Embrace: People – Futures – Change is a social enterprise based in East Anglia supporting people in our community primarily through coaching, but also ongoing support, mentoring and signposting. We strongly believe that everyone deserves a chance to shine and to have the future they want and deserve. We has the strap line ‘Supporting you to become the best version of you’, with the main aim to support people who are perceived to be or feel marginalised or disadvantaged within the community to be the best they can be.

Embrace was founded in 2015 by Emma Roache, who started her working career at Aviva, although it was Norwich Union in those days! Having lived a challenging life including, growing up in an abusive home, being made homeless at 16 yrs old through no fault of her own, and later experiencing an abusive relationship, Emma has a level of empathy and compassion which cannot be taught. Using her passion and drive to turn her adversity into a positive through Embrace, she is able to support others and enable and empower them to live the life they deserve. As Project Lead, Emma has worked helping people for over 15 years. She is qualified level 3 in Information Advice and Guidance and in Health and Social Care and has a BSc (Hons) Degree in Combined Social Sciences with Criminology along with being a Professional Certified Coach with the International Coach Federation and currently studying towards a Masters in Psychology.  The other organisations involved in this project are Daisy Programme and Leeway who are both established domestic violence charities based in Norfolk. 

The support we provide is bespoke for each individual and offers a person-centred approach, because each persons experiences and needs are different. The fact our founder and project lead, Emma, has lived the experience of many of the things she supports people on makes a real difference to the people we support, along with her extensive training and experience. The results we get are huge and they are sustainable long term. People we work with tell us that they had almost given up finding ways to be different, to be happier, to overcome challenges and so on. 

Domestic abuse is continually increasing following the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.  This project will mean we support more women who need the extra help & support we can provide, in order to fulfil their potential.  Your donation will help us in supporting 10-12 women with 121 coaching.  Our aim is to support individuals to be in a place where they feel confident to live a full & happy life, to find clarity for goals & to identify the path they need to take.  

Your support will mean we can support women who have experienced domestic abuse to build on, increasing confidence, self-esteem and self-belief which are essential to be able to build the future they deserve, to regain their freedom and their ability to live a fully and happy life where they can fully participate in society.

The specific areas we will focus on:

• Rebuilding and increasing confidence, self-esteem and motivation
• Supporting the women to identify opportunities for them to progress and create the future they want and deserve
• Build upon visions and hope and dreams for the future - breaking these down into achievable steps to move towards their goals
• Reinforce the belief that they are allowed to dream, to strive for what they genuinely want from life, which can be challenging when recovering from abuse
• We will hold them accountable, challenge them to get out of their comfort zone, and to believe in themselves and acknowledge that they are deserving.

This project will be supporting women who have been impacted by domestic abuse and who need extra help and support in order to fulfil their economic potential and become financially secure. Research shows that the majority of people who experience domestic abuse are women and although this happens across the board economically, the majority are unemployed single mothers. (ONS, 2019a). With the long-term impact of physical and emotional abuse lasting for many years, as many as 6 years to overcome the associated anxiety in many cases (Oliver et al., 2019), this results in both a social and economic cost to society.

These impacts can be in terms of both provision of core and support services and from people being economically inactive for a number of reasons. We believe that with our support and the life changing work we do, that we can support individuals to recover more quickly from the impacts of the abuse they experience.  This means reduced costs to society in terms of a reduction in the need for support services, but also in terms of the individuals being able to participate more actively in society sooner.