Charity awarded three-year contract to support women, children and families

Doncaster Council has awarded charity YWCA Yorkshire a three-year contract to deliver the Green Gables housing and support service. The contract announcement follows a competitive tender process, and runs from 1st September 2024 to 31st August 2027, with the potential for a two-year extension.  

YWCA Yorkshire has delivered housing and wrap-around support from Green Gables since 2004. The Green Gables team recently celebrated 20 years of uninterrupted service and partnership working in Doncaster. 

Green Gables supports young women, children and families to create better futures. The expert team of YWCA Yorkshire Project Workers establish and maintain long-term, supportive relationships with vulnerable families. The charity also provides safe housing and a range of wellbeing, mental health and skills training programmes.   

The new contract will directly support parents that have entered the Early Help pathway; streamlining services and better-connecting people from Doncaster to the wider network of support available across the borough. 

Since the contract was first awarded in 2004, Green Gables has supported hundreds of families to build safe homes and access skills training and employment. In response to the significant need of families - the team have become specialists in supporting young parents to recover from domestic abuse, poor mental health, parenting and financial difficulties.  The new three-year-contract-term will see an additional 13 young parents access safe housing, and 65 more families benefit from inclusive, compassionate and expert support across Doncaster. 

YWCA Yorkshire’s Green Gables Project Manager, Janine Egan, said: “Green Gables is on a mission to support women, children and families to create better futures locally. The people we support are often struggling with parenting, safeguarding, mental health difficulties, financial hardship and domestic abuse. Our highly skilled team is trained in a range of specialist programmes designed to reduce harm, build resilience and improve long-term outcomes for people. Working with partners from across Doncaster we have had great success supporting families over the last 20 years and we are committed to continuing this excellent level of support.” 

Seventy percent of people supported by Green Gables experience considerable parenting challenges. All Project Workers are trained to deliver the Solihull parenting program, and the charity employs 'You and me, mum' facilitators and a 'Reducing Parental Conflict' practitioner.  YWCA Yorkshire delivers a bespoke life-skills programme to 250 families across South Yorkshire including specialist modules in ‘safeguarding children’, ‘preparing for a baby’, ‘parenting routines’ and ‘neglect’. Adopting these professional standards and advocating for compassionate, expert support for vulnerable families, has meant the charity have historically reduced parental conflict for  71% of families, and significantly improved school attendance. 

The use of Wellbeing Recovery Action Plans with people supported by Green Gables, and life-skills modules tackling ‘self-esteem’ and ‘poor mental health’, has led to an 84 percent improvement in poor mental health. Forty-one percent of people accessing Green Gables have experienced domestic abuse and the team’s delivery of specialist programmes and peer-support-services has proven to reduce harm for every parent and child affected. 

Alison Tomes,  Head of Early Intervention and Prevention, City of Doncaster Council, said: “City of Doncaster Council are delighted that following a robust commissioning process, YWCA Yorkshire Green Gables have been successful in securing the Supporting Accommodation for Young Parent and Parent-to-be Contract. We welcome the opportunity to continue our partnership working to support children, young people and families in Doncaster to thrive.”