Youth Advice Centre (YAC) Brighton
Support offered at YAC Brighton
Contact Information and Opening Times
You can pop into the Youth Advice Centre and speak to a member of the team at the following times:
- Housing Advice: From 31 March 2024, the Youth Advice Centre (YAC) will no longer operate a housing advice drop-in clinic. See below for more info.
- Support and Advice: Monday – Thursday 3pm-6pm / Friday 3pm-4:30pm
Ways to get in touch:
- Visit Us: 11 St George’s Place, Brighton, BN1 4GB
- Call us: 01273624432
The YMCA Youth Advice Centre (YAC) offers advice, support and guidance to young people in Brighton and Hove. The YAC team are able to offer expertise on a wide range of topics. Our aim is to provide young people in the local area with a safe and friendly environment where they can access helpful advice and support.
We offer a Family Support & Mediation Service and a Support & Advice Service providing sexual health advice and services, emotional and wellbeing support and benefits and money advice.
Support and Advice at YAC
The Support & Advice service is a safe space where any young person aged 13-25 can talk to a worker one to one and receive the support around a wide range of topics including:
Access to the C Card (free condoms) scheme and relationship support. HIV, STI and Chemsex awareness support and referral pathways.
Anger management advice, self-esteem support, self-harm, stress and anxiety, bullying support and help accessing mental health support and counselling. Support around ADHD and ASC referral for finding appropriate support and advice accessing GP and additional services. Advocacy support to access additional statutory and non-statutory services.
Help filling in forms and support to make claims, budgeting and money management advice and help to access specialist benefit support. Support accessing ID and relevant information to enable access to appropriate support. Gambling support.
Support completing CV's, job applications and searches, finding training and education, support accessing well-being teams, learning support mentors and referring to other appropriate services. Support with accessing transport for education. We support young people with accessing volunteering opportunities. Cooking classes with potential for additional training. Local training schemes and job opportunities.
Partner with external organisations to support funding and financial crisis for young people, in-house support accessing funding for essential items, food, energy bills and additional support. We offer a direct referral pathway to access funding through Brighton and Hove City Council and the Community Hub, completing referrals for Local Discretionary Social Fund, Housing Support Fund, Lift-Up Fund and Food Bank referrals - if you are unable to be supported by our Food Market project.
We work in partnership with multiple organisations and are a direct referral pathway for all forms of support outside of housing.
Boys and Young Men Support Project
The Young Men’s Youth Support Project centers around the development of boys and young men aged 16-24. Our goal is to work with our clients to empower them. Many may have faced barriers engaging with other support services, peers, family, employment, their community, or their own goals and aspirations. Some of the barriers we can help to overcome include low self-esteem, loneliness, negative worldviews and identity issues. We offer help to those who have been affected by substance use, criminal justice, poor mental health, accommodation issues, and many of the problems that young men face today.
Utilising a youth work advocacy model, we will:
- Work 1-2-1 with young men for up to 2 years.
- Build a trusting relationship and get to know their interests, strengths and assets, and also their barriers to achieving what they want.
- Help navigate and advocate for them in accessing other services.
- Help them to stay in services that might be helpful through working on life skills, emotional literacy, anger management, and help to understand systems they have to navigate.
- Encourage, and support them to build agency in their lives and in their care and support.
- Help identify their hopes, aspirations, goals and support them to start to achieve them.
- Link them in with a like-minded peer group and build upon positive social skills.
Please note: This service is closed to new referrals as we continue to work with our existing clients until March 2025. Please feel free to contact the wider YAC team [email protected] to discuss available support.
Find out more about Support & Advice –
- Visit Us: 11 St George’s Place, Brighton, BN1 4GB
- Call us: 01273624432
Housing Advice
From 31 March 2024, the Youth Advice Centre (YAC) will no longer operate a housing advice drop-in clinic.
- Young people requiring housing advice (including emergency assessments for homelessness) should approach Brighton and Hove City Council (BHCC) for assessment.
- If you are an existing client and need to update your YAC Housing Advisor, they will be based at the council until Friday 3 May 2024.
BHCC Customer Service Centre:
The Brighton YAC Support and Advice Team are still here for any non-housing related support.
Family Mediation
Family Mediation is for 14- to 25-year-olds providing a safe space to talk and to share how you are feeling with a trained mediator to support the process. Mediation supports and improves relationship breakdown and has been successful in preventing youth homelessness.
Find out more about Family Mediation - Click here.
YMCA YAC Food Market
A Youth-Led sustainable social grocery store
If you are 16-25, live in Brighton and Hove, and seeking an affordable and sustainable way to shop locally or low waste, then YAC Food Market has something for you. The aim of this project is to support young people in accessing healthy, low-cost foods and shopping products at a simple one-stop shop – an easy way for young people to access locally produced
and supermarket surplus, providing a modern and sustainable approach to food waste and food poverty. YAC is keen to empower young people throughout the project, seeking volunteers, feedback, and inspiration for how YAC Food Market can reflect the needs of our community.
We are partnering with Brighton and Hove City Council, Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, FareShare Sussex, Neighbourly, Brighton and Hove Food Factory, and Sussex University.
Privacy Notice
To see our privacy notice for young people using our services click here.
Our information sharing document explains why we may need to share young people's information and how we do this.
