Equality and Diversity

Our group support and drop-in services are open only to women, including trans women.

We can support people of all genders in our emergency accommodation either through our refuges (women-only), or our dispersed independent properties. We also support families with children of all genders and ages in our safe accommodation, ranging from refuges to dispersed accommodation, depending on individual circumstances.

Sometimes our refuge and dispersed property spaces won’t be available due to space but we will always support you if we are able to and work hard to offer suitable alternatives to you if we are at full capacity.

We have interpreters available for people who speak all languages, through the translation companies Language Line and Big Word. Some of our staff also already speak different languages, as well as English, that may be common in Leeds communities.

We have British Sign Language interpreters available for any clients who are deaf or have hearing impairments. We will make any adjustments we can to make our support work for you.

Yes, we can. We have 2 spaces in our refuges and 1 dispersed property suitable for people with mobility needs. We also have 1 refuge space for someone with full-time care needs. We will always do our very best to keep these places available and prioritised for people with physical disabilities or care needs.

If we cannot support you , we will do our very best to help you access support from another service that can help.

Clients in our refuges often have a range of diverse backgrounds, identities and experiences. We work hard to ensure that everyone is well catered for, can access to the foods they want and can celebrate all religious and cultural events. We often have big celebrations for Diwali, Eid and Christmas and Easter, as well as other festivals.

We aim to have a diverse team of staff in our refuges and the rest of our service to ensure people from a range of backgrounds and experiences are represented. We also have specialist workers to support people from Gypsy and Traveller communities and people with experiences of forced marriage, honour-based violence, trafficking and modern slavery.

We also welcome people with children and young people of all genders in our emergency accommodation and have a specialist team of Children and Young People workers.

We can work with people with “no recourse to public funds” (NRPF) and people with unsettled migration statuses through all of our services.

We do not have a limit on how many people with NRPF we can support at our refuges but because this is dependent on getting funding, it means we are sadly not always able to support everyone who comes to us.

If you currently have no recourse to public funds, please do get in touch with us and we will do our very best to support you. We will talk you through the process we will go through to try to support you. If we are not able to support you in this instance, we will do our best to help you find other services that can offer support.

We are well-trained and equipped to work with people with mental health needs. We also completely understand that domestic abuse and violence can have severe impacts on the mental health of victims-survivors. 

We work with all our clients with a trauma-informed, non-judgemental, person-centred approach, taking into account their needs and listening to what they want. We can also support you to access appropriate mental health services to make sure you get specific support for mental health, including drug and alcohol use services, therapy and counselling services and more.