Here at It’s Your Choice, we like to keep our supporters informed about the work we do, so we thought you might like to know a bit more about our 18+ housing service.

 

Although the New Forest is viewed as being an extremely affluent area, locations such as Blackfield, Totton and New Milton fall into the bottom third of the national deprivation index. At IYC we are committed to helping young people aged 18-25, within these areas, who are either homeless or at serious risk of homelessness and have nowhere else to turn.

We help these young people in numerous ways, including sourcing accommodation or providing them with food, warmth, shelter, clean clothes and hygiene products on a regular basis. We’ve also supported a number of these young people with issues relating to substance use, offending behaviour, personal relationships, sexual health matters, training and employment.

We are entering our third year of carrying out this work and so far, have supported over 100 of the New Forest’s most vulnerable young people. We work by building trusting relationships and encourage these young people to feel, not dependency, but a sense of belonging here at IYC.

Our aim is to develop these young people’s resilience, consequential thinking, conflict resolution skills, and improve their general physical, mental and emotional health and wellbeing. Subsequently, this enables them to find a renewed sense of direction and therefore, improved access to more opportunities.

We are hugely grateful for the funding we receive from The Blagrave Trust, which enables us to carry out this work.