A Voice For Great Change
Here at Kairos an important part of our makeup is to guarantee that our women’s voices are heard. We ensure that we partner with agencies to create a platform where our women can use their shared experienced to shed light on important issues that have an impact on their lives and ultimately for this shared knowledge to hopefully help shape reports that can go a long way to help shape policies that can help benefit the vulnerable and marginalised young women right here in our backyard.
One of the ways we achieved this this year was by coordinating with an organisation called Agenda which focuses on giving young women a platform for their voices to be heard and for the information gathered to inform policy. Our work with them focused on the effects of mental health on girls and young women ages 14-24 in England.
We presented one of our service users who is very passionate about and very active in political circuits where young women can speak their truth and contribute to the wider conversation on issues affecting young women here in the UK.
Given the nature of her mental health during lockdown, when this research process was taking place, it was important to facilitate a smooth and sensitive communication pathway between our service user and Agenda. I worked closely with the Agenda personnel to ensure she understood the needs of our service user. The perfect balance for a research relationship fuelled our service user’s participation and this enabled the process to be successful.
Her participation in this project was positive and her remarks weighed in heavily on the report produced. There is a call to action for girls and young women’s mental health to be widened to include how abuse, poverty and other forms of limitation impacts on their wellbeing. Furthermore, a national mental health strategy with respective funding will hopefully be attained to help understand, tackle and hopefully reduced these outcomes in the lives of girls and young women in the UK.
As a service we consider each service users’ needs and abilities. We certainly push them to tap into and harness their talents that have proved to be essential in bringing about change in themselves and to other women around them.
Our women rise and thrive.
Click HERE to access Full Briefing Paper