Vesta - Specialist Family Support CIC

We are pleased to inform you that we run a peer support group for Polish women from Wrexham and surrounding areas. The group has been set up for Polish women of all ages who have complex needs, such as domestic violence, substance misuse, mental health issues or parenting problems but we also welcome women who simply feel lonely and would like to meet other Polish women for a coffee and chat. We run weekly meetings in Wrexham. Our meetings are confidential and are run in a friendly and welcoming atmosphere. We offer free childcare and we can also pay for travel expenses for women who experience financial difficulties. Polish women who are interested in attending can contact Ewa on 07545075093 or write to us to info@vestasfs.org. The project is delivered by Vesta - Specialist Family Support CIC and is funded by Mind.

Following the success of our first Brexit information session we organised another event in partnership with the Crewe Town Council and The Salvation Army. While the outcome of Brexit still uncertain , EU citizens across the UK need information regarding their rights and their status in the UK over the coming years. Our information session is aimed at the Polish community, we want to clarify any concerns they may have in relation to Brexit. “Brexit – know your rights” event will take place on 16 May 2019 from 6pm to 8pm at The Salvation Army, Prince Albert Street Crewe CW1 2DF. Our event aims to provide information about EU citizens’ rights in the UK during Brexit, about the ‘settled status’ scheme, and to offer a Q&A session. The information will be delivered by an immigration lawyer who is offered by the European Commission Representation in the UK, through Seraphus Solicitors, to provide impartial, politically neutral information. We will have a Polish interpreter present to assist with session delivery to the Polish community. We also created an event on our Facebook page with more information about the event, which you can forward to your Polish clients - https://www.facebook.com/events/555205365002534/ The event is sponsored by the European Commission and Crewe Town Council. It’s a great opportunity to make Brexit clear to those who will be affected by it in the forthcoming months. #VestaSFS #CreweTownCouncil #CreweSalvationArmy #Seraphus

On 2nd of March we hosted an event for Polish women to celebrate International Women's Day. We also launched our new project - Peer Support Group for Polish women in the Wrexham area. The International Women's Day is very popular in Poland. It's widely celebrated on the 8th of March to showcase women's achievements, roles in the society and it's a nice reminder of how important and valued women are. We have a lot of talented Polish women in Wrexham and Cheshire, they have a lot to offer not only to the Polish community. We asked them to help us to make other women feel special. They offered them free beauty treatments, health advice and products that helped them to have healthy lifestyles. We were overwhelmed with the positive response and opinions from women who attended our event, they highlighted the need for such events in the local community. "Thank you very much for organising this event. Everyone was very friendly, smiles were on everyone's faces. I met a lot of interesting women" "Today's event was an incredible experience. It was an opportunity to meet new interesting women. I am very grateful that I could be here and share my passion with other women" We launched our new project at the event. We will be running a peer support group for Polish women who live in the Wrexham area. It aims to support women who experience difficulties around mental health, addiction, domestic violence, parenting and those who simply feel lonely. The first meeting of the group is on 14th March at 11.30 in the Hightown Community Centre, Fusilier Way, Wrexham, LL13 7YF. We'll be promoting group meetings locally and on our Facebook and Twitter pages. The project is funded by #Mind.

#VestaSFSCIC will deliver Gateway - domestic violence awareness and recovery programme to Polish women who experience(d) domestic abuse. We will deliver one group course in Derby and we will also offer the course to five women from Derbyshire on a one-to-one basis. Courses will be run in Polish by accredited facilitators. Please keep an eye on our website, Facebook and Twitter, we’ll publish course dates and further information there. Gateway is an accredited programme. It is built on the principle of respect and empowerment while raising awareness of the impact and dynamics of controlling relationships. It aims to raise awareness and assist recovery from the effects of abuse and encourage safer and informed choices for the future. Course Objectives: · Create a safe space for mutual support · Promote an active understanding of the dynamics of controlling relationships. · Increase understanding of where the responsibility for abusive behaviour lies · Reduce isolation, self-blame, denial and minimisation · Raise awareness via person centred active experiential methods, respecting the privacy of personal experiences · Consider attitudes and beliefs that support abusive behaviour · Improve safety planning strategies · Increase understanding of the impact of domestic abuse on parenting skills and children’s lives · Consider potential early warning signs in new relationships · Identify support mechanisms through formal and informal provision Domestic violence is a hidden problem in the Polish community and when it comes to light, the situation of the family is usually very serious. We want to reach out to victims to offer them support and knowledge that will help them to reduce blame, understand how the abuse works and empower them to take care of themselves better and create safer homes for their children. “I learnt how to escape the abusive cycle and how to protect myself and my children” The project is funded by The Community Foundation for Staffordshire from the Tampon Tax Community Fund. 1. Community Foundations are independent charities that make grants to support grassroots groups. They work with local businesses, funders and government to create tailored programmes of grant-making that respond to the needs and assets of communities. 2. The Tampon Tax Community Fund is money generated from the VAT on sanitary products to projects that improve the lives of disadvantaged women and girls. UK Community Foundations was asked by government to distribute the largest share of the funding raised through this levy to small, local projects.

