Cumbria Community Foundation - Furness: Opportunities and Challenges 2021

F U R N E S S – O P P O R T U N I T I E S & C H A L L E N G E S 35 Women’s Community Matters Women’s Community Matters, as the name suggests, primarily supports women - but, by extension, it supports children and families too. The Barrow-based organisation offers a wide range of courses, support groups, activities and appointments, providing support with anything from benefits, housing, domestic or sexual abuse, the police, courts and prison, to mental wellbeing, employment, education and social pastimes. Weekly drop-in sessions enable women to meet in a friendly women-only environment, and there are groups for women who are pregnant or have recently given birth, as well as activities and initiatives. A spokesperson for the charity said: “People come to us for a range of things, and while they’ll have one thing on their referral forms, we’ll meet with them and after 50 minutes we’ll get to the real reason. That’s standard for this kind of work. “Extreme poverty and domestic violence go hand in hand, and housing is a really big issue at the moment. There’s simply a lack of good affordable housing. “Barrow Council is absolutely brilliant but they obviously have a limit to their housing stock. The problem is that in the private market you have a lot of landlords that are chasing the commercial contractors, and they are pricing the properties out of reach for a lot of locals.” It’s a similar story to every charity: Women’s Community Matters feels like it could do a lot more work and help more people if the funding was there. Long-term sustainability is the key to being able to support everyone who needs it. While the charity is all about helping women, its remit extends to helping children to stabilise a family as a whole. Each charity in Furness has its own areas that they specialise in, and Women’s Community Matters is no different. They work well together to provide as much support as possible, without creating an overlap. “There is a high level of communication with the charities we work with and link in with. One, nobody wants to step on anyone’s toes, because explaining why you’ve taken someone else’s funding is not a conversation anybody wants to have and, two, we all do all sorts of bits and pieces, but we recognise that each organisation specialises in the area that it works in. “Yes, we do some work that would be covered by drug and alcohol charities, or housing, or Furness Homeless Support, but when you look at the root of our work, it all comes down to stabilising the mother, and if you stabilise the mother, you stabilise the family.” “We are supported by the Police and Crime Commissioner’s office, and we are looking more towards long- term sustainability contracts, but we are like everyone else - the funding isn’t there.”