The Willow Centre - Helping Miscarriage and Abortion survivors
Whilst some women struggle to have a baby - many others struggle with the reality of being pregnant. It was being confronted with patients seeking abortions and fertility help, side by side, which spurred on Joy Fussell to set up the Willow Tree Centre in Yate.
“If someone had told me six years ago that I would be doing this, I would have been speechless!” Joy Fussell says.
“As I look back on setting up the project, it’s amazing how God has led me as an individual and us all as a team one step at a time.”
Located in Yate, The Willow centre provides support and advice for women facing a crisis pregnancy, miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion.
Originally from North Yorkshire, with a nursing and midwifery background, she moved with her husband David and children Mark and Amy to the Bristol area to undertake nursing agency work. Then joined a local hospital as a bank nurse. It was on the Day Surgery Unit, that Joy was confronted with the shocking parallel of one set of patients receiving abortions, with another set receiving fertilitiy investigations.
“On the day surgery unit, there would be a list of people coming in to have terminations. It seemed unfair that we would have four or five people on one side of the ward having terminations, and on the other side there were three or four people having investigations for infertility.“I started questioning these things, but it went on to be more than that. I would come across women who, right up to the door of the theatre were uncertain about the decision they were going to make or who would get part way through the procedure and change their minds when it was too late.
“Although many people feel relief immediately after an abortion, I came across women on the unit who were really anguished by the decision they had had to make or were particularly upset when they realised they had made the wrong decision, and they wished they had kept the baby.”
Joy belongs to the Christ the Rock Fellowship in Yate. Each New Year the church sets aside a few days for prayer, and during one of these prayer times several years ago Joy felt challenged by God to stand up and make a difference in the area of abortion.
“It took me a long time to know how to respond.” she admits. “Abortion is an enormous issue and I couldn’t see what difference I could make as an individual to that.
"By 2003 I felt the time had come to do something so I looked on the CARE (Christian Action, Research and Education) Centres Network website, and then wrote to them saying how I felt. I’d read about their crisis pregnancy centres but I can’t say it immediately jumped out at me that this was what I should be doing.”
CARE put Joy in touch with the Newport centre and through them she caught the vision for what was possible. There are around CARE 150 centres in the UK, however at that time people living in the Bristol area had to travel some distance to their nearest one.
Joy shared her vision with the leadership at Christ the Rock, who were very supportive and after prayer and discussion gave her the go ahead. Seventeen people volunteered to take part in CARE’s accredited Christian counselling course in Newport including Anna, a former administrator, and Julie who has a background of counselling and caring. Anna and Julie became Trustees along with Joy and the three began to pray, plan and fundraise for the Willow Tree Centre.
“Sometimes I think perhaps I was slow in responding to what God called me to do,” says Joy, “but God’s timing is different to ours. If I’d really known how to run with it quicker, the timing maybe wouldn’t have been right because Anna and Julie’s had different circumstances a year or so earlier and they wouldn’t have been able to respond.”
Eighteen months after Joy contacting CARE, the Centre opened its doors in two rented refurbished rooms in the St Nicholas Family Centre, in the Abbottswood area of Yate. A sound proofed counselling room ensures confidentially during counselling and a welcoming reception area has access to kitchen facilities for those much-needed cups of tea!The centre is open during the week for several ‘drop-in’ sessions and counselling can also take place by appointment. There is a twenty-four hour phone number that diverts to a trained volunteer as clients may be apprehensive about leaving messages on answer phones but will talk to a person. Calls to CARE Confidential from the Bristol area are also referred to the team.
“We aim to provide a safe place for women and their families who are facing a crisis pregnancy,” says Joy, “however our vision is much wider than just helping people talk through those issues. Several of our counsellors are currently doing post-abortion counselling training, and we counsel women who have had a miscarriage or stillbirth.
“Three volunteers have also become educators for Care for Education’s schools sex and relationship programme, Evaluate, and we have had an encouraging response from secondary schools who would like to use it. Evaluate is a fast moving multimedia presentation that is very interactive and really keeps young peoples attention. It emphasises that we are unique as individuals and even though we might make wrong decisions, that’s not the end and we can go on to make right ones. That way we hope we can help prevent crisis situations happening in the first place.
“We’ve been so encouraged by the number of people in the area that have shared our vision, and have offered such a diversity of skills: for example a group of ladies who knit baby clothes and befrienders who will support people who decide to go through with a pregnancy. The whole work is grounded on prayer and we have a network of people who pray for us regularly.”
In particular South Gloucestershire has a high rate of teenage pregnancy, and in the future Joy would like to explore ways of working alongside statutory services in helping reduce this.
“The Willow Tree Centre isn’t about one person alone making a difference. We are a team and we are one piece of a much bigger jigsaw of CARE centres and other agencies working across the country.”
For more information on The Willow Tree Centre