'Devastated' staff speak out after being made redundant from Women Out West

Rebecca Todd, Rachel Pettit, Aishea Drysder, Nadine Dockray and Katie Moir all worked at Women Out West in Whitehaven – and are emphatic about how much they loved their jobs supporting vulnerable women.

Ms Moir, the former office administrator, said: “It didn’t feel like going to work. We had such a good team and you see the impact you have on the clients and how well they’re doing. We were constantly on a high.

“It was hard but because of the team we had and the outcome we saw on the clients, it just didn’t feel like work.”

They say they were “humbled” to collect the ‘charity of the year’ award for Women Out West at the Pride of Cumbria Awards in June after being nominated by their service users.

But their roles have now been made redundant in a restructure of the centre’s model.

Two manager jobs have been scrapped, along with a number of other roles, and a two-tier structure has been put in place, which consists of a CEO and several support staff.

Rebecca Todd, the former centre manager, said: “We loved going into work. It was the best job.

“We are all absolutely devastated. We never thought we would be here. This was our passion. We are all professionally trained to support women the best we could and give them that excellent service.”

Time To Change West Cumbria, which runs Women Out West, say the changes will allow them “to operate in line with the other women centres in Cumbria”.

CEO Rachel Holliday has said that women were waiting “exceptionally long periods of time” to be assessed and only 30 per cent of women were being seen face-to-face.

But the former staff dispute this and say the figure “does not reflect the work they did at all”.

Mrs Todd said they’d had a meeting on May 9 with Rachel Holliday, who was devising a spreadsheet that showed how long women were waiting to be referred in for the initial assessment.

The former centre manager said: “It wasn’t a true reflection of who had been seen. It wouldn’t have comprehensive information on how many contacts you have made, how many times they have been in prior to the referral. That wasn’t captured in that.

“Every woman had had contact with us. They maybe hadn’t had their initial assessment but they’d had our contact.

“It wasn’t that they were sat waiting. They had that contact all the time.”

Aishea Drsyder, who worked as the Hope to Recovery practitioner, said: “Other agencies that do similar work have longer waiting lists. Realistically, our waiting list was 12 ladies. We worked hard. Really hard.

“We might have a referral come in from an agency but the lady might not be ready to access the services. So it might take three or five or ten of our contacts to build the trust for them to access the centre. You can never force their own recoveries but it felt like that was the way that things were going.”

Mrs Todd said: “When we work with sexual and domestic violence there’s that perpetrator that’s always been in control. We’ve got to be mindful that they have their own choices and when they’re ready, we’ll be ready for them. Not just say, just get yourself in. It doesn’t work.”

Mrs Todd said on June 7, staff were given a two-week deadline to clear the waiting list and get women into the centre. One-to-one work with existing clients was halted in the meantime.

She said: “Our training and supervision was stopped. We worked day and night as a team to invite all the women on the list up to the centre. That waiting list was cleared within a week.”

Staff previously had access to clinical supervision - a qualified psychotherapist who they could turn to if they had issues and who helped regulate their emotions when they were impacted by the sometimes distressing nature of their jobs.

Ms Drysder said: “At that point we had quite high impact cases that we were supporting so it was quite devastating that the clinical supervision was stopped at that point.”

Mrs Todd said: “We have had some really horrific cases that have affected the team and the staff that have worked with the ladies and children we have lost as well. It’s been horrific.”

Mrs Todd said they had received “no complaints whatsoever” from service users but were told by Rachel Holliday that housing officers were complaining that they hadn’t picked women up quick enough.

She said they were informed on June 10 that Rachel Holliday was stepping down as CEO of Women Out West and Vanessa Decastro from Carlisle’s Gateway 4 Women would be taking over.

Mrs Todd said: “We had a pre-organised meeting with Copeland housing team on June 20. It went absolutely fine. There were no issues raised with us.”

She said later that day, she was taken aside by Jo Booth, a director at Time to Change West Cumbria, who told her to get the team together, and Vanessa would let them know what was happening.

Mrs Todd said: “We had that meeting. It was just horrific. She told us we wouldn’t be working with crisis. Get rid of your uniforms. I want bums on seats, this is what this is about. That’s their model.

“It was awful for the team. We had to run these drop-ins that were ‘adult clubs’.”

Ms Drysder said: “The model had previously been done and it didn’t work. It was unsafe practice. It wasn’t right.”

Nadine Dockray, who was a support practitioner, said she had been seconded to Women Out West from Calderwood House to help with workload during Covid but was always going to go back to the homeless hostel in Egremont.

She said: “On June 7 when she [Rachel Holliday] was going to halt the one-to-one work and get these women through the door, she said to me, my position would end in November and I would go back to Calderwood House.

“But then I was given a redundancy letter because there was no position for me within the organisation, despite my job at Calderwood being advertised two days before I got that redundancy letter.”

Mrs Todd said: “The whole redundancy process – it was a bolt out of the blue. I put a grievance in prior to that on July 4.

“The board of directors has not been supportive at all. It was a big thing for me to take a grievance forward. For it to not be withheld is really disappointing. For an organisation that is empowering people, leaving women feeling disempowered like they have done. That’s the concern.”

Rachel Holliday has said that all staff had the opportunity to attend the consultation and suggest other options and structures, but most declined to do so. She said staff were also given the chance to apply for the new positions.

The former staff members said they did give feedback on the proposed structure. Mrs Todd said: “We have fed our views in. We didn’t attend all of the sessions.

“The jobs were a lower pay grade and lower skill set to the experience and qualifications that we have. There was no position for a manager.”

Ms Dockray said: “The pay was significantly lower at a time when we are in a cost of living crisis. It’s a bit of an insult to ask us to interview for our own jobs at significantly lower pay.”

Ms Moir said: “People didn’t just not attend either. They didn’t attend because of how they had been made to feel, rather than just not going.”

Mrs Todd said: “At this point we had staff who had were really ill with work-related stress.”

Rachel Pettit, who worked as the office manager, said: “I’ve worked every day since I was 16 years old and I’ve never been off with work-related stress. That speaks volumes.”

Ms Pettit said staff felt they had been “kept in the dark”.

Ms Drysder said: “We have asked lots of questions about why these decisions have been made and they just won’t give us anything.

“If Rachel had come to us and said this is what is going on and told us the full facts of the restructure and what her plans were, we would have found a way to be able to make it work. But we were not given that opportunity.

“We’ve been pushed away. We haven’t been given straight answers.”

Ms Dockray added: “If there had been transparency, we could have worked together for a better solution.”

READ MORE: Board member says restructure of women's centre was "necessary" and dealt with "reasonably"