The Period Literacy Toolkit was co-produced with women with lived experience, frontline workers, and public health practitioners. It offers inclusive and trauma-informed information, guidance and resources, and is designed to be meaningful, practical, and accessible to both frontline workers and individuals with lived experience.

It has been commissioned by Birmingham City Council Public Health and created by Spring Housing, following research around women and homelessness.

This work identified that, whilst those experiencing homelessness are likely to experience period poverty, there was a need for wider support beyond the provision of supplies.

Education and awareness around both period poverty and periods themselves was low within the homelessness sector, and there were concerns that staff members often were not comfortable talking about periods or had not received enough information to enable them to empathise with, and assist, service users.

This work also identified that those with lived experience, and practitioners in homelessness organisations, needed to be a central part of creating a resource to address these issues.

The Period Literacy Toolkit was co-produced with women with lived experience, frontline workers, and public health practitioners. It offers inclusive and trauma informed information, guidance and resources, and is designed to be meaningful, practical, and accessible to both frontline workers and individuals with lived experience.

 

The toolkit aims to enable organisations to: 

• Reduce stigma surrounding periods
• Increase staff understanding of the physical and psychological symptoms of periods and how this might be affecting those accessing their service
• Increase staff ability to: talk to service users about periods; offer practical support; link service users in with external support and signpost to appropriate healthcare services where needed.

For more information and to watch the YouTube video, please visit the link below:

 Click Here

 

To download the toolkit, please click below:

Period Literacy Toolkit PDF

Alternatively, contact Thea Raisbeck (project lead and author) if you have any further questions via: [email protected]