Hey,

I’m running my first marathon for St Anne’s Resource Centre (SARC). I work as a Clinical Psychologist within the Street Therapeutic Outreach Team (Forward Leeds/LYPFT) and my office base is at SARC. Street Support services, including my team and SARC, support people who are homeless in Leeds. It feels like a massive team within Street Support services and SARC is one of the hubs where the people we serve can come for support, and different teams are welcomed to use the space for their work too - it aims to be a place of safety.

I would appreciate any money you can give. The work the teams do can be intense and tricky (if it’s difficult for us, it’s hard to imagine the struggles and barriers facing the people we work with) but the shared values of empowerment, care, empathy and seeing passed someone’s difficulties with all the different parts which make them them (including all their strengths), is key. The work would also be lost without a sense of togetherness and all being human - so I hope this money can be used to support us to do a few things we normally don’t have the budget for! Because we are a big team, I’d like the street support services who use SARC, as well as the people we serve, to decide how this money is spent.

Some ideas so far are; winter essentials, library/book case, resources to make soothing kits/a chill corner. But I’ll welcome the ideas and can let people know how the money was used - it’ll depend on how much we get!

thank you!