Collaborations

Throughout all of our activities and collaborations, our aim is to ensure that the authentic voices of our members are heard, so we undertake lots of engagement to be effective advocates for our community.

We also support and enable our members and volunteers to have spaces at these tables, so that they can speak for themselves, should this be something they want to do! 

Public bodies and healthcare professionals

We work with public bodies and healthcare professionals like the NHS Wales Executive, its Women’s Health Strategic Clinical Network and Gynaecology Implementation Network (amongst others) to help them better understand the experiences and priorities of our members.

We also like to work collaboratively with health boards, so that they can design services which meet patients’ needs. We support our members and volunteers to get involved in some of these activities, so that services are co-produced and are more likely to work efficiently.

One example of this is with Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board in North Wales, where we have helped to set up its ‘Gynae Voices’ forum. The forum enables gynaecology patients in the region to have regular input into the care they receive.

Welsh Government departments and groups

We work with Welsh Government departments and groups, like the Disability Rights Taskforce, the Gender Equality Forum, and the Period Dignity Roundtable, so that the policies they develop are inclusive and consider women’s health and wellbeing ‘in the round’.

This is because we know that good health and wellbeing isn’t always the responsibility of the NHS, but can have other underlying causes, such as being poor, not knowing your rights, living in a rural area, or not having access to good transport, for example.

Senedd Committees

We support Senedd Committees, like the Health & Social Care Committee, and the Equality & Social Justice Committee, to gather evidence about the various health and wellbeing-related experiences of our members, so that they can better understand what’s happening on the ground and better scrutinise the Welsh Government’s decisions.

We also act as co-Secretariat on the Cross-Party Group on Women’s Health and attend other groups like this both in Wales and the UK so that politicians from all parties can hear about patients’ experiences and learn what’s needed in Wales to address health inequities.

For example, our Volunteer Champions attend UK All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Endometriosis and Menopause.

Universities

We work closely with different universities in Wales, including Cardiff, Swansea, and Bangor to help them establish research projects relevant to our members, and involve them in their activities. This is often described as PPIE, or Patient & Public Involvement and Engagement.

At FTWW, we are keen to make sure that this is as inclusive and accessible as possible, as we understand that women who are disabled or living with long-term health issues can sometimes find it challenging to get and stay involved. We aim to ensure that their priorities and needs are considered and accommodated in these spaces, especially as ‘women’s health research’ has historically been lacking in the UK and globally. You can find out more about our work with research teams here.

We listen, and work collaboratively with other charities and grassroots groups. This is because we know that no organisation can fully represent everybody and other charities will be experts in their own community’s needs.

By coming together, we can ensure that as many voices as possible are heard. Often the issues we hear from different communities and specialist health charities will overlap, so bringing these perspectives together is important. When it comes to women’s health, one of the ways we do this is by Chairing the Women’s Health Wales Coalition.

Collaboration news and blogs