Introductions were made around the group. Those who attended were from a variety of backgrounds – mum’s who found it difficult to access maternity services, researchers, students, general interest in volunteering, health professionals.
Nada and Becca spoke about what the maternity stream does and how the link between the streams and the City of Sanctuary.
Topics covered:
- The resource packs
- The Maternity stream award
- The conferences we hold and why, how the women are a key part of the Maternity stream and getting the message across to others.
- Quarterly meetings that are held in Bradford and the regional steering group meeting – what we aim to achieve by holding these.
- The socials and trips we do for our volunteers
- Videos that are on the website
- Volunteering opportunities that are available – treasurer position, social media, interpreting videos into other languages, helping with socials, crèche worker, fundraising
The main question from those who attended was what can they do to help? As a result from this all email and contact details were taken as well as a list of roles that people would be interested in. This also resulted in them being invited the regional steering group meeting on the 14th October at Ebor Court, with a follow up email with all the details of this meeting as well as details about the conference in Hull.
(The health Stream worked in very much the same way the only difference being):
Some attendees were from the NHS and worked in mental health services, others were students, in particular final year medical students.
The medical students would like to help raise awareness within the University of Leeds as well as asking one of our volunteers to speak at their next event about the mental health impact of going through the process of claiming asylum. Rose to follow this up.
Those working in the mental health services were interested in promoting services for refugees and asylum seekers and signposting.
All contact details were taken for the attendees.