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Summer Newsletter 2014
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Dear Friends & Supporters
 

Welcome to our 2014 Summer Newsletter


New Deputy Director
This July we welcomed Justine Pritchard to the role of Deputy Director. Justine has been a senior counsellor at the Maya Centre for some years, so she comes with a depth of knowledge of the Maya and our work. She will be focusing on developing and improving the clinical aspects of the service as well as supporting the Director, Jo Ansell, in general management.   


Talk Enables Change Debate
The 10th of October is World Mental Health day, and the Maya Centre is celebrating 30 years of providing counselling and psychological support to women affected by gender related violence.

After three decades of doing this work we are asking:

Why does the abuse of women persist in the 21st Century?  
How can we break the cycle of violence against women?

This debate, with some of the most knowledgeable women working in the area of women’s mental health and violence against women, is a key conversation for anybody concerned with the subject matter.
Our short history video about our evolving service will also have its debut on the night. Following it's debut the short video will be available on our website.


For further information on our guest panel please visit our website.
To book your seat please visit Eventbrite for tickets. This is a free event but we are suggesting a donation of £10.00, to help us provide more counselling sessions. 

If you'd like to help us advertise, please see our:
printable poster and e-Flyer or if you're on Twitter, please include #TalkEnablesChange within tweets where possible!

We hope you can join us!

 


 
Looking To The Future
The Trustees and staff have been working together on a strategic plan for the next five years. We are aware that our funding becomes more precarious during this financial year and next as a number of large grants come to an end (the lottery and Islington contracts in particular). We have developed a plan for re-focussing the service on gender-related violence and abuse and in providing a more holistic service to the women we see, with our long term therapy supported by community and other provision aimed at successful outcomes for the increasingly complex needs of clients now approaching our service.
Comic Relief Funding for Dahlia FGM Project 
Our spring newsletter reported on our application for additional funding to build on the very successful FGM survivors group we piloted last year. We are very pleased to let you know our application has been accepted!
We will be offering specialist counselling and group therapy for the next three years thanks to a grant from Comic Relief. The new service will provide group therapy and 1:1 counselling for survivors of female genital mutilation working in partnership with Manor Gardens Health Advocacy Project.  
 

 

AGM
Wednesday the 17th of September at 6.30pm is our Annual General Meeting, to be held at  the Maya Centre.
After election of Trustees and a summary of our year, guests Leyla Hussein and Eleanor Tomlinson from the Manor Gardens Health Advocacy Project, will speak about their work and campaign on raising awareness of FGM.

Statistics for 2013/2014
During the financial year 2013-14 we have increased the number of women who have engaged with therapy. After a slow period while we moved premises, we have invested in doing assessments quickly, aiming not to exceed four weeks between referral and assessment, and usually meeting this target. We have also managed to reduce the number of women waiting for allocation to a therapist although this is more difficult to maintain because of financial constraints limiting the number of therapist we can employ to see clients long term. 



An Improving Story
During this year we set ourselves some targets for reducing drop out and rates of non-attendance at planned sessions (DNA) and these have improved considerably from the previous year,   
Therapeutic Groups

As well as the art and FGM groups, this autumn more new groups are planned; two long term therapeutic groups, one for mature women and one for survivors of domestic violence. The psycho-educational group will also start again in September and run for 8 weeks. 
Exploring Self through creativity
This summer sees our first creative therapies art group. This has been a very popular group and ten of our clients are meeting weekly over the summer with one of our therapists to produce pieces of art around the theme of their therapeutic journey. The results will be shown in October as part of the Islington Exhibits programme. 
The Ashden Trust

We have been awarded £20,000 by the Ashden Trust, for us to continue our work with homeless women and women at risk. 
Thank you to the Ashden Trust for supporting the Maya Centre this year.
Thank you for your continued support!
Copyright © 2014 | Maya Centre, All rights reserved.
Summer Newsletter 2014

Our mailing address is:
admin@mayacentre.org.uk | The Maya Centre, Unit 8, 9-15 Elthorne Road London N10 4AJ

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