Young Person's Hub
What Is Bardsley Youth Project To Our Young People?
What's on offer for you at
Our Engagement team are here to support you through out your time of need. We can support you to find your way around the housing system, the benefits system, looking for a job or training etc. We can refer you to supported housing and support you to make a homelessness application to the local council.
We offer emotional support and guidance and will be able to have the time for a chat with you.
We can support you by going with you to appointments being there for difficult phone calls of helping you to fill in confusing forms.
The engagement team prides itself on fulfilling the Bardsley moto of "Walking with Young People".
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Some of our young people access this service because:
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They find benefits appointments challenging and they would like someone to go with them (we know appointments can be scary and hard for some of us).
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They have been sofa surfing for a while and want support finding a safe, permanent place to live.
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They are having trouble at home and are worried they might be kicked out - they want to find out more about their options.
Becky (left) and Kim (right) are our friendly engagement workers. As young people they are your first port of call. Click here to find out more about them and the rest of the team.
Any young person from the city of Coventry age 16-25 can just turn up to our Monday Drop-in. You can drop-in to speak to a support worker about your housing situation and what you would like support with. It's a great chance to play pool, meet other young people like yourself, play Xbox or table football, and get to know our 1:1 support workers who run the session. See our latest sessions here. You can come for the whole session or walk in when you feel like it.
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Some of our young people:
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Come while they are sofa surfing with friends, and want to find out how we can support them to find a permeant, safe place to live.
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Come to meet our engagement team and see if they would like to access Bardsley
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Bring us household bills or council tax letters they would like support with understanding and acting on if needed.
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Ask us how to use home finder / ask for help setting up their home finder account
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Come to chill and play pool or Xbox with a familiar face or other young people in similar situations
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Come to find out more about activities and training we can help them apply for or access
We have an onsite pool table at Monday drop-ins if you fancy bring a friend and have a game while your waiting for a worker to be available to talk to your about your housing situation
We offer food parcels for young people who are moving into supported housing that have not yet been able to make a claim for benefits. This helps them to survive the few weeks until they make a claim and get a payment.
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Food parcels can also be used to help out young people who are in tenancies but have had an unexpected expenditure and find themselves low on food.
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We can supplement our food parcels with food bank vouchers if required.
We are able to help young people out by giving them furniture which has very kindly been donated to us by members of the public. When young people do get a home of their own it is unfurnished. We can help you apply for government grants to furnish you homes but this can take anything up to 11 weeks to be processed, so in the meantime you will need basic items to be able to live and succeed in your new home.
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We provide kitchen packs which consist of all brand new items that you would need to be able to cook and keep your kitchen clean until your community support grant is processed. Kitchen packs include a microwave and George Foreman style grill so you will not go hungry for want of being able to heat up food.
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We are also able to offer other items on a loan basis until your grant comes through such as a bed, fridge and freezer.
If you are short of clothes, we have a small clothes bank where you can come and get free clothing. Most of it has been kindly donated, but items such as underwear we always buy new.
We are working towards the clothes bank becoming a swop shop where you can donate unwanted clothing as well as find yourself something "new to you".
Wash Packs
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The Bardsley Youth Project provides young people with Hygiene packs that consist of all of the items women and men need to keep themselves clean.
We found a lot of young people struggled with the cost of affording basic hygiene items when they lost their accommodation or were waiting for benefit claims to come through.
We created hygiene packs that would last for 4 to 6 weeks for young people to take care of themselves. We wanted to lessen the impact of poor self-esteem that you may experience if you do not have the means to wash, brush your teeth and take care of your menstrual needs.