1625 Independent People - core costs
Bristol, UK
Housing is just the tip of the iceberg of what we do. We run 13 specialist projects and services to help young people reboot their lives in different ways. In 2014/15 we supported over 1800 young people who we either homeless or at risk of homelessness in Bristol and surrounding areas. Our service works because we know that housing does not fix homelessness. Our priority is always to give young people a safe, stable place to stay and deal with the immediate crisis - before we start work helping them to build their new future so they don't face homelessness again. Sometimes this means mediation to help them go back to a family home, where that is not appropriate or possible we help them prepare for independent living. Family/relationship breakdown is still the main cause of youth homelessness in the UK with over 83,000 16-25year olds experiencing it every year. Debt, mental health, abuse, neglect and addiction are also common themes. Every young person's story is unique just as they are, there is no such thing as a blanket support package, which means we offer a unique, tailored service to every one of them. 1625 Independent People is funded by (ever decreasing and unstable!) local authority funds, BIG Lottery funding, private trust funds, local businesses and private philanthropy. We are a strong, robust organisation and what we do works, but with more public, corporate and state support we could do so much more! We've been going for 30 years - we know our stuff and we know young people. Young people are an important section of the community, when their own support structures fail them we should step in. When we say "we" - we mean you, us and them over there, it's the neighbourly thing to do.
What we've received