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I’m incredibly pleased to finally share some exciting news linked to the WE CARE project.

Earlier this month, I was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship as part of the 2026 Promoting Lifelong Health programme. Over the next year, the Fellowship will support visits to Sweden and Canada to learn from international leaders working in compassionate health and social care for women who have experienced sexual violence and abuse.

For me personally, this feels both hugely exciting and deeply important, not only as a researcher and social worker, but because this work is rooted in listening to the experiences of women and practitioners. The opportunity to learn from international approaches and bring that learning back to improve services, experiences and outcomes for survivors across Wales and the UK feels incredibly meaningful. The Fellowship connects directly with the work we are already doing through the WE CARE project, which is brilliant! 

The WE CARE project was developed to better understand these experiences and, importantly, to work alongside survivors and practitioners to identify what compassionate care could actually look like in practice. The Winston Churchill Fellowship now provides an opportunity to take that learning further by connecting with international researchers, clinicians and survivor-informed services already leading innovative work in this area across Sweden and Canada. 

In Sweden, the Fellowship will involve working alongside colleagues at the National Centre for Knowledge on Men’s Violence Against Women (NCK) at Uppsala University, including Professor Carolina Överlien, Dr Johanna Bergman and Dr Linette Backeman. Sweden has undertaken important work around trauma-informed and sensitive healthcare approaches, including national guidance and practitioner resources supporting survivors accessing healthcare services.

In Canada, I will be working with international leaders exploring compassionate care approaches, including Professor Shane Sinclair at the University of Calgary, whose internationally recognised work has shaped contemporary understanding of compassion within healthcare systems. The Fellowship will also involve learning from the authors and contributors involved in the Compassionate Care Handbook, whose work has focused on translating survivor experiences into practical guidance and sensitive approaches for healthcare professionals supporting people affected by sexual violence and abuse. This work is particularly important as it moves beyond theory alone and focuses on how compassion, safety, communication and dignity can be meaningfully embedded within everyday healthcare interactions and systems. Excitingly, the work will also build on emerging collaboration with Dr Linn Haag at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada, whose work focuses on the often-hidden health and neurological impacts of violence against women, alongside improving service responses, recovery and systems of support for survivors.

One of the things I am most looking forward to is learning not only about clinical practice itself, but also about the wider systems, cultures and organisational approaches that help compassionate care become embedded in everyday healthcare.

This includes:

• practitioner training and confidence

• trauma-informed communication

• creating safer screening environments

• self-sampling approaches

• reducing barriers to healthcare access

• embedding survivor voices into service design

• understanding how compassionate care can improve both experiences and longer-term health outcomes

The learning from the Fellowship will feed directly back into the WE CARE project and wider work across Wales and the UK. Over time, we hope this will inform future guidance, training, policy development and practical resources that support safer and more compassionate healthcare experiences for survivors.

As a social worker and researcher from North Wales, it also feels incredibly meaningful to be able to bring learning from communities and services here into international conversations, whilst also bringing global learning back home. I’m very aware that this Fellowship builds on the trust, honesty and courage of the women and survivors who continue to share their experiences through the WE CARE project. Their voices remain at the centre of this work.

Over the coming months, I’ll be sharing updates from the Fellowship journey, reflections from visits, emerging learning and resources through the WE CARE project website and social media channels.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the project so far! This feels like the beginning of an important next chapter.