Monika's Story

Monika started her journey with ICM as a newly arrived Polish immigrant looking to learn English in 2016. For 4 years Monika studied English with ICM, while simultaneously boosting her confidence and sparking a desire to help her local community. Monika started to think how she could help others, to make their lives easier and as a result progressed to a volunteering role with ICM as a classroom assistant, regularly supporting other Polish speakers in the classroom.

Monika quickly progressed to become one of ICM’s Community Champion volunteers. She started supporting her community to effectively engage with local health services both pre and post pandemic.  She delivered translation services at local surgeries, promoted vaccination programmes and provided volunteer support to the health service - taking a great burden off front line services.

Leading on from this work and responding to the needs in her local community, she started to volunteer in the local hospital.  Initially she would buddy up with pregnant women from migrant communities forging a strong relationship with the Antenatal Clinic and the Perinatal Mental Health Service. Monika worked with local midwives to support pregnant women from diverse communities to break down the language barrier and help them get the best care available.  Monika soon found that communication between hospital and GPs surgeries and pharmacies can pose problems for women from ethnic communities: she picked up problems with incorrect translations relating to prescriptions and corrected these.

With the support of ICM Monika then conducted a consultation with our pregnant learners and young mums, volunteers and Community Champions and she found that: Communication and Trust were the main issues that needed addressing. Language and cultural barriers can be daunting – women often feel isolated in hospitals and need support from people who speak their language.

Lack of cultural awareness can be a real issue e.g. there are cultural differences around breast feeding and the length of time this could or should continue.  In particular with the Roma community there is a fear around the possibility of losing their babies. She found that all of these issues conspired to erect barriers to effective health care for prospective parents from our migrant communities.

Monika’s findings and feedback to the Local Maternity and Neonatal Services (LMNS) led directly to the creation of a Maternity Project at ICM to address these issues with Monika at the helm. The project has now been running for 4 years and has successfully supported many migrant families to receive safe and appropriate health care in childbirth, directly reaching an estimated 950 people.  This would not have happened without Monika’s volunteering effort.

Not only has Monika established an important community project within the heart of ICM she also expanded her local voluntary work becoming a Director of The Hive, a thriving new community hub in Ipswich and volunteers with other local partner organisations St Elizabeth Hospice, Polish Community Hub and Future Female Society.

Monika describes her Community Champion role as “a bridge between community and society. We are dedicated to helping people in the community.  We are amplifiers and give a chance to be heard despite the language and cultural barrier.”