International Women’s Day 2024
CEO’s Blog Post.

Hello from our new CEO Cherryl Henry-Leach

International Women’s Day is a global celebration of women and their achievements, and a call for everyone to help advance equity. It’s a fitting moment for us to introduce our new CEO Cherryl Henry-Leach, whose expertise and passion will drive us further forward in our mission to bring communities together to end domestic abuse. It’s an exciting time for our charity, and here Cherryl shares how we are standing together with the individuals and organisations fighting for justice and equity in our sector, and how this day, and every day, should be a recognition of the strength and rights of the victims/survivors at the centre of our work.

“The commitment and passion in our sector to give victims/survivors access to trauma informed support and justice is second to none. It is exciting, challenging, humbling and dynamic work, which helps people through the darkest times – empowering them to rebuild their lives and resilience whilst finding their voices. It is, quite simply, awe inspiring.

This International Women’s Day, I’m calling on us all to reflect on how we an accelerate intersectional approaches that respect our diversity, life journeys and experiences. For me, equality comes down to if someone needs support at 3am, they can find that support and feel safe, heard, believed, understood, respected and held, regardless of who they are.

Our team will be reflecting on this at our upcoming away day. Equality, Safeguarding and the Co-ordinated Community Response (CCR) model underpins everything we do, internally and externally – it’s our Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse DNA.

I’ve undertaken several roles over the past 26 years within the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) sector, across various disciplines including service innovation and improvement, policy development, early intervention responses, and frontline practice guidance. In all of these roles, I’ve strived to ensure that sector colleagues have the support they need to reflect on the complex relationship many of us, myself included, have with the work we lead, given that many of us have lived experiences that fire our passion to challenge, advocate, lobby, educate and create change.

International Women’s Day on Friday 8th March is an occasion where we can reflect on the women we are and those that we know, work and live with, who we look up to, that we are proud to support. Why wouldn’t we be inspired by the women we know?

STADA’s Blooming Strong initiative cements this for me. I hope you will join me in nominating inspirational women to receive a paper flower bouquet made by survivors of domestic abuse in recognition of their strength, resilience, and determination to make a difference – however big or small. I was immensely touched when Standing Together colleagues presented me with my flower last October – as a Black woman boding from a first UK-based generation of migrant family that has a working-class background, who has experienced many of life storms/challenges, this flower is one of my most treasured possessions. It sits on my desk and constantly reminds me to support others to succeed and thrive.

A sombre reflection on recent weeks has been the closing of smaller charities that support victims and survivors in local areas and the challenges set out within the report by End Violence Against Women released in February, which cites the recent YouGov poll that nearly 7 in 10 people think that public institutions should be doing more to tackle VAWG.

This report enthused me to think about how we Stand Together with sector colleagues to show our collective strength in numbers... but also thinking about our own survival in a difficult climate. This can only be achieved by our working in partnership with others – in a collaborative and coordinated way – something Standing Together is well renowned and valued for (for example, our CCR is recognised in the UK Government’s Domestic Abuse Statutory Guidance as best practice). As I attend events and meetings, I constantly hear how we are viewed, respected, and needed. For me, both personally and professionally, this is a very real positive that makes me proud to be CEO – and a caretaker of a legacy that my predecessors have nurtured.

As we move forward through these difficult times, we are Standing Together with partners, individuals and organisations in statutory and voluntary agencies that are committed, as we are, to tackling VAWG in our communities, by working collectively to transform the way we think about, prevent, and respond to domestic abuse through an inclusive system of coordination to support victims and survivors.”