Following the uncertainty created by Brexit, EU citizens across the UK need information regarding their rights and their status in the UK over the coming years. VestaSFS# in co-operation with Crewe Town Council and The Salvation Army will host an event for the Polish community to clarify any concerns they may have in relation to Brexit. “Brexit – know your rights” event will take place on 11 February 2019 from 6pm to 8pm at The Salvation Army, Prince Albert Street Crewe CW1 2DF. Our event aims to provide information about EU citizens’ rights in the UK during Brexit, about the ‘settled status’ scheme, and to offer a Q&A session. The information will be delivered by a lawyer, made available through the EU Rights project. The lawyer is offered for free by the European Commission Representation in the UK, through the Law Centres Network, to provide impartial, politically neutral information. We will have a Polish interpreter present to assist with session delivery to the Polish community. You can read more about the event on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/events/397620197652799/ The event is sponsored by the European Commission and Crewe Town Council. Over a hundred people attended our information session about Brexit in Crewe on 11th February. We gained very useful information about current situation and requirements relating to registration of the new immigration status.

by Magdalena Mis | @magdalenamis1 | Thomson Reuters Foundation Thursday, 5 April 2018 12:32 GMT "Sometimes it's just this one piece of information that we give the victims that allows them to go on." By Magdalena Mis LONDON, April 5 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - When calls to a Polish domestic violence helpline in Britain plunged last year, its founder Ewa Wilcock was puzzled. Since its launch in 2014, she had been receiving more calls from compatriots living in Britain than she could handle. Yet they halved - to just over a dozen a month - in mid-2017. "People would start the conversation saying they were not sure if they should be calling at all because they were afraid of the social services," Wilcock told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Cheshire in northwest England. Wilcock soon discovered that myths were spreading among Poles on social media - and by abusers - that parents who reported domestic violence would lose their children, making victims too scared to seek help. "Some people said that social services remove children from homes and put them up for adoption," she said. "(They said) that foster families get a lot of money for caring for children, that it's a great business." There is no reliable data on domestic violence among the 900,000 Poles in Britain - its largest overseas-born population - but nearly 2 million people, mostly women, are physically or emotionally abused by a partner or relative each year. "They are ashamed to tell family in Poland," Wilcock said. "They don't want them to worry but they have no one to talk to in Britain." SCARED Services provided by Polish charities are often the first point of contact because they make the process of accessing support and finding safety less intimidating for victims. "When you're stressed, it's very difficult to communicate even in your own language," domestic violence counsellor Anna Janczuk told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It's even more difficult using a second language and finding appropriate words to describe what is happening," said Janczuk, who runs the London-based non-profit Familia Support Centre, which provides legal and psychological consultations. Katarzyna Zatorski, a family solicitor based in the northern town of Huddersfield, said most of her Polish clients dealing with domestic violence are referred to her by Polish charities. "The most difficult thing is to seek a lawyer's help," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. "If it's difficult for a Briton, then it's much more difficult for someone living in a foreign country." Hanna, who declined to give real name, said her husband used to suffocate and beat her, once breaking her nose. He told her that social workers would take their daughter away if she reported him. "I didn't know what to start with, how to do it, because I was very scared," she said. "In a situation like this, you don't even know what your name is. When you speak about legal matters, you don't understand the meaning of certain expressions." Without Janczuk's support "nothing" would have changed, Hanna said, nearly a year after she left her abusive husband. "Contact (with Janczuk) calmed me," she said. VOLUNTEERS Wilcock's helpline only takes calls twice a week while Janczuk's support centre is open for less than 20 hours a week because of funding shortages. "Some funders don't like it that we help just one minority," Janczuk said, sitting next to a donated computer in the modest room from which she runs her organisation with the support of volunteers. "We are doing more than the limited resources that we have allow us to do," said Janczuk who helps about 25 victims of domestic violence per month. "Sometimes it's just this one piece of information that we give the victims that allows them to go on." Hanna said she still calls Wilcock's helpline about once a month when she is worried about issues like child custody. She used to call every week. "If they were open more than twice a week, I would have called them more often," she said. (Reporting by Magdalena Mis @magdalenamis1; Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our first workshop for Polish parents who raise their children in the UK and want to preserve their native language and culture at the same time. Raising bilingual children presents as a difficult task for parents, but the benefits of speaking two or more languages are undoubtedly worth every effort they put into their work. We are running a workshop for parents and their children in Wrexham on 20 October 2018. Parents will learn how to successfully raise bilingual children and how using more than one language can affect child's development. We'll bust common myths about bilingualism and give parents practical tips on improving linguistic skills of their children. Children will take part in fun activities in English and Polish, which will give them an opportunity to practice their language skills and spend time with their Polish peers. Workshop is free to all parents. It's financed by the Polish Consulate General in Manchester.