Young People - YMCA DownsLink Group

What does YMCA WiSE do?

YMCA WiSE supports young people around staying safe in relationships, online and in the community. 

Who does YMCA WiSE work with?

We work with young people up to 25 years old in Brighton & Hove, East Sussex and Surrey.  

At some point in our lives, everyone will need support with relationships. This is regardless of our gender, sexuality or background. 

If you’re a young person who is interested in working with YMCA WiSE, it’s important that you know that you’ve already got skills when it comes to keeping safe. Our job is to help you to build on these strengths. 

To do this we work with you and the people in your life towards finding the best ways to support you. 

Everyone we work with is different: some people want to chat a lot, others not very much. That’s ok, because we are happy to adapt how we work. 

girl3

"I liked that I could talk about taboo subjects and not feel judged"

boyq

"It has helped a lot, I never opened up to professionals, but my WiSE worker helped me to open up and has taken a lot of problems off my shoulders"

girla

"I’ve learnt to be happier, safer and generally more confident with myself"

What can we do to help?

boya

We can meet you in places where you feel comfortable. This could be McDonalds, school, a youth centre or somewhere outside.   

We will work with you to build your own support plan. This means that you help to decide the topics we’ll cover, the type of work you want to do, and how often we meet.  

An example of the types of topics we cover; healthy relationships, consent, sexual health, online safety, grooming, keeping safe, self esteem.

We are a charitable independent organisation, so its your choice if you want to work with us. If you don’t want to work with us, or decide to stop, that is completely okay.  If you still need support we can suggest other organisations that could help. 

We believe that it’s important to ask young people for their expertise – to help us run our project as well as we can, click this link to our participation page.

WiSE isn’t a crisis service. If you are not safe please call 999.

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