Transforming Together: reflections on 2024

Transforming Together is a network of professionals, local decision-makers, and women with lived experience working together to improve support for women with multiple unmet needs in the North East.

The network grew out of a community of practice originally formed in 2022, as part of Transforming Services for Women’s Futures, a collaborative research project which resulted in the publication of ‘Dismantling Disadvantage’ (2023).

This research found that failures by public services to provide appropriate support to women with multiple unmet needs was contributing to women in the region dying early as a result of suicide, addiction, or murder by a partner or family member at almost twice the rate of the rest of England and Wales.

It served as an urgent wake-up call for ‘levelling up’ efforts to combat regional inequality and a post-code lottery for support. With the aim of driving forward and implementing the recommendations for change included in the report, Agenda Alliance began work to convene the Transforming Together network.

The network’s first meeting was held in February 2024. As we near the end of the year, we share some reflections on our efforts so far.

The local perspective

Laura McIntyre: With a new Labour Government, a female North East Mayor, and two female Police and Crime Commissioners for Northumbria and County Durham, a lot has happened since the Dismantling Disadvantages report was released last July. These developments, at national and local level, offer a chance to work together for the women of the North East, especially those facing ongoing exclusion.

One of our first actions as a network was to develop pledges for these local decision-makers. We secured Kim McGuinness’ commitment to these, including a request to establish a ‘Tackling Women and Girls Multiple Disadvantage Taskforce’. Local government has a lot more meaning now than it did a few years ago, so we hope the region’s newly progressive leadership will continue to support what we stand for. Real reform and the participation of those in positions of authority are long overdue.

Dismantling Disadvantage provided some horrifying statistics and did a fantastic job of elevating women’s voices and experiences in our region. Establishing the Transforming Together network has been the next stage of change, to ensure collaboration to help women escape cycles of violence, trauma, and deprivation. A multi-agency response is crucial: we need a variety of voices in the room, sharing power, if we are to actually effect change across interconnected sectors. Working with the systems that we are attempting to modify requires that they be present with us, and we listen to one another thoughtfully.

A wide variety of experts from government and volunteer sector services, as well as women, now comprise the group, and we’re working to drive forward our three main aims. To bring about change, our efforts need to remain focused on the specific concerns that women face and provide concrete local solutions. Policymakers, health, and police and crime commissioners, as well as local authorities, are paying attention and need assistance in order to implement meaningful changes to commissioning, policy, and service design. This puts us in a strong position: if we use it effectively, Transforming Together has the potential to implement local improvements that could support women’s lives for years to come.

The national perspective

Nadine Smith: It is great to see a new government with a commitment to halve violence against women and girls, address lack of opportunity and well paid and stable employment, make devolution go faster, and reset the relationship between government and civil society. Yet still, women are too often spoken of as victims and their health needs reduced to their reproductive systems. The narratives need shifting to show a more holistic picture, and what the North East is doing to tackle women’s unmet needs.

Transforming Together can help government deliver in the region and shift the dial from unmet to met needs. We can contribute expertise to what proposed NHS women’s health hubs really need to look and feel like; we are interested in conversations about safe and quality housing; we want to ensure that women have tailored holistic support, for example through health-led supported employment initiatives that Integrated Care Boards and Local Authorities now have responsibility to roll out, in partnership with civil society, charities and faith groups. We are developing our collective messages on these areas with a view to shaping future policy and engaging in consultations from government.

However, it is our utmost priority that these new initiatives do not replicate the silos and mistakes of the past: short term funding, fragmented badly commissioned services and missing data have badly affected the network’s membership and the women they serve. We see the impact stigma and ignorance have on access to services. We also know (rightly or wrongly) that what gets measured gets managed so we pledged to share data across our services so we can build the evidence base for better, and educate professionals about what is working and why. We want to stand firm against poor commissioning that drives a wedge between our services and have pledged to commit to collaboration and putting lived experience at the heart of all we do.

As government speaks of a new relationship with regions and with civil society, we are putting words into action. The North East will be the trailblazer for tackling unmet needs for women, and Transforming Together can enable this to happen at pace and at scale. We invite DCMS, DHSC, Home Office and the Cabinet Office to see what we are doing, to really listen to the voices of women when considering better outcomes and how funding can be driven towards them in a region that stands with and for all women. We can only do this by working together in partnership.

The personal perspective

Women with lived experience: Two of us had been involved in the research process for Dismantling Disadvantage – before the work on Transforming Together began, we’d travelled to Parliament to launch the report. Doing this really helped build confidence; for some of us, it helped connect us to our voice and believe we matter. So, we had some sense of what the network was trying to achieve but the first few meetings were still a little overwhelming, being in a room with so many professionals after the experiences we’ve had.

However, this far in we can see now how much shared drive and commitment there is from everyone. We can see we're all passionate for the same cause. We're part of the project because we don’t just want to share our stories; we want to turn the negative experiences we’ve had in life into positives to help future women. Each meeting starts with a contribution from us because we want the professionals in the room to hold our perspectives front and centre. So far, we’ve shared a collectively written story about our experience of services, and poetry about how we’ve felt treated and failed.

It’s also been important to make sure women like us aren’t left out of public debate. This year, the North East had the opportunity to elect a new mayor and we wanted to understand the candidates’ commitment to making change for women at the sharpest edge of disadvantage. We attended a debate with the potential candidates in March and asked a question about their plans for tackling women’s premature deaths. A couple of us also presented at the North East Drug and Alcohol Conference in May, advocating for the importance of womens-only recovery services. Since Kim McGuinness’ election, some of us were able to meet her as representatives of the network.

Being part of the Transforming Together network has made us feel part of something big. It’s been a busy year, but what we’ve seen so far makes us feel optimistic there will be a positive impact. Our hope for 2025 is that we will start to see tangible action taken in response to the network’s efforts. We want real change for women experiencing disadvantage in the North East – it can’t wait any longer.