Our aim is not to just provide young people with somewhere to live, but to give them something to live for.

Support is largely funded by the Supporting People Programme, a Government grant that aims to give vulnerable people a stable home with support to enable them to improve their opportunities and quality of life.

The YMCA offers a range of individual support plans to help residents overcome issues they may face.

Each individual must work with a Support Worker, who will assist them in drawing up an Action Plan to help them work towards their personal aspirations and goals.

Young people come to the YMCA for a variety of reasons and the range of support we provide covers:

• Accessing benefits
• Developing job skills and finding employment
• Training
• Addressing substance misuse issues
• Life skills, cooking, budgeting
• Personal development

By providing accommodation with support we aim to assist our residents to acquire the skills and confidence to make their transition to independent living as easy as possible.

To help integrate our residents and avoid their isolation we plan social events including fellowship meetings, film nights, quizzes, external activities such as paintballing, bowling, theme park excursions and fundraising events.

Our staff are committed to a resident-centred approach with the emphasis on a resident’s welfare and dignity. We value residents’ input and continue to monitor the quality of our service delivery with exit interviews, questionnaires, resident reviews, one-to-one feedback and resident focus groups.

There are regular residents’ meetings at which they can offer feed-back to staff members. We encourage residents to identify further areas of support or activities which they would like us to provide.