Starbucks Broadgate

For everyone living with complex disabilities. For everyone who is deafblind. Sense is here to help people communicate and experience the world. Our TouchBase Pears centre, in Selly Oak, is a pioneering, multi-purpose project for the whole community in Birmingham and beyond – a place that brings people together in a welcoming environment where everyone can feel connected, included and part of the community. It has: Developed by Sense, TouchBase Pears also offers a range of arts, sports and wellbeing activities for children and adults who are deafblind, have sensory impairments or complex needs. TouchBase Pears operates as a social enterprise, with a focus on sustainability and creating value for the whole community.

The main purpose is to support the emotional wellbeing and mental health of LGBT people in Coventry & Warwickshire by reducing isolation, enabling LGBT people to be more confident about their sexual orientation or gender identity by their improving the awareness of LGBT rights and equality. We want to continue providing peer support offering an advice and support service by telephone, online, drop in, face to face and a befriending service and since 2012 the provision of regular targeted informal support activities including: regular Coffee Afternoons inviting people, all identifying as LGBT; Ladies Coffee Mornings for Lesbian, Bisexual & Trans women; “YANA” supporting people identifying as Trans & Gender Variant; “Out in the UK” supporting refugees & those seeking asylum because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The Charity also wants to continue worksing in partnership with Prism, a local LGBTQ youth group, Embrace, a project run by Age UK for older gay men and “TimeOut Counselling”, a donation based counselling service.

We actively assist owners in searching for their lost or stolen dogs and rescue stray dogs that have served their 7 days at local authority holding kennels. Less than half of strays are being reunited and sadly, many are being euthanised. Happy, healthy, social, dogs that have done nothing wrong – they have simply lost their way home or have been abandoned by their owners. To date, we have rescued over a thousand dogs that would otherwise have been put to sleep. Under the Pawprints banner, we neuter, vaccinate and provide treatment for injured or abused dogs. We have paid thousands of pounds out for medical treatment for neglected, abandoned or lost dogs and are proud to say that we are not breed selective. In order to meet these costs we have held online auctions, jumble sales, dog shows, quiz nights and have held stalls at various venues to raise much needed funding. Please visit our Events/blog page to see what is currently planned. You can follow our daily progress, meet the team and interact with us on our Facebook group.