Tampon Tax Community Fund (360G-cabinetoffice-GA-199565)

By providing funding for the Office Manager this will enable us to help more women improve their mental wellbeing. We aim to transform the lives of more women and girls by providing emotional support through counselling for those experiencing a pregnancy-related issue. Women experience mental distress when faced with pregnancy-related issues such as pregnancy or baby loss, ante or postnatal depression, fertility issues or birth trauma. Their distress may be increased if they have a history of childhood sexual abuse (we can address this in counselling if indicated). They may not be able to turn to friends or family for support. Their distress can affect them psychologically and physically, resulting in strained relationships and days off work. Women generally prefer counselling to medication. Counselling has been shown to be more effective than routine primary care (British Association of Counselling & Psychotherapy). Research has shown that following a pregnancy or baby loss women can experience increased partnership breakdown. Through counselling women learn gender differences in processing grief and how to facilitate appropriate discussions with partners. Signposting to other services where there is a need for further support of women and girls, this may include anger management, housing, benefits, befriending for pregnant mothers. These outcomes are hoped to be achieved by the provision of more counselling hours and greater accessibility to Talkthru services. The Office Manager would achieve this through increasing network opportunities, adapt and improve operations to promote efficiency and by marketing (both monitoring existing campaigns and creating new marketing initiatives) to reach potential service users and stakeholders. We closely monitor all aspects of our service and so will be able to clearly see the difference this project will have made through: statistical data, client feedback and individual case studies.