June 20, 2023, 5:42 a.m.
Our Impact & Reach
April & May at The Women's Health Hub
Postpartum Matters
Hi team,
Hope your week is going well! We’re popping into your inbox this week to share with you the impact and reach we have had through The Women’s Health Hub throughout the first month or so of its being. We are hoping to build up our funding and make The Hub sustainable long term, so this new section aims to highlight the impact we are having in the community and all the ways we are learning and growing!
Remember, Substack is great because you get to choose which of our newsletters you get, and you can unsubscribe to any of the sections you are not interested in. We just want to show you how to do that, really quickly, before we dive into today’s topic. We’re going to use Zoe’s lovely friend ’s publication as an example.
Once you are on our publications webpage, you can click on your face, in the right hand corner and then select the ‘Manage Subscription’ button - you can see Zoe doing the same for Claire’s publication below.
Once there, you can scroll down until you find the Notifications heading. Here you will find all of our different sections. If you are on our Postpartum Matters CIC publication then you should see four different sections ~ Our Monthly Newsletter, Our Impact & Reach, Doula Diaries and our Q&A interview section called Wishes for our Daughters. You can see Claire’s different sections below.
If I wanted to unsubscribe to a certain one of Claire’s sections - say her ‘Notes from the Sea’ section, then I would just click on the green button and unsubscribe from that particular thread. You can do the same to each of our four sections - meaning you will only hear from us when we are writing about what you are interested in.
Here’s what it looks like after you’ve unsubscribed from a section:
We think this is a pretty cool feature as it means we can write about the full breadth of our work and women’s health in general whilst knowing that we’re not bombarding you with content you don’t want to see!
With that said…
Let’s get to it
Measuring impact and reach feels a little overwhelming to us just now… what should it look like, how do we share something that is so important to measure and monitor, but that has the potential to be numbers and stats, when our entire essence is all about the people, the empowerment and the personalised support?!
We wonder if you have any thoughts on this, what would be helpful to see here?
We’re going to be brave and dive right in, so let’s see where it leads us…
Reflecting on our Women’s Festival opening weekend, we were absolutely blown away by just how many people came to join in, with ninety-nine bookings for the eleven sessions! Our most popular session saw more than twenty people in the space at the same time, with multiple generations of women sat together listening to Suzanne share her wisdom about pelvic health. Suzanne is a pelvic health physiotherapist and Founder of Know Your Floors - everyone needs to see her content, it’s just amazing.
We’re not sure anything will ever surpass the moment where we watched grandmothers, mothers and daughters pass around a ring pessary! Lottie normally only sees these hidden away in Pharmacy prescription bags, so this was rather special to witness and be part of. It was such an honour to welcome so many people through the doors; some were old friends, some were friends of friends, and some had never met any of us before. It was truly magical and gave us many goosebump moments.
We were so honoured that so many felt able to pop along and will be everlastingly grateful to everyone, including our wonderful photographers for their support, Magda and Becks.
Another huge thank you is needed for the Ballinger Trust, who we met at the Community Hub Funders Fayre – their donation of £1,000 to our CIC allowed us to ensure the Hub looked and felt warm and inviting, and we look forward to sharing our work and plans with them again soon.
APRIL THOUGHTS
The final week of April saw us welcoming friends, both old and new, and exploring what others would like to see happening in the Hub. We started our regular journaling club and lovely Sue returned to run some social sessions with us, welcoming six more people through the doors during our very first week. We asked what health meant to you all, what good health would look like and what the barriers were. We invited people to share their thoughts on our huge whiteboard in our entrance and it was so nice to see the back and forth chats. You shared fabulous suggestions for groups with us, ranging from infant feeding to an elder club and we have been so excited to get cracking with all of them!
Our adventures into the world of radio and newspapers began this month too, with Lottie chatting to Lee Theasby at Radio Hartlepool and Zoe popping along to be interviewed by BBC Radio Tees in Middlesbrough. The opening weekend also found itself a spot in the Hartlepool Life newspaper. All very exciting and wonderful for sharing with local people, but not at all what we expected or dreamed of when we first imagined this work. It’s been exhausting and fun and a lot of learning!
