BME womens group Saheliya celebrate their twentieth birthday later this month. Saheliya is a Sanskrit word meaning ‘women friends’, and the project has been a true friend to many hundreds of women since it was established in July 1992.
Manager Alison Davis explains that, although some issues being encountered are changing, the need for the support service remains as great as it ever did:
“Since 1992 Saheliya has been providing support to BME women in Edinburgh who have mental well-being issues – mainly women who are not accessing mainstream services. During these twenty years the profile of our service users has changed: now our average service user has moderate to severe rather than mild to moderate mental well-being problems. Their problems relate mainly to experiences such as racism, Islamaphobia, honour violence, in-law abuse, forced marriage, female genital mutilation (FGM), trafficking, torture and other organised violence. Compared to only 1% five years ago, presently 38% of our service users are from refugee communities. For eighteen years, we had only one case of FGM; we now have FGM survivors on waiting lists for our services.
“We provide a wide range of learning activities to sustain recovery and to maximize social and economic integration; this includes accredited childcare training with the potential of work experience placements in our childcare service.
“Through our therapeutic and case work support and because of our organisational focus, we are able to identify changes in the local demographic profile and in needs for specialist services that are not easily identified by mainstream agencies or generally acknowledged by BME community organisations. Our organisational statistics and our specially devised database and monitoring and evaluation systems enable us to map mental health support needs, prevalence of harmful cultural practices, and effective support packages. Saheliya is an important resource for mainstream policy makers and service providers in planning responses to population changes and for service delivery.
“We believe that our wrap-around services, move-on opportunities, and collection of statistics makes us an important organisation for Edinburgh and for Scotland as a whole if we are to ensure inclusive services and achieve integration.”
The organisation is holding a
20th Anniversary Celebration Stakeholders Event
on Thursday 15 November from 9.30am to 1.30pm
an opportunity to meet staff, learn about Saheliya’s work and participate in workshops.
For further information about the anniversary event, or about Saheliya’s range of services, telephone 556 9302 or email info@saheliya.co.uk
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