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Bawso Services

We are the leading provider of services for black and minoritised individuals and communities in Wales. Here are the services we provide.

Floating Support

Floating Support provides housing related support to women and their families who live in the community and are at a risk of experiencing domestic abuse or re-victimisation. In partnership with other service providers Bawso ensures that tenancies are maintained, and survivors are empowered to establish sustainable livelihoods.

Refuges and Safehouses

Bawso provides purpose-built refuges and safe houses across Wales that are designed to cater for the cultural, religious and language needs of black and minoritised survivors of all forms of violence and abuse. Key workers are on hand to offer support and advice and to connect residents to other services.

Outreach Community-Based Services

Bawso provides services in the community with the help, support, and encouragement of black and minoritised communities and community leaders and activists in Wales. Bawso workers support victims to manage their lives and responsibilities while identifying a

preferred means of removing themselves from vulnerability and harm. They are helped to assess their own circumstances and understand what support is available and how to secure it. Bawso also provides additional and tailored support to refugees fleeing domestic abuse under the governments Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS).

Community Advocacy

Community Advocacy Services address the exceptional challenges resulting from COVID-19 faced by black and minoritised women who are subject to domestic abuse and other forms of violence. It delivers innovative ways of connecting with victims at a neighbourhood level, enabling them to disclose their circumstances and seek help.

Female Genital Mutilation and Forced Marriage

Bawso specialist services are available for victims of Female Genital Mutilation, Forced Marriage, and Honour Based Violence. This is delivered by regional teams covering South Wales, Cwm Taf, Gwent, and Dyfed Powys. Services ensure the safety of victims and guide them in taking court action against perpetrators. Bawso also advises government and statutory bodies in their responses to, and dealings, with victims.

Women’s Empowerment

Bawso provides specific advice and support to improve the employment prospects and outcomes for long-term unemployed black and minoritised victims of abuse and violence, who face complex and multiple problems and severe barriers to entering the job market. Bawso helps these individuals to prepare for, and access, employment.

IRIS

IRIS is a training, support and referral programme in Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan, bringing primary care practitioners together to increase their awareness of the circumstances surrounding victims of domestic abuse, to identify victims, and enable them to disclose their circumstances. IRIS refers individuals to those statutory and third sector support services best equipped to help them.

Modern Slavery and Trafficking Services

Bawso’s Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking support and safe accommodation Services are provided through the Diogel Project. The Welsh Government funds Bawso to carry out this work in North Wales. Traffickers use force, fraud, or coercion to lure their victims and compel them into labour or commercial sexual exploitation. Bawso works closely with the Police and Border Force, and ,under the auspices of The Salvation Army, to support victims who are invariably extremely traumatised, some of whom access the National Referral Mechanism and others who remain outside it.

RISE

RISE is a partnership project between Cardiff Women’s Aid, Bawso and Llamau. It provides a single gateway to support for victims of Domestic and all forms of abuse in Cardiff. Bawso provides generic advice and specialist accommodation for black and minoritised women, girls, and men.

Prevention Services

Bawso is always seeking resources to strengthen and extend its prevention services designed to increase awareness and challenge attitudes of violence against women, domestic abuse, and sexual violence across the population.

Bawso seeks to avert violence before it occurs through training, awareness campaigns in schools and the community, and interventions designed to stop further acts of violence and re-victimisation.

Where resources allow, counselling services are available. Bawso seeks to use every means possible to change attitudes within black and minoritised communities to harmful cultural practices.

Incidences of violence against women, domestic violence, and sexual abuse continue to increase year on year. Prevention programmes designed to inhibit and thwart this behaviour are crucial if a perpetual increase in support services is to be avoided.