No Wrong Door – Perfect Partnerships

7th March 2025

Financially Included shares their Feminist Approach to Service Design

This International Women’s Day, we spoke to Amber Cully, Project Manager for the Financially Included Project. She shares details of their innovative work contributing to Glasgow’s No Wrong Door approach in a guest blog.

What is the Financially Included project?

Financially Included is a partnership project between GEMAP Scotland and The Glasgow Violence Against Women Partnership (GVAWP), funded by the Scottish Government’s Delivering Equally Safe (DES) fund. It remains the only project in Scotland solely dedicated to addressing economic abuse and the financial impact of all forms of gender-based violence.

The project provides:

• A trauma-informed, specialist welfare rights and debt advice service
• Training and resources on economic abuse
• Workforce upskilling to improve early identification and response
• Awareness-raising on the economic impact of male violence against women and girls

Through our work, we have seen first-hand the urgent need for a gendered lens in service design and decision-making. The vast majority of the women we support are lone parents experiencing deep and persistent poverty. If we are to fully address child poverty, we must tackle women’s poverty.

The 2024 Glasgow Child Poverty Report found that 63% of children living in poverty come from lone-parent households, and 94% of lone parents in poverty are women. Since launching, Financially Included has supported over 430 women, with stark realities emerging from our data:

These statistics highlight the significant barriers women face when trying to rebuild their financial stability.

Joining No Wrong Door

When I first heard about the No Wrong Door approach, I felt optimistic – was this the beginning of real change? In early 2023, Glasgow City Council and GCVS issued a rallying cry to the third sector, public partners, and registered social landlords to work together to change a broken system, placing citizens at the heart of this process. At the first NWD networking event, there was an undeniable energy in the room, from speakers to attendees, all keen to explore a new way forward.

Over 150 organisations have joined the No Wrong Door Network and are contributing to creating a connected support system.

Following that event, I joined the Tell Your Story working group, recognising its alignment with our own approach.

The Tell Your Story Working Group is in the final stages of engaging in a service design process to understand families’ challenges when looking for support. Through this collaborative approach, the group is working to express their goals and prototype a solution—likely a tool—that can be co-designed with citizens. The aim is to ensure families only need to share their story once, with services across sectors able to respond holistically to their needs. This process ensures the solution is shaped directly by the people it’s intended to serve, making it more user-friendly and effective.

Over the past year, I’ve worked alongside third and public-sector partners, as well as parents, mapping out a collaborative, multi-agency response to support needs in Glasgow.

The Power of Co-design

As we near the completion of the Tell Your Story co-design project, it’s clear that while the process has demanded significant time and effort, it has been a transformative experience. Unlike anything I’ve done before, the approach is genuinely collaborative, shaped by diverse voices from across sectors, but most importantly, shaped by citizens.

Their lived experiences have been central in designing solutions that are accessible, responsive, and free from the bureaucratic hurdles that so often make navigating services overwhelming.

Hope for the future.

This International Women’s Day, at a time when gender-based violence remains a persistent issue, I feel hopeful. Through our involvement in No Wrong Door, we’ve influenced the process by embedding a gendered lens and trauma-informed approach into the Tell Your Story project.

True change takes time, but this initiative signals a shift—one that listens to and values the voices of those directly impacted. By continuing to work together, we can build a future where no woman is left without financial support and no parent has to navigate services alone.

Need Support?

If you would like to engage with women’s gender-based violence support services and are or have experienced economic abuse and would like support please contact financiallyincluded@gemap.co.uk or call 0141 773 5850.

If you are interested in a training package for your organisation, please get in touch at financiallyincluded@gemap.co.u

More Perfect Partnerships

Do you have an example of a perfect partnership you’d like to share? Email susan.robertson@gcvs.org.uk with your stories.

Click below to read our other examples of Perfect Partnerships.