues homeless women face and good practices on how to address these. Health was defined in a holistic way, including mental as well as physical health, and not only gynecological problems. Several services were visited in and around Helsinki - housing units for homeless women, projects targetting sexual health as well as those on peer involvement. The presentations of the meeting are available here:
POLAND - EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL SAFETY IN SERVICES
This month the Women and Homelessness project held a joint workshop at Lodz University. The event focused on the pressing need to increase emotional and physical safety for women using homelessness services. Participants shared expertise in supporting the complex needs of homeless women, often rooted in trauma due to adverse childhood experiences and/or gender-based violence (GBV). They shared examples of how services are transforming into psychologically-, trauma-, and gender-informed environments to improve safety for survivors of GBV.
Supporting Women and Couples Living on the Street - Online join training session
Due to travel restrictions caused by the epidemic, joint training sessions on the spot were impossible for the second half of the programme. At first, we hoped that the situation would improve, so we agreed to postpone the following events, but as time went on it became clear that if we wanted to address the planned issues, we would have to organise online training sessions. Our fourth training originally was planned to take place in Copenhagen and aimed at sharing good practices and experiences in supporting couples. This training was the first one that we have delivered online. It was held in two separate blocks in the last months of 2020 and February 2021. The original theme was expanded to include the topic of supporting and empowering women on the streets.
Participation and Client Invovement - Join training session
The training session on participation and client involvement also was held in a virtual way. The event was hosted by St. Mungo's, but as in the previous training session, we saw presentations about related experiences and programs of other organisations. They can be seen below.
Including intima topics into support – Online joint training session
At the sixth training event, the partners shared some of their newly developed programs that were born by the inspiration of the project, we discussed methods and aspects of support in which the social workers can connect to their clients when they face difficulties that are not easy to share and talk about. The main topics in connection to this were, the support of women struggling with addiction, approaches that can reduce the risk of those who are exposed to transactional sex or are involved in sex work, how the services can react to the needs of LGBTQI people. The presentations can be seen here.