Beyond International Women’s Day – Enhancing opportunities for women at Forward
Last week, staff across Forward came together to celebrate International Women’s Day (IWD) 2025.
Our women’s Employee Resource Group (ERG), ForWomen, asked colleagues to nominate inspirational women across all of Forward, with an outstanding 75 nominations. On Friday, these women were celebrated across the organisation for their dedication, hard work and commitment. We also created two short videos inviting staff to share what International Women’s Day means to them and their role. International Women’s Day was also celebrated locally in many of our services, with staff hosting an open day for women in Margate and teams in prisons arranging events for female inmates.
Case Study: IWD Event at HMP Downview
On Friday 7th March, Forward staff at HMP Downview celebrated each other, and honoured the strength, resilience, and courage of women, including those navigating life in prison. This event provided a safe and supportive space to reflect, heal, and empower each other on the path to recovery and a brighter future. The itinerary included a guest speaker from Treasures Foundation and two activities, which involved those who attended engaging in creating their own affirmations for our affirmation tree as well as writing inspiring letters to their future self – many were handed in to be given on each clients release day and others were kept by the women for times when they needed to hear those words from their earlier self on their recovery journey. Each client who attended received a goody bag which had some activities, face masks, sweet treats, forward pens, and inspiring women’s leaflet and affirmation stickers.
Clients were informed of the services available to them following Mandy’s talk which served as an inspiring lived experience perspective of how and why meet and greets worked for them, their journey with substance misuse, the criminal justice system, finding faith, and eventually turning their life around. Mandy’s Q&A opened up the door to discuss some of the services available, such as Treasures (recovery housing) and referral process, Women in Prison, Forward recovery Housing, meet and greets, peer roles, and volunteering in the community.
The IWD event was well attended and we invited a range of women from different wings who are working with Forward. The response has been amazing and has sown a seed with many of the women who attended.
Beyond International Women’s Day, Forward are working hard year-round to improve our support for women within our workforce and services. Improving access to our services and women’s support provision is an organisational priority and our Service Accessibility Working Group have recently developed an action plan to progress this work. This includes:
- Further developing our understanding of the whole treatment journey of women in our services.
- Exploring how we can extend our women’s only provision throughout our services and/or offer alternative models of delivery which reduce barriers for women accessing our services.
- Developing partnerships with community-based women’s groups to reach groups of women who are currently underrepresented in our services and work with them to shape our service offer.
- Updating existing and developing new intervention materials to ensure they are gender responsive.
- Upskilling our frontline staff on topics relating to the complex experience of womanhood, such as how the hormonal cycle interacts with addiction and domestic abuse.
At Forward, 72% of our overall workforce and 59% of our senior leadership team are women and we want to ensure that all women within the organisation feel included and supported.
Over the past year, our women’s ERG (ForWomen) has been working hard to raise awareness of some important issues affecting women in the workplace and to improve support in place for them. Some highlights of ForWomen’s work over the past year include:
- Leading on developing Forward’s Domestic Abuse strategy.
- Hosting a lunch and learn for colleagues about Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder and Addiction.
- Showcasing educational content and hosting an event with CoppaFeel for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
- Hosting a discussion-based event for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls.
The EDI team are currently setting out plans for 2025-26, which include developing guidelines on how we support trans women within our single-sex services, identifying new ways of supporting women going through menopause at work, and developing future female leaders at Forward through our new mentoring and leadership development programme.