Being live on the radio is quite a scary thing - we’ll let you know if it gets any easier with practice!
Our Numbers ~ April ‘23
Radio and newspaper appearances: 3
People through the door: 105
‘The Women’s Health Hub’ Facebook reach: 12,328
Funding raised: £1000 grant + £70 from Just Giving (You can still donate here)
MAY CELEBRATIONS
May involved celebrating and highlighting Maternal Mental Health week with baby yoga, general drop-ins, journaling, a sling library and a perinatal mental health session with the lovely co-founder of the Perinatal Mental Health Partnership, Steph Addison.
We started to realise we had built up “regulars” already, as well as welcoming new folk and babies through our doors, including a very special guest who was only three days old! There’s something rather magical about newborn snuggles, especially when you knew them as the bump too.
MAY GROWTH
We enjoyed many cuppas with local charities, CICs and businesses, building our sense of connection and community within Hartlepool, sharing the passion for supporting women+ and making sure that we know what’s available out there and “they” know what’s available in here! From Cornerstone to LilyAnne’s, from START to Let’s Connect, and from social prescribers to midwives, photographers, carer support and services empowering parents of children with Special Educational Needs and disabled children, as well as the Survivors of Bereavement by Suicide (SoBS). It was incredible to feel so supported and welcome within the Hartlepool Voluntary Sector and amazing to find out just how much is going on within the town.
Is there someone missing from this list that you think we should be talking to? Drop us a comment below
MAY REACH
May also saw another wonderful empowered girls club, the return of Ruby’s grief café and Kerry’s menopause café, the start of infant feeding socials (thank you for the suggestion!), the start of queer socials and more beautiful neurodivergent peer support, as well as the beginning of Sue’s Over 60’s Club (we are working up to naming it Elder Club!). In total we welcomed more than sixty visitors through the doors and supported people online with both signposting, listening and encouragement. The social media side is definitely worth celebrating too, maybe even sit down for this part, as Facebook shared with us that we reached more than 18,000 people by the time we were through with May!
There were radio interviews (Planet Radio TFM), newspaper articles and plenty of leaflets making their way around the town and social media. We narrowly missed discussing voting with ITV (for that we will always be thankful) but most of all, we are so very grateful to every person that shared our posts, told others about the Hub, donated their hard-earned money, and ventured along to see the space.
Our Numbers ~ May ‘23
Radio and newspaper appearances 3
People through the door 68*
Facebook reach 18,179
Funding raised £170 through Just Giving
*Our numbers for May look a bit smaller than April - we think this is, in part, due to the majority of April’s sessions being on a weekend. Also, for the full day of workshops in April, many people came along for one and ended up staying for all of them! These are all things for us to consider & learn from moving forward as we continue to grow and widen our reach but also our staffing levels etc.
MEASURING IMPACT
We are frequently surprised by the lovely feedback that’s shared with us, and feel such joy when we hear that your experience of the Hub has made a difference to your wellbeing, or empowered you to share in decision-making about your birth or your health. Facebook reach and page visits tell us one story about impact and reach, but the stories that truly let us know whether we are enabling change and fulfilling our dreams, are those that you feel safe enough to share with us when you are given space to be truly yourselves.
Do you have a story to share about how the Women’s Health Hub has made a difference for you or someone you know? Please do tell us below or feel free to get in touch directly – we love hearing from you. Finally, although we hope we have a created a space where everyone feels safe and heard, we have also created an online form for you to provide feedback and suggestions anonymously should this be preferred: The Women's Health Hub Hartlepool (google.com).
Thank you for building this community with us.
Lottie & Zoe x
P.S. If you value the work we are doing here and wish to support us to grow - from Hartlepool and beyond - then please do consider becoming a paid subscriber to our Substack. It’s £5 a month or £50 for the year and gives you access to lots of bonus content, whilst knowing you are supporting a good cause! You can subscribe by following the link below. Thank you so much xx