Announcing the Finalists of CII Foundation’s Woman Exemplar Program, 2018
Nancy has tackled severe backlash and threats for challenging caste and gender-based discrimination and organized 11,980 ultra-poor Dalit women and children into SHGs, domestic workers unions, and children’s collectives.
Living with poverty, dealing with chronic mental illness and being lesbian led Srija to build a movement of barefoot community women mental health counselors in partnership with the government, directly impacting 4,000 persons with psychosocial disabilities and reaching 300,000 individuals through dialogues to break the stigma around mental illness.
Forced into marriage at the age of 12, Munni is transforming the lives of 5,770 illiterate rural women through literacy and livelihood programs in Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
Nancy, Srija and Munni are among the 15 unstoppable women change agents who were announced as Finalists of CII Foundation’s Woman Exemplar Program, 2018 in the three categories of Education, Health and Micro Enterprise.
ABOUT CII FOUNDATION’S WOMAN EXEMPLAR PROGRAM
The CII Foundation’s Woman Exemplar Program recognizes exemplary women who are transforming grassroots India. Since its inception in 2005, the program has discovered, recognized and supported women from excluded communities who have, against all odds, excelled and contributed to the development process in India. The women who are selected to this initiative are called EXEMPLAR because they demonstrate vision, resilience and role model leadership.
Winners of the CII Woman Exemplar Program, 2017 with dignitaries
ABOUT THE 2018 WOMAN EXEMPLAR PROGRAM
This year, the Woman Exemplar Program, 2018, received 227 nominations from across 23 states – the highest ever. After a rigorous five-step selection process, 15 Finalists were shortlisted, each of whom have emerged ground-up, from the most marginalized communities of India. They have overcome deep social and economic exclusion to transform their own lives and their communities.
Working across nine states with different communities and sectors, these Finalists share a common vision of an inclusive India, where full citizenship is secured for all. In every way, these grassroots women change makers are ‘nation builders’, driving progress and change in the fields of education, health and micro enterprise.
Three winners (one each from the categories of Education, Health and Micro Enterprise) will be selected by an illustrious jury and felicitated by business, government and civil society leaders at a CII exclusive session in April 2018. The winners will receive a cash award of INR 3 lakh and a trophy. All winners and Finalists will also be part of a year-long leadership training and mentoring program.
Moni Kannaujia in her classroom of change
MEET THE FINALISTS
CATEGORY: EDUCATION
A child wage laborer, Munni was forced into marriage at the age of 12. She withstood intense domestic violence and schooled herself, sometimes writing with coal on waste paper discarded by her neighbors. She is today a leading advocate for women’s literacy and education. This ‘Malala of Eastern UP’ has transformed the lives of 5,770 illiterate rural women through literacy and livelihood programs. She has also organized them into collectives to access government schemes and entitlements.
Thrust into poverty after her father’s death, Nita found purpose in building a grassroots volunteer movement in the forested tribal belts of North Bengal. She has launched 4,500 youth and women change agents who have set up 61 self-sustaining volunteer groups in villages around remote and impoverished tea plantations. The change agents facilitate projects to address access to education, health, sanitation, trafficking, rights abuse and environmental resilience. These projects have impacted more than 8,500 individuals.
A survivor of domestic violence and financial crisis, Arshi has launched a movement against early marriage and trafficking in deep, interior pockets of Eastern Uttar Pradesh. Through life skills and vocational training, she is encouraging 5,000 vulnerable girls to stay in school, delay their marriage, and prepare for viable livelihoods. Arshi has also mobilized 13,000 SHG members as education advocates and trained 250 women to take up girls’ education leadership roles in the government.
Daughter of a Dhobi, Moni funded her education by working as a domestic help. Channeling her passion for the camera, she now leads a unique technology-and-media education initiative, Digital Study Hall. Moni and her team have produced more than 2,000 videos of classroom sessions conducted by model teachers on joyful learning and gender empowerment. Uploaded on YouTube and distributed offline, these films have impacted 100,000 teachers and girls in government schools across Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Daughter of a sugarcane vendor, Nasreen has ignited a movement for education and empowerment among girls of the poorest Muslim, Dalit, Devdasi, and Maadiga communities of North Karnataka. She has organized 854 children and young women in civic action and advocacy groups, where they experience self-transformation and access scholarships, tuition, and counselling supports to pursue higher education. These groups now play a key advocacy role against Triple Talaq and other discriminatory religious practices.
