This week on the podcast we’re chatting to Tracey Secker, enterprise manager at The Haven Wolverhampton, the independent charity which supports women and dependent children who are affected by domestic abuse and homelessness.

In this week’s episode Tracey explains how the conversations abuse and how it's recorded have changed, The Purple Pledge- an initiative Tracey’s spearheading to promote domestic violence support in all workplaces, how The Haven, through their social enterprises, empowers women, and how COVID and working from home has changed the support that’s needed.

The Haven Wolverhampton provides a range of services; from their 24-hour helpline to their emergency refuge accommodation; they are supporting women from the minute they flee, to when they are ready to resettle. As part of the plethora of support The Haven provides, Tracey has set up several social enterprises, to employ women already benefitting from The Haven’s services. This includes a cleaning company that maintains the emergency refuge accommodation.

Furthermore, Tracey has been leading a new initiative called The Purple Pledge, which was launched last year, and is growing fast! The pledge was launched to encourage employers and businesses to develop and maintain a robust policy on domestic abuse and have at least one domestic abuse workplace champion- as you would a first aider, nearly 1 in 10 people who are subjected to domestic abuse report that the abuse continues at work, this includes phone calls, texts and emails.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the work that The Haven Wolverhampton are doing is saving lives and is giving women and children affected by domestic abuse a safe place to flee to, be supported, and be taken seriously. Please, head over to their website and donate if you can.

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