Impact Children, Young People and Families services carry out vital work around Sussex to help children, young people and families in need. We provide safe spaces for them to live, learn and play. Our services include WASP, Safety Net, The YPC and Stopover.

Last year we supported over 1,700 young Sussex residents and we are working hard to further extend our fantastic work. Your generation donations will help the services to continue their brilliant work.

WASP is an afterschool play scheme for children at City Academy Whitehawk which provides play opportunities, positive adult role models and promotes active lifestyles and healthy eating. WASP supports over 100 children and their families each year. It is for 4 -11-year olds, who need a safe place to play, make and meet friends and gain skills out of school hours. WASP is where children forget their worries, laugh and have fun alongside learning new skills. A key part of our work is raising confidence and aspirations and ensuring achievements are recognised but above all ensuring children have a good time.

Our team at Safety Net work with Brighton and Hove children and their families to help children feel safe in their homes, school and neighbourhood. Safety Net provides one to one, small group and whole class support and workshops to help 8-13-year-old children feel safe, build confidence, self-esteem and resilience. Safety Net helps children to improve their ability to communicate assertively and deal with conflict. They are taught strategies to self-calm, as well as how to behave assertively in situations they find challenging. Safety Net also runs group work to prepare children with anxiety through the transition from primary to secondary school. This is particularly important for those who will have to travel and may not be placed with their friendship groups. This is done through a range of group activities all aiming to help children:

The Young Peoples Centre in central Brighton is where we provide one-to-one and group sessions for young people needing support and advice around their wellbeing and mental health. The centre is a bright and friendly building where the Impact team work alongside other organisations, which enables easy access to multiple services for young people. The centre also gives statutory services a non-clinical environment to meet with young people, making communication and support easier to provide. The young people who use our services are predominantly experiencing mental health issues and are often on long waiting lists for higher level services. Our model of support means we can help them to find strategies to manage their health until they can access higher level support. We are also there to provide a safe place and trusted staff to check in with, after they have received higher level care. We work closely with School Nurses who refer young people to us for support which helps them to stay in school and manage their issues with bullying, self-harm, anxiety, body dysmorphia and suicide ideation. We also take numerous calls each week from parents who are extremely concerned about their teenagers mental health who we provide informal support to.

Our Stopover service provides specialist supported homes for young women in need. We currently have ten houses open and each one provides different levels of support depending on the needs of the residents. We have one house for young women with babies up to 1 year old and one house for young women with low level or undiagnosed learning disabilities. Many of the young women we support are care leavers, others are homeless as parents are not able to, or choose not to, support them. All have suffered abuse and neglect; a significant number have not managed to maintain places in other supported housing. Stopover works closely with social care and housing services who refer young women to us. We have excellent working relationships with other relevant services and a reputation for bringing successful results for young women where other services have not been able to accommodate them due to their circumstances or behaviour. This is a direct result of our model of trauma informed support in psychologically informed environments in small properties. We have a highly skilled staff team who build positive and trusting relationships with young women which last throughout their time at Stopover. As young women move on from Stopover, many stay in touch with us as we have been the only people to have consistently cared about, and acted on, their welfare.