CATEGORY: HEALTH
Living with poverty, dealing with chronic mental illness and being lesbian led Srija to find her life’s mission. She has shaped Janamanas, a community mental health program in deprived municipal wards and panchayats in West Bengal. Srija is building a movement of barefoot community women mental health counselors in partnership with the government. The counselors have directly impacted 4,000 persons with psychosocial disabilities and reached 300,000 individuals through dialogues on breaking the stigma around mental illness.
Gowramma’s world crashed with the news that her husband was HIV positive. But she pivoted quickly to convert this adversity into an opportunity for entrepreneurship. Unable to afford the nutritional supplements that her husband required, Gowramma developed and produced an affordable alternative-Samruddhi, a FSSAI certified supplement. Distributed through NGOs, hospitals and clinics, Samruddhi has revived 5,500 individuals back to health. Gowramma has received investments from social enterprise funds and is poised for growth.
Married at the age of 9, a daily wage laborer at the age of 11, and widowed by AIDS at the age of 15, Asha founded Saksham, the Ajmer chapter of the Positive Women’s Network. Working in Nasirabad, Rajasthan’s most high-prevalence HIV belt, Saksham has offered de-stigmatized counseling, free treatment, nutritional supplements and access to government health services for 6,011 women, children and men living with HIV. She has also trained and connected 50 women survivors of HIV to livelihood opportunities in difficult rural belts of Ajmer.
Born into a family of iron smiths, Deepa won over poverty, abuse, early marriage, domestic violence and work place discrimination to emerge as a change agent. Her organization is launching transformative Dalit, Adivasi and Muslim youth leaders. They are mentored to mobilize local governments and communities on sexual health, gender rights, mental health, and wellness. Deepa’s work has directly impacted 15,800 youth leaders and their communities. More than four groups have evolved into formal organizations, in turn impacting 15,000 individuals.
Growing up with abuse, violence and poverty, Hajera is working to end domestic violence and child sex abuse in the poorest pockets of Hyderabad, dominated by religious conservatism. Hajera and her team of ‘peacemakers’ are opening up safe spaces in bastis for women and children to access psychological and legal relief. Awareness sessions, counseling and legal redressal have given courage to 1,382 women and 4,593 children to break their silence around abuse and take urgent action.
CATEGORY: MICRO ENTERPRISE
Financial independence from a micro enterprise enabled Eliza to overcome domestic violence. With this conviction, she grew from being a SHG member to pioneering the SHG movement in Assam. Under her leadership, MASK has impacted 2,550 women and their families through SHGs, micro entrepreneurship, animal husbandry and other allied activities, ending indebtedness and stemming forced migration. By engaging women from all ethnic and linguistic groups in livelihood generation, MASK has strengthened unity between once-conflicted tribes.
Vechulou grew up in an isolated village on the Indo-Burmese border, managing farm work and domestic chores. Her capacity for back-breaking work enabled Vechulou to transform her community by introducing modern agriculture and animal husbandry to 10,586 women, farmers and youth, seeding thousands of small entrepreneurs in the deep rural interior pockets of Nagaland. The only woman to be invited to traditional Naga tribal council meetings, Vechulou represents the voice of Naga women in the state.
Daughter of a Dalit school headmaster, Nancy has tackled severe backlash and threats for challenging caste and gender-based discrimination. Vizhuthukal Trust (VT) has organized 11,980 ultra-poor Dalit women and children into SHGs, domestic workers unions and children’s collectives. It has incubated more than 450 Dalit women entrepreneurs, providing credit linkages of up to 3 crores. VT has also provided supports to elderly Dalit domestic helps who are abandoned and too emaciated to fend for themselves.
At 15, Sumitra was abandoned and left penniless by her husband. Today she is a master at seeding and strengthening grassroots business ventures.Working in the drought-affected areas of Osmanabad, Sumitra has organized 3,000 women into SHGs with an asset pool of Rs. 5.3 crores. Owner of two businesses and a producer company, she has also mentored 2,000 women entrepreneurs, of which 700 are running successful businesses with annual income increases of more than 40 percent.
Sangita fought against the stigma of Leukoderma by establishing a livelihoods ecosystem for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs). Working in 132 villages, she organized 954 PwDs in Peer Support Groups and SHGs and encouraged savings, access to social security and small business ownership among them. Through entrepreneurship trainings and market linkages, 50 PwDs have launched ventures. They bring home annual incomes of Rs. 60,000, disrupting the conventional understanding of ‘ability’ in this backward region.
