Case studies

To help lower-income residents with the rising cost of living and food inflation, Kirklees Council is working with charity ‘The Bread and Butter Thing’, a mobile food pantry that increases access to affordable, healthy, and nutritious food.

The Employment and Skills Hub team connect with employers to source both short term and long-term work experience placements and engagement at careers, information advice and guidance events. The Hub also links with construction employers to create Employment and Skills Plans. The ESH has been vital in ensuring coherent employer engagement around incentives for Apprenticeships, Levy transfers, Traineeship bonuses, and the Kickstart Scheme in order to secure physical and virtual work experience-based pathways into businesses for young people in Hampshire.

Liverpool City Council has worked with the local NHS to set up a network of women’s health hubs in GP surgeries. The hubs offer both NHS and council-commissioned services from cervical screening to long-acting reversible contraception (LARC).

Swindon Borough Council’s public health team has worked with the two organisations which provide in-reach services into prisons to develop a new residential rehab pathway for women when they leave a prison estate.

Suffolk is embarking on a year-long project to improve the sexual and reproductive health support that women with learning disabilities receive. It will involve a series of workshops, which will then be turned into videos to improve the knowledge and experience of women from this community.

The London borough of Kingston has worked with local partners to set up the Kingston Women’s Hub to help women who have experienced domestic violence and abuse. Alongside crisis support, it offers a holistic range of individual and community support to help women thrive.

The Manchester Healthy Weight Strategy identifies Black and Asian residents as being a cohort particularly at risk of obesity. So, after noticing low uptake of weight management support among South Asian women, Manchester City Council has helped to fund a programme specifically targeting them.

In Southampton the substance misuse provider Change Grow Live has worked hard to tailor its services to women. This includes setting up women-only groups and offering support and treatment in different locations around the city.

A partnership between Surrey County Council and Woking Borough Council’s Women’s Support Centre is ensuring women who are involved in or at risk of becoming involved in the criminal justice system get the support they need for drug and alcohol problems.  

The Women’s Health Network in Bradford has been at the forefront of tackling the health inequalities women face for the past five years. It holds regular meetings, hosts talks, events, focus groups and workshops to influence service design and engage women from all communities.