Our Funded Projects

Summary

Re:Assure women’s project remains London’s only tailored service for HIV positive women, who have experienced domestic abuse and are survivors of rape, and are all at an increased risk of poor mental health, co-morbidities, non-adherence to anti-retroviral medication and increased abuse.

The project aims to support women towards living fuller, healthier and happier lives and to increase their overall wellbeing. This is achieved via an early-action approach that helps us address a participant’s needs, and prevents challenges from mounting up and becoming unmanageable in the long term.

Re:Assure is managed by Positive East’s clinical psychologist Joanne McCarthy. Activities include:

• Individual clinical psychology
• Empowerment workshops
• Volunteer opportunities
• Advocacy work

Over the next 12 months 100 women will be involved in our Re:Assure women’s project.

Need for Re:Assure

Women are still treated as homogenous when it comes to HIV support and care. We have found that services continue to provide untailored support that doesn’t take into consideration the complexities of living with HIV as a woman with past and ongoing trauma.

Women living with HIV continue to face higher rates of domestic violence. The last major study on this found that HIV positive women have experienced domestic violence at rates nearly double those of HIV negative women, 52% and 27% respectively (BHIVA 2013; Office for National Statistics 2016). Lockdown has contributed to and accelerated IPV (intimate partner violence) – in May 2021 there was reported a 12% increase in the number of domestic abuse cases referred to victim support (UK Parliament Report, May 2021).

Research reveals a direct correlation between past abuse and higher rates of poor mental health, loneliness, and lower adherence to antiretroviral medication (WHO “Violence against women”, 2016; UN Women “Prevalence and new infections”, 2016). This is compounded by the day-to-day realities of being a female asylum seeker; a group who continue to experience higher rates of ongoing violence.

Generic support services remain inadequate when it comes to meeting specific needs of women living with HIV, including complex emotional and physical needs as a result of past and continued trauma. There remains a fundamental lack of understanding about how best to meet these complex needs and services remain untailored.

Re:Assure also encourages the women to advocate for themselves and seek more in depth knowledge about their care, so that they are able to raise questions themselves. Without the continuation of Re:Assure, the complex needs of HIV positive refugees or asylum seekers and HIV positive women who are survivors of domestic abuse will not be adequately met.

Covid continues to aggravate the already precarious situation for the women who routinely access Re:Assure. Women continue to report a larger deterioration in mental health as a result of the pandemic as well as increased levels of domestic abuse as highlighted above. Re:Assure is needed to help ensure that these women are given the support they need to overcome these additional barriers created by Covid.

 

Quotes from past Re:Assure attendees:

‘It was like a breath of fresh air after all the worry and stress since diagnosis’.

‘Leaving my house, coming to the group and meeting all the women made me feel normal again’.

‘The group gave me the strength to change many things in my life’.

Nutrition for Body & Soul

New referrals in 2021

524 individuals plus their 111 family members aged over 16 and 212 children under 16 = 847

People in receipt of food deliveries in 2021

(includes those already on service at the start of the calendar year, hence the greater number than referrals received)

732 individuals

155 adult dependents

299 under 16s

14 under 6 m

1200 Total beneficiaries

At the start of the Covid19 crisis we identified the needs of our service users and began our emergency response service on 13 March as soon as it became evident that we serve a vulnerable group of people who are not able to leave home to do the shopping. Our adapted service is

• Continued dietary advice provided over the phone from our qualified dietitians to understand people’s situations and understand their dietary requirements.
• Emergency grocery deliveries to people’s homes to ensure people have access to the right food based on their physical and cultural needs.
• Providing additional household essentials such as toothpaste, soap and other basic essentials.
• one-to-one social support through weekly telephone calls for those with no social network and experiencing poor mental health and isolation.

In the early part of the Covid19 crisis we saw a four-fold increase in referrals to our essential groceries service, the impact of which will continue to be felt in the next financial year.

Of the people who received our tailored nutrition services in this year,

72% were living well below the poverty line with an income of less than £100 per week.
74% had no income
53% were men living alone – one third aged over 50.
47% of households with children (80) were single parent households, these are primarily women with Black African or Caribbean ethnicity.
40% endured both financial hardship and critical health
37% had a late HIV diagnosis (CD4<350)
30% did not have an undetectable viral load, which makes them susceptible to other infections.

Overview of 2021

Throughout 2021 the ongoing effects of the pandemic has meant changes in our activities and models of service delivery.

• We experienced a greatly increased level of service for grocery deliveries with 3,172 deliveries equating to 199,836 meal equivalents. We continue to support more than twice the number of people than in 2019 before the pandemic began.
• Due to covid public health concerns our face-to-face meals through our Eating Together programme was provided at a reduced level. We were able to run a series of light lunches for smaller groups of people. There were 283 attendances at 37 sessions by 49 of some of our most socially isolated individuals. We have increasingly been aware of the impact that social isolation, loneliness and depression can have on people not just living with HIV but many of whom have multiple challenges within their daily lives (e.g. homelessness, insecure housing, no recourse to public funds, unemployment, housing evictions, food poverty, energy poverty and much more).
• In order to address and better manage this during the pandemic we created a category of complex needs where many of our service users were provided further support with an extension of the time limited grocery delivery service beyond our normal 3 grocery deliveries. Currently we are supporting 27 complex service users in this way.
• During the pandemic lockdowns our Kitchen Services Manager was redeployed to provide a potential weekly telephone call to our isolated service users – with 90 people receiving calls. In September 2021 we created a Volunteer Telephone Befriending Service with volunteers. Following training we currently we have 7 volunteers who ring one person once a week to provide a listening ear and support.
• Our Eating Positively programme comprising of 4 sessions of nutritional theory and practice (cookery classes) is also being enhanced with the recent filming of cookery sessions. This will enable us to provide the programme online with real time sessions with our specialist HIV dietitians interspersed with recorded cookery sessions. We will be able to provide an improved offer with hybrid sessions and real physical sessions.
• The ongoing impact of the pandemic has created delay in our move to our new kitchen and the development of our community café. We have undertaken the necessary refurbishment of kitchen and other areas and are ready to commence in 2022 once the public health situation allows it.
• We have also been able to further support 19 mums with HIV with new born babies and infants up to the age of one year, with formula milk.

 

Case studies and testimonials

“I cannot express how helpful you and the food chain have been for me during this very dark time. I am beginning to change my relationship with food. To take the time to prepare my meals although painful is very satisfying and even nurturing. And of course to have ingredients is amazing. I am already beginning to plan for next month.”

“I would like to take the opportunity to give you and the team a massive thank you for rescuing my needs when it was at most critical.  If you had not intervened, I don’t believe I would still be alive today.   I was drenched in suicidal thoughts days and nights and the Food Chain was incredible to help”.

“The Food chain has done so much for me and I am ever so grateful your organisation was around. What would I have done without the weekly talks and kindness from you all and all the volunteers to help me move forward to a bad health spell and now I am manging it much better and healthier and feed myself nourishing non processed meals. It was the first HIV support service I accessed since 1994”

Thank you for your support of The Food Chain