ABOUT THE SPONSORS
Health Category Sponsor: J K Tyres
Micro Enterprise Category Sponsor: JCB
NOTE TO THE EDITORS
The CII Foundation was set up by CII to provide a meaningful bridge between marginalized communities and donors, especially corporates, and to develop and manage high-impact programs through strategic guidance on CSR. Over the last few years, CII Foundation has undertaken various projects with corporate sector support in the areas of skill development, child development and maternal health, water conservation, disaster relief and rehabilitation etc.
Start Up! – an incubator, impact accelerator and leadership springboard to social entrepreneurs- manages the due diligence, leadership trainings and mentoring for the Woman Exemplar Program, on behalf of the CII Foundation.
NHS Resolution is calling for improvements and better integration across the NHS and mental health services to ensure at risk patients are given more support and care having carried out a thematic review of suicide-related claims.
The report, launched to coincide with World Suicide Prevention Day on 10 September 2018, Learning from suicide-related claims: a thematic review of NHS Resolution data, examines some of the factors that contribute to suicide claims and the quality of investigations following these tragic incidents.
101 deaths occurring between 2010 and 2017 were examined in-detail. The NHS trusts involved in these cases were supported through NHS Resolution’s inquest scheme[1]. In addition 25 claims relating to non-fatal suicide attempts were also analysed for comparison.
To reduce the risk of suicide-related incidents and to improve the response of trusts, NHS Resolution has made nine recommendations for NHS trusts and national bodies. The recommendations highlight potential learning for those delivering mental health services in England. Where recommendations explicitly reference bodies external to NHS Resolution, we have worked with them to agree the relevant recommendation and are grateful for their support and commitment to action them.
Working in partnership with organisations including the Royal College of Psychiatrists, NHS England, NHS Improvement, Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, and families and staff members affected by suicide, the study draws on the unique dataset held by NHS Resolution to explore best practice and key areas such as:
the shared clinical characteristics of those ending their lives by suicide that result in a claim for compensation; and
how well families, carers and staff are supported following suicide; and
the investigation process.
Psychiatry/mental health claims represented 320 (3%) of clinical claims by number in 2017/18, and accounted for just 2% of the total value of new claims reported. However, these cases are devastating for all involved: individuals, their families and carers and often the NHS staff that are involved in their care.
Dr Alice Oates, NHS Resolution’s Clinical Fellow and author of the report says: “Sadly many of the clinical findings in this report will be familiar to those working in mental health. We found that, generally there was poor support for those with substance misuse problems, inadequate communication with patients and families, and a lack of a range of services to support individuals. The quality of risk assessments, therapeutic observation and subsequent serious incident investigations conducted by some trusts needs improvement. Finally, following a death, the support offered to both families and staff involved was variable.”
“That said, we must not lose sight of the good, innovative practice occurring across the country. By learning from good practice and from where things can be improved, I hope this report and the associated recommendations will help trusts to improve their suicide prevention work and in turn support safer patient care and better support for families and staff.”
The UK National Representative for the International Association for Suicide Prevention, founders of World Suicide Prevention Day, says: “This report highlights important lessons we can learn from claims for compensation following the death of a loved one by suicide. It not only offers insight, but also guidance through recommendations and examples of good practice to help implement change. Service providers, in particular, will find this a valuable resource.”
Helen Vernon, Chief Executive of NHS Resolution says: “This work reflects our renewed commitment, outlined in Delivering fair resolution and learning from harm: our strategy to 2022, to learn from inquests, share learning from harm and work in partnership with others to drive forward the patient safety agenda, in this instance with a focus on mental health.”
The full recommendations are:
1). A referral to specialist substance misuse services should be considered for all individuals presenting to either mental health or acute services with an active diagnosis of substance misuse. If referral is decided against, reasons for this should be documented clearly.
2). There needs to be a systemic and systematic approach to communication, which ensures that important information regarding an individual is shared with appropriate parties, in order to best support that individual. Trust boards should consider how communication is best enabled within their existing systems and prepare to adapt to new models of care, which should include working models to facilitate communication across services.
