Experiences of Urdu-Speaking Sanctuary Seeking Women When Accessing Women’s Health Services in Wandsworth.
Through trauma-informed, community research, we aim to understand the specific impact that language barriers have on sanctuary seeking women when accessing women’s healthcare in Wandsworth.
January Pilot
We collaborated with a local voluntary sector organisation, Happy Homes Community, to involve 41 Urdu-speaking sanctuary seeking women in a research café. The findings and recommendations will be shared in our final report and zine.
March Workshop
We collaborated with Roehampton Wellbeing for Women and Children and Mindworks UK to involve 15 sanctuary seeking women in a workshop at the Manresa Clubroom to understand the way that language barriers have impacted their experiences of accessing women’s healthcare.
By collaborating with these key community partners, we were able to maintain a safe and familiar space that encouraged open conversations around women’s health. We were well supported by the interpretation offered by Asma Choudry and Sahar Beg who allowed for us to share important health information and hear the experiences of attendees.
We thank the women who attended and generously shared their personal stories around accessing women’s healthcare. Through group discussions, as well as a collage-making and creative writing session hosted by artist Asma Istwani (currently completing her residency with Culturally Mindful) we were able to gather insights about the particular challenges faced by refugee and asylum-seeking women in Wandsworth. These stories will be included in our final report but, more importantly, in our zine, which will be launched in early 2027!
Next Steps
- We will host one more workshop involving at least 15 more sanctuary-seeking women in Wandsworth who speak various community languages, such as Somali.
- Continue to circulate the survey amongst sanctuary seeking women, aiming to receive another 33 responses (40 in total)
- Circulate the survey to women’s healthcare services to gather insights on their experiences providing support to sanctuary seeking women who do not speak English fluently
- Host a community event launching a zine (a small, usually self-published, creative resource that aims to connect communities and empower readers and creators (Mixam, 2025) and disseminating findings with community organisations, council, NHS professionals, and Wandsworth residents
- Produce resources reporting insights (report and zine)
- Establish new community relationships through continued collaboration with local voluntary sector organisations to continue collecting stories and seeking funding to create new opportunities to support organisations which work with sanctuary seeking women.