We are an outreach and prevention charity which aims to engage, empower and equip vulnerable and excluded women, families and young people to live lives free from harm, abuse and exploitation and to reduce life limiting choices and behaviour.
Alongside our four main services, we offer psychotherapy support, with an inhouse therapy team which includes volunteers. Our volunteers support across all of our services and are essential to the work we do.
We are unique in our approach to engagement in that we offer both trauma informed and responsive engagement, which includes assertive outreach and advocacy. Meeting people where they are, recognising their strengths and understanding the context in which they are living. This includes engaging with wider family and significant others and contributes to our lifecycle approach illustrated below.
Lifecycle approach:
Youth project:
This project works with boys and girls ages 8-16, in the schools and supporting the families. Our sessions deliver training on healthy relationships, boundaries, and age-appropriate sexual education. They are taught about wellbeing, self-esteem, and have a safe space with trusted adults to learn and grow in these areas.
‘The intervention responds to the wider determinants of poverty and disadvantage whilst targeting support on those with the most need’.
Blossom Project:
Blossom was directly informed by our work with older women who identified having someone to support, hope and offer unconditional positive regard sooner may have prevented some of the hurt that they endured.
Blossom works with young women aged 13-25 and has provision to work with those who have additional needs and those transitioning from children to adult services. For many who access Blossom, it is a bridge between exiting the care system, and living independently.
Our project is preventative and intervening; putting service users at the heart of everything we do and ‘being listened to’ has been identified as one of the most important measures of success by the young women.
Liberty:
Our longest standing project is Liberty, who offer a dedicated wrap around service aimed at women who were/are sex workers/sexually exploited.
Every year this project reaches out to women who experience coercive and controlling behaviour, sexual assault, rape and exploitation, offering women a safe space for counselling and engagement.
Our project is unique for its outreach support, led alongside a team of volunteers, which goes directly to where the women are and offers the initial interactions which lead to many of them becoming known to us, and then accessing our support services.
Criminal Justice:
Our newest addition is our Criminal Justice Team. Working in partnership alongside Changing Lives, this team was set up to help women within the criminal justice system and help those who are repeatedly offending break these cycles.
Our holistic approach enables our staff to support women and tackle why they are offending, whether that be due to addictions, poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, and helps them in accessing what is needed to enable them to break free from life limiting behaviours that entangle them in this system.
A Way Out are rightly proud of the amazing work they do with and for women across Cleveland and we’re proud of their place in our Network. You can find out more about A Way Out, including how to donate to their essential services, by following THIS LINK.
