WHAC - Women's Health and Advice Centre

Looking back at 2011 and to the future

"Despite the increasingly difficult economic climate we continue to find creative and resourceful ways to meet current challenges and to make positive plans for the future.

The past year has seen the progression of new and established partnerships. Collaboration with like-minded organisations, for example the SWAN project and our support services delivered in partnership with DAWN (Advice) Ltd, have allowed us to reach out to more women. We will continue to be open to exploring partnerships where there is clear sharing of principles and values. This will enable us to attract increasingly scarce resources and to develop our services. Our commitment to improving WHAC led to our commissioning an external report of our services this year which contains excellent feedback – great credit to our staff and volunteers!

Over the past year almost 1000 women have made use of our services directly with another 5000+ contacting us for advice and information. Most importantly our audit tools demonstrate significant improvement in the mental health and wellbeing experienced by our service users. Our counselling service has delivered 704 sessions this year, we continue to recruit and train volunteer counsellors to enable us to take more referrals. We have recorded a big increase in the number of younger women and victims of sexual/domestic abuse accessing this service. WHAC has run 16 courses over the year ranging from the established popular Creative writing, Relaxation & Tai Chi to the newer Life Coaching & Self Discovery Courses

WHAC's past and future successes remain due in total to our excellent staff and volunteers who deliver services that continue to be needed and valued.... To quote a manager from Northumberland Care Trust from last year's survey report: 'If WHAC weren't there.....where would women go?'"

Maureen Sanderson, Acting Chair