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At Brighton YMCA, we house and support single men and women with a diverse range of needs, enabling them to improve their wellbeing, gain skills and maximise their confidence so that they can go on to live independent and fulfilling lives. We are a well established charity in Brighton and Hove, having responded to the local housing need since 1870. We are a key partner of Brighton and Hove City Council in providing supported accommodation for the city. We are a member of the wider YMCA movement. We support vulnerable men and women with a past history of homelessness or disadvantage. At present we house 280 people local to Brighton and Hove. This represents 56% of the people in Brighton and Hove with similar support needs. We support the people who use our service to believe in themselves, their potential and what they can achieve through a variety of services. We do not just provide housing, but offer a supportive, encouraging environment so that people can realise their true potential. Our services: • Housing: We provide shared and self-contained accommodation, across five different projects, in Brighton, Hove and Portslade. • Support: All our projects are staffed. Our project workers are trained to a high standard to provide the best care and support for our customers on the road from supported housing to independent living. • Life Skills: Our LASER accredited Life Skills Course based at George Williams Centre is opened to all our clients. This is a popular Life Skills Course, providing workshops in three main areas: Cookery, Personal Development and Information Technology. Our Life Skills tutors are experienced and well trained. They all have experience in supported housing work and are therefore best placed to ensure attendees get the most out of the courses. • Opportunities for self-expression: Our Art and Music Groups are run by experienced and dedicated staff and offer our clients opportunities to express themselves. • Throughout the year, we hold Health and Well-Being, Work and Learning and Move On events, where we invite our clients to engage with other support providers in the city. Our Mission: Supported Housing • Supporting Potential Brighton YMCA’s mission is to house and, where possible, re-settle homeless men and women of all ages. We wish to provide best opportunities for our clients to reach their full potential and eventually move on towards independent living. Our aims are: 1. To provide a caring, supportive and rehabilitative environment; 2. To empower our clients to help them achieve their full potential and maximise their independence; 3. To treat everyone fairly and with respect, regardless of race, ethnic origin, disability, sexual orientation or age; 4. To offer best value for money by developing our staff team and our range of premises.

Stay Alive is a suicide prevention pocket resource for the UK – the UK’s first suicide prevention app. It is free to download. We plan to continue to develop the app and keep it free to use and access in the UK and beyond. We are a Brighton-based charity with a simple but powerful goal: that no one should have to contemplate suicide alone. We work locally and nationally with communities, organisations and individuals, helping them to become ready, willing and able to effectively support someone at risk of suicide. Our experts sit on a range of local and national strategic groups, including TASC (The Alliance of Suicide Prevention Charities) and NSPA (The National Suicide Prevention Alliance). We constantly work to fight the stigma that surrounds suicide and to encourage help-seeking through our Stay Alive app and thriving social media community. Stay Alive app offers help and support both to people with thoughts of suicide and to people concerned about someone else, and can be personalised to tailor it to the user. To find the app, search for ‘Stay Alive Suicide Prevention’ on either the Google Play Store, or the Apple App Store Stay Alive – key features: - Quick access to national crisis support helplines - Local crisis services can be promoted - A mini-safety plan that can be filled out by a person considering suicide - A LifeBox to which the user can upload photos from their phone reminding them of their reasons to stay alive - Strategies for staying safe from suicide - How to help a person thinking about suicide - Suicide myth-busting - Research-based reasons for living - Online support services and other helpful apps - Suicide bereavement resources We are seeking around £12k funding (based on a preliminary quote by the developers) to upgrade the LifeBox, a feature to which app users can currently images that remind them of people/places/animals/quotes/anything that connects them to life. We wish to upgrade the LifeBox to become more of an Emotional First Aid Kit, in line with current clinical expertise around helping people change their emotional states in a crisis. We’d like to include: • The ability for the user to create playlists and play music directly from their device, without being online (reducing barriers) • A video capture function where the user can record and store video clips, e.g. a message from a loved one to watch in times of crisis, or a message from oneself to oneself with ideas about staying safe. The music function is something that the young people’s group that we consulted with, and many others, said they would like to see. Thank you for taking the time to read our application.