You Asked We Responded (YAWR) services commenced in 2012 to address an identified need within the Pakistani Community of Rotherham. Majority of the Pakistani community live in Rotherham’s most deprived wards and due to the extended family structure, they do not access support and help that is available.
Through the social care project, YAWR Services emerged as an organisation with a unique selling point – “to be able to respond to the cultural environment that is welcoming and engaging to all communities”. Within that framework, we have a specialism of being able to respond to not just attracting referrals but meeting health care needs in a culturally appropriate way.
YAWR initially was a constituted organisation and has grown organically. The uniqueness of YAWR as opposed to other organisations is that we have not relied on “Grant” funding to deliver our services. We have established a reputation with mainstream providers that include Voluntary Action Rotherham, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council and a number of private providers who support their service users with assisted living and accommodation. It is a testimony as to what YAWR has achieved is that when we sign off our service users, they are willing to pay privately for our staff to continue to support them.
The management committee of YAWR, in 2020 realised that they were now in a position to become incorporated as the Service Level Agreements that they had acquired increased from an initial £10k to over £50k in some cases. Therefore, trustees were recruited and YAWR became incorporated.
The vision for YAWR is to establish a “Wellbeing Hub” with physical premises that can accommodate a whole range activity in relation to “Health and Wellbeing”.
YAWR aim is to establish a long term vision for the benefit of its service users that will lead to an improvement in their quality of life. YAWR are not the only organisation delivering a Social Prescribing Service” (SPS) to Rotherham’s wider community. However, we are one of the most successful deliverers of SPS and this has resulted in the mainstream stakeholders consulting with YAWR services to undertake research in the take up of SPS within the minorities’ communities.
