Much of this funding (just under 100k) was ring fenced to March 2025. It funds housing support for the LGBT Community, young families living in refuge and help for women with complex needs.
This is news every charity dreads and compounded by the fact the Council proposes these cuts will start mid-year. Given time we may have been able to fund raise and apply for grant funding to bridge gaps. This time frame makes that an impossibility.
In the last calendar year forty-one survivors were helped through RISE LGBT Dispersed Refuge service of which twelve (29%) said they are transgender and 41% had more than one disability. For the same year twenty-one adults and thirty-one children (total of fifty-two) were helped through therapeutic support by RISE In-Reach team.
We understand that councils up and down the country are having to make very difficult decisions. Many Councils (Hampshire, Portsmouth, Cambridgeshire, Hull, Herefordshire, Derbyshire, Nottingham City and Liverpool) have opted to honour their commitments and the funding has been ring fenced, as promised, until March 2025.
We are calling on our Council Leader Bella Sankey and B&H CC to follow suit and keep their promises to allow us to maintain a service while looking for alternative funding.
If you think it is important for our LGBT community, for women and children in Refuge and for women in unbelievably difficult circumstances to get practical help and support please write to your local Councillor before February 22nd Brighton & Hove City Council - Your Councillors (brighton-hove.gov.uk)
We are not asking for any special exemptions to cuts - only that the Council follows the example of other Councils in honouring its commitments and giving RISE the room to save valued and necessary services.
We want to show the Council just how valued these services are and so we are asking our community to act now – email your local councillor, come to the meeting at 4.30, Hove Town Hall on the 22nd February to show your support. Link here Brighton & Hove City Council - Agenda for Council on Thursday, 22nd February, 2024, 4.30pm (brighton-hove.gov.uk) . Contact your councillor before the meeting. Here’s a list of local councillors: Brighton & Hove City Council - Your Councillors (brighton-hove.gov.uk) Show the Council that these services matter. Use #SaveRISE as a hashtag on any social media and if you can please donate Donate to RISE | RISE (riseuk.org.uk)
For more information please contact the Communications Team E: [email protected] T: 07460771412
