The Women’s Services Map – A Transformative Tool For Supporting Women

Designed, developed and launched by the NWJC with funding from The Jabbs Foundation, the Map helps to connect women to valuable resources and the support networks they need. The interactive directory-style website currently lists and promotes over 77 women’s centres and more than 280 specialist services from across the UK. Since its launch in September 2023, traffic to the website has been steadily increasing, with almost 8000 users and over 28,500 page views to date. And with new organisations being onboarded, and featured organisations adding new service listings monthly, the reach of the Map is continually growing.

Unique features of the Women’s Services Map
The Map is a highly intuitive platform, designed to simplify the process of locating women’s organisations and specialist services in specific geographical areas. Users can shortlist these services through various search options, including an interactive map, postcode search, or by filtering results by organisation or specialism.

Directory listings offer comprehensive details for services, including contact information and referral procedures. With services categorised into 16 different specialisms, users can easily filter searches to find targeted support to address individual needs in areas such as accommodation, mental health, domestic abuse and substance misuse.

The Map is a highly intuitive platform, designed to simplify
the process of locating women’s organisations and
specialist services in specific geographical areas.

The Centres Database provides detailed descriptions, service listings, contact information, operational hours, and links to websites and resources for each featured organisation. Additionally, the inclusion of information about organisations and projects working within all 12 of the UK’s women’s prisons makes the Prisons Database an invaluable resource for professionals too, enabling them to search for prison-based interventions and services to support women in custody.

Fostering collaboration in the women’s sector
The Whole Systems Approach is a widely adopted system across the women’s sector, promoting the building and maintenance of partnerships to ensure women have access to all-encompassing services from multiple specialist providers within their local communities. The Map aims to support this approach by fostering collaboration among women’s centres and specialist service providers, and promoting a culture that values the sharing of resources and joined up service delivery.

Through the encouragement of synergy and awareness within the sector, the Map enhances opportunities for information sharing and signposting. This approach is crucial for ensuring that women transitioning from prison to the community have access to accurate information about specialist support in their area.

Professionals working in the women’s sector benefit significantly from using the Map. Its unique design simplifies referral processes and streamlines support options. This enables practitioners to have tailored and in-depth discussions with women to best determine their needs and preferences and to then signpost or refer accordingly.

The Map also helps to illustrate the vast network of specialist women’s services available across England and Wales, demonstrating and reaffirming the huge value and impact of women’s centres and women’s specialist services in the UK.

The NWJC believes the Map is a transformative tool
that can support better outcomes for women and girls
in contact with the criminal justice system.

By increasing awareness and promoting direct referral routes into services in both women’s prisons and the community, the Map effectively helps to address some of the challenges women face when it comes to accessing the specialist, trauma-informed, gender-specific support they need.

These specific challenges for women, rooted in structural and systemic inequalities, often stem from poverty and debt, violence and abuse, insecure housing, poor mental health, substance abuse, disability, or discrimination. Receiving holistic support that addresses each root cause and is unique to the individual, is key to breaking cycles of reoffending.

 The Map empowers women by providing resources, tools
and signposting to help them rebuild their lives and prosper.

The launch of the Map marks a significant milestone since it is the UK’s first comprehensive directory of services for women in contact with the criminal justice system. It can be utilised by women in prison, on probation, in the community or at any point in their justice journey. By promoting an extensive list of safe, gender-responsive spaces that offer reliable, quality support, the Map empowers women by providing resources, tools and signposting to help them rebuild their lives and prosper.

We are committed to continually adding other women’s centres and women’s specialist services to the Map so if your organisation would like to be featured and currently delivers services for women and girls in contact with the criminal justice system, and/or runs women’s centres in the UK, please contact us for more information. Listings on the Women’s Services Map website are free.