AN ADVOCATE for vulnerable women, Lianne Kirkman, is to spend ten nights in a row sleeping rough, to highlight issues of women’s safety and to raise money for a hub where women can meet, have access to support services, and develop new skills for employability, alongside an alternative to custody.

Ms Kirkman will travel from Leamington to Coventry, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth, Southampton, London, Doncaster, Hull, and Blackpool. Her journey will be filmed, and the film will be screened at an International Women’s Day conference on 7 March. She will meet local organisations and seek to raise awareness of the complex issues and existiing best practice, as well as highlight gaps in service provision

A former nurse, she suffered a personal breakdown that brought her to contemplate taking her own life in 2013, and led her to volunteer at Leamington Christian Mission. Since then, she has set up the Helping Hands community project in Leamington, and launched the Esther Project, born out of the conviction that women are not best served in a mixed-gender environment.

This will be her tenth year of sleeping rough to highlight the issues, but the first with multiple nights. “Every experience is going to be different,” she said on Tuesday. “But I know that we’re going to be met with the same issues around funding, around women not being safe, the effects of trauma, and the cycles of abuse and poverty.”

She confesses that she hates sleeping out. “I know it’s very unpleasant. It usually hits me around 3 or 4 a.m., and I feel absolutely dreadful,” she says. She has been aware of homelessness since her teens: her mother ran a shelter for homeless people in Scunthorpe, and she later worked in outreach in Birmingham and Wales.

A local skiing shop supplied her with cold-weather wear, including thermals, a mat, and a sleeping bag. “I don’t think I’ve ever been better equipped,” she says. “I’ve done this in cold weather before. You can keep yourself warm through your layers, but in wind and rain, it’s horrible.”