All women deserve to be safe
The Blossom Project supports girls and young women aged 13-26 years old who experience stigma, poor mental health and have multiple unmet needs and/or disadvantages to build resilience, prevent abuse, harm and exploitation.
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We stand side by side with girls and young women to allow them to be, to realise their potential and ultimately be empowered to be in control of their own lives.
​The support provided by Blossom is trauma informed and focussed upon working with girls and young women to strengthen capabilities. Blossom accepts referrals from a variety of agencies across Teesside such as; social care, education providers, mental health agencies, police, housing, health, youth services and self-referrals.
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Blossom puts service users right at the heart of everything we do. This has been identified by service users as one of the important measures of project success, i.e. that they feel listened to.
On a practical level, this consists of a balance between regular one to one support and crisis providing direction and incorporating needs; group work providing a six weekly rotation of course content, with each session planned and reviewed by the service users.
Katie* was referred to the Blossom programme due to a fractious relationship with her mother, experiencing physical abuse as a child - changing to emotional abuse as she has grown. She struggles managing day to day relationships.
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Katie has engaged in work around health relationships, healthy boundaries, stress awareness and management and resilience training, engaging well with the sessions.
She has reported a new outlook on the relationship she has with her mum and understands that her mum's behaviour is not okay, but more importantly that she cannot control her mum's behaviour and this is okay as she does have control over many other things in her life.​
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Katie reported that her mum's behaviour no longer affects her as much emotionally because of this new understanding and she feels better able to manage this day to day.
*names changed
Tilly* fled the family home in the Isle of Man due to difficult relations with her family. She is suffering from low self-esteem and low confidence and needs help with her mental health. Housing is also an issue as she is due to move out of her current address.
Through the work with the Blossom Team, Tilly has accessed our in-house counselling service and has looked into her childhood trauma and is addressing this going forward. She is building her confidence and working on healthy relationships. Working with the team she is looking at housing options and receiving support around this.
Tilly is attending weekly and receiving the support that she needs.
*names changed
CLIENT QUOTES
"I'm so grateful to have you to talk to"
Updated December 2024