Four trustees including former chair Sarah Hill left Women’s Aid in recent months, the charity has confirmed following its recently announced job cuts.
Hill left the board in March, while former vice-chair Jo Gough and Zlakha Ahmed exited the board in December last year, according to the charity’s listing on Companies House.
Nikki Bradley stepped down on 16 June, according to the listing, while the domestic abuse charity has registered no new board members in the past two years.
The charity confirmed that four trustees had left in the past year as their tenures ended but said it could not disclose the names of its current board members for safeguarding reasons.
Women’s Aid’s website still lists Hill, Gough and Ahmed as trustees at the time of writing.
Closure of live chat service and staff cuts
The charity recently announced that it is cutting 13 jobs and will close its live chat service at the end of this month.
Explaining the changes, chief executive Farah Nazeer cited “rising costs and a tougher funding environment”, with the move expected to save the charity £1m.
Prior to the redundancies, the charity employed 101 people, meaning that it will be cutting around 10% of its workforce.
Four out of the 13 redundancies will be made to the live chat team, with the service itself being dismantled after being scaled back in recent months.
“To ensure we’re sustainable in the long term, and that survivors can access the support they desperately need, we’re changing how we run some of our services,” Nazeer said in a statement announcing the staffing changes.
“The current model for our live chat service was created during the Covid-19 pandemic, with emergency funding, and, as with many charities, we’ve continued to deliver this life-saving work despite not having dedicated funds for a number of years.
“Sadly, we can no longer afford to do so. We’ll be ending live chat on 31 July and are carrying out a phased closure, with full details on our website between now and then.”
Nazeer added that Women’s Aid will continue to run a reduced version of its email service to support survivors within set hours and the charity is looking into ways it can offer an alternative to its live chat service in the long term.
“We’ll also be clearly signposting survivors to the government-funded helplines that are run by other organisations within the sector,” she said.
“Our focus is, and will always be, making sure that women and children stay safe and get support when they need it, by working with our network of 185 member services across the country.”
Nazeer added that the decisions to make cuts and close the charity’s live chat service were not easy to make and were not a reflection of the “incredible dedication or impact” of Women’s Aid staff.
In its most recently filed accounts, the charity recorded an annual income of £7.2m for the financial year ending in March 2024, while its annual expenditure stood at £8.4m for the same period.
These figures are up from the £5.4m in income and £6.8m expenditure the charity recorded in 2022-23.
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