Although the homeless situation is still massively prevalent in the City and therefore in our service, we have been attending multi agency meetings with agencies that support people into accommodation. We know this will not be an easy fix but if we all keep working together, we can help people get off the streets and into accommodation and get the support they need to be able to safely keep that accommodation. 

We are still seeing lots of new sign ups with referrals coming from other users, the hospitals, Pullman Place and the 111 service. We are grateful that people are being signposted to us in the evenings when the statutory services are closed. For many, just having somewhere to go and someone to speak to in the evenings when they would otherwise be alone with their thoughts can literally be life-saving!

Support at The Cavern is open from 6pm-11pm, 365 days a year at 56 Westgate Street, Gloucester City Centre.

If you would like further information, please contact our Support at the Cavern Lead, Pam Evans at [email protected]

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Much of our work with the Anchor involves giving our trainees confidence to ask for what they need in life, especially if their life experiences have led to loss of trust of professionals or authority figures. Many of our trainees are afraid to express their needs, so it is really encouraging when someone, after several months of working with the Anchor team, is able to make an appointment with another service to get the help they need for a problem. Others can be anxious about communicating with their housing provider to make their needs known, so our trainers work with people to break down what they want to do and say into manageable steps. It has been positive this month to hear that some of our trainees have grown sufficiently in confidence to raise these issues in a positive manner, and with good results.

An Anchor trainee who has been on the programme for eight months now created a fascinating “roadmap” of her experience so far. Initially she felt terrified, and thought she had to perform to please others, but her hope for change gave her a reason to continue. Gradually she began to trust her trainers, to learn to say no and to take positive risks. She started to face her fears by breaking them down into manageable steps.  She feels she has turned a corner recently, and has started to believe that recovery is possible and that she has a future that she can shape. It has been the intensive, personalised training that the Anchor provides that has helped her to reach a point where she can now imagine a future without carers.

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This month in Youth Support our value of community has really shone through. At the suggestion of a couple of our service users, a team from Prince's Trust came to us with a community building project. The team has brightened up our courtyard leading into Support by planting new flowers and re-purposing recycled materials to make a planter. As well as this, they deep cleaned the entire courtyard and our basement space. It's really heart warming to see service users value the environment we provide to the extent that they would bring in friends from outside our service in order to maintain and improve it.

Not only this, but the links we are building with other services such as Young Glos will prove invaluable as youth support continues to show itself as a helpful service for the young people of Gloucester and beyond. This is exactly the kind of community we believe in and want to continue to encourage in our young people!

Youth Support is open 5-10pm every day of the year for anyone between the ages of 14 and 21. If you struggle to find us, feel free to pop into The Cavern on Westgate Street and ask for us. We'd be happy to show you around!