Experience Step up, safe space CIC

​

We aim to address practical needs with food, clothes and small household goods. We are a non profit making organisation run by volunteers.

SUSS uniform recycling project was recently awarded a grant from Hampshire County Council, Waste Prevention Team to set up a brand new pop up free used school uniform service for our local area. This is great news as it means we will be able to buy a pop up gazebo, airtight storage crates and folding tables so we can make the events much more flexible and accessible for everyone. It will also mean that we should be able to help more families and encourage recycling of clothing, shoes, book bags etc. This is especially important given climate change and the fact that the New Forest District Council has very recently declared a climate emergency. Our ambition is to create an environment where recycling uniforms becomes the norm for every family and we hope that our new pop up events will help this.

We are aiming to launch this service in February 2022 half term, then throughout the year, primarily in the school holidays and half terms.

This will take a lot of time and effort and currently we only have a small number of volunteers. Given we are now being supported by Hampshire County Council with funding, we are looking for volunteers to help organise and run the events, sort and label all the items. If you have a few hours to spare we would love to hear from you.

We are always looking for used logo’d uniform items so please bear us in mind if you have any- please remember that we do not charge families for any items - they are free for everyone.

We are very excited about this new service and are keen to get going- please do contact us if you can help in any way- we look forward to hearing from you!

We also can provide individualised self-sooth and sensory boxes for adult and children with sensory disorders.

Background and our history: 

We are a community support group, primarily in New Milton, but covering all surrounding areas,  called Step up, Safe Space, we formed in November 2020 and became a community interest company on the 19/01/21 our number is: 13143815.

The Directors background is as a family crisis support officer and two main volunteers who support in the running and development of the group have vast experience of public health nursing and in early years care and education. 

Objectives:

To offer advice re obtaining support on unmet health issues, including mental health issues, ensuring food needs are met adequately, ensuring all safeguarding issues including domestic abuse concerns, are referred to the appropriate agencies within national guidelines. The group has a designated safeguarding lead. 

​

To encourage recycling and reusing.

To also offer practical support with referrals to other community groups, like the New Forest basic food bank. To ensure all donated food is effectively delivered to those in need and donated food is not wasted. This includes delivering to those currently in isolation and those currently suffering from the virus. And other support services including dropping off shopping and collecting and delivering prescriptions.

To also promote community cohesion with a sense of community pride, by enabling easy donation of quality goods from the local community. These are distributed to those that would benefit from the donations, across the area by members of the team. These donations are food, clothes, all baby and children’s items and small household items ( electrical items are PAT tested.)