3). Risk assessment should not occur in isolation – it should always occur as part of a wider needs assessment of individual wellbeing. Risk assessment training should enable high quality clinical assessments, which include input from the individual being assessed, the wider multi-disciplinary team and any involved families or carers. While acknowledging that risk can be considered as ‘high’, trusts should move away from stratifying risk assessments into crude ‘cut offs’ of risk, and encourage more descriptive formulations of risk. In order to ensure that professionals are performing to a high level, this training should be regularly during clinical supervision.
4). The head of nursing in every mental health trust should ensure that all staff including:
- mental health nursing staff (including bank staff and student nurses who may be attached to the ward);
- health care assistants who may be required to complete observations; and
- medical staff who may ‘prescribe’ observation levels
undergo specific training in therapeutic observation when they are inducted into a trust or changing wards. Staff should not be assigned the job of conducting observations on a ward or as an escort until they have been assessed on that ward as being competent in this skill. Agency staff should not be expected to complete observations unless they have completed this training.
5). NHS Resolution should continue to support both local and national strategies for learning from deaths in custody. In particular, there should be ongoing work to review learning from litigation in cases involving prison healthcare, which will continue to inform the Prison Safety Programme and National Partnership Agreement action plan. External bodies such as Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have a role to play in sharing good practice nationally, and will ensure that the aforementioned programs are effective in delivering their objectives.
6). The Department of Health and Social Care should discuss work with the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch (HSIB), NHS Improvement, Health Education England and others to consider creating a standardised and accredited training programme for all staff conducting SI investigations. This should focus on improving the competency of investigators and reduce variation in how investigations are conducted.
7). Family members and carers offer invaluable insight into the care their loved ones have received. Commissioners should take responsibility for ensuring that this is included in all serious incident (SI) investigations by not ‘closing’ any SI investigations unless the family or carers have been actively involved throughout the investigation process.
8). Trust boards should ensure that those involved in arranging inquests for staff have an awareness of the impact inquests and investigations can have on individuals and teams. Every trust should provide written information to staff at the outset of an investigation following a death, including information about the inquest process. In addition we recommend that the following mechanisms to support staff are considered:
The SI investigator should keep staff members up to date with the SI process, and the trust legal team should inform them of whether they will be called to coroner’s court as soon as this information is known.
There should be formal follow-up points to ‘check in’ with staff that have been involved in an SI. For example, there could be a follow-up meeting with managers three months, six months, and one year after the SI to ensure staff are supported both throughout the process and when it has finished.
Introduce a system for monitoring and alerting managers when staff have been involved in more than one SI in close succession in order to highlight the potential need for additional pastoral support.
9). NHS Resolution supports the stated wish of the Chief Coroner to address the inconsistencies of the PFD (report to prevent future death) process nationally. We recommend that this should include training for all coroners around the PFD process. Monitoring of the PFDs given, both in terms number and content should lie with both the CQC and other external bodies, with this information being shared nationally to drive improvement in health care systems.
Ends
Notes to editors
The Inquest Scheme: Since 1 April 2013, NHS Resolution has offered discretionary funding under its Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST), to provide legal representation for member trusts at inquests. If an application for funding is successful, the trust is supported by one of ten legal ‘panel’ firms. Panel firms are law firms that have high-quality legal health clinical negligence teams that are contracted by NHS Resolution to provide legal advice for healthcare claims. More information can be found on page 18 of the report.
Learning from suicide-related claims: a thematic review of NHS Resolution data has been authored by Dr Alice Oates, a Clinical Fellow at NHS Resolution.
Emotional and legal support services for those bereaved by suicide can be found on page 112 of the report
About NHS Resolution
NHS Resolution is the operating name of the NHS Litigation Authority.
We provide the following core services to our customers:
Claims Management delivers expertise in handling both clinical and non-clinical claims to members of our indemnity schemes.
Practitioner Performance Advice (formerly the National Clinical Assessment Service) provides advice, support and interventions in relation to concerns about the individual performance of doctors, dentists and pharmacists.
Primary Care Appeals (formerly the Family Health Services Appeal Unit) offers an impartial tribunal service for the fair handling of primary care contracting disputes.
Safety and Learning service helps to make the NHS a safer place by learning from harm and sharing best practice to reduce future risk.
Visit our website for more information about us: www.resolution.nhs.uk
For media enquiries. please contact Jessica Clinkett, Communications Officer jessica.clinkett@resolution.nhs.uk or 0207 811 2636 or Nick Rigg, Corporate Communications Lead nick.rigg@resolution.nhs.uk or 0207 811 2688
