Sister Circle is a charity putting women’s health first. They support women in challenging circumstances to empower themselves and lead healthy lives through advocacy and peer support. They build relationships with women who are isolated and find themselves in unfamiliar circumstances and create communities of support. They put women’s health and compassion at the heart of everything they do, so that all women can seek better health for themselves.

More specifically, when women face barriers to accessing healthcare in their pregnancy it can lead to negative health outcomes for the mother and the baby. Sister Circle’s Maternity Mates (programme) are a supporting hand to women through their pregnancy journey and their baby’s early years.

Fatimah Mohamied, ASAM (Association of South Asian Midwives) Cultural Safety Book Club, says:

"As more awareness has been garnered from the rising rates of health inequalities among marginalised populations, a need for change on a systemic level is certainly required. However, on an individual basis, a personalized journey to understanding the shoes we walk in is also necessary, in order to understand the shoes that others walk their own convoluted lives with. The Cultural Safety Book Club is a means to enable this journey, by sharing perspectives, provoking thought and reflecting upon the intersections of healthcare with wider social and political nuances.

"The book club consists of discussing one chapter, or part of a chapter each week during term time through a theme. This enables more extrapolation from the text while allowing for flexibility; it is not necessary to attend each session, nor is it necessary to read the chapter, though it adds greatly to the experience. Themes already discussed include Community, Masculinity, Grief, Instinct, Trauma and Honour.

"The most recent season of book club finished with success framed within a context of participants learning from one another and building a sense of community with our difference marked as a strength and not a hindrance. The book chosen was “The Fortune Men” by Nadia Mohamed, which is a fictionalised account of real and heavily researched events surrounding the false conviction and execution in 1952 of the last man in Wales to be hanged. His name was Mahmoud Mattan and he was a Black Somali Muslim man. The book has been shortlisted for the Booker prize while winning numerous others and has been consequential in the South Wales Police apology for the hanging that occurred 70 years prior.”