Cymru

St Giles Cymru is a national charity working alongside communities across Wales to tackle poverty, exploitation and the drivers of crime. Our focus is on delivering practical support and amplifying lived experience to inform solutions that work. We will engage openly and constructively with all elected representatives, public services and partners to help people build safer, more stable lives.

Our work spans prisons and communities, reaching rural, suburban and urban areas, with a strong focus on prevention, early intervention and long-term resilience.

• Prisons and probation - we have over 10 years of experience delivering prison and probation contracts in Wales, supporting over 10,000 men to rebuild their lives. Currently, these are being delivered through Personal Wellbeing and Finance, Benefit and Debt coaching contracts.
• Specialist support for women - through our Boost (Building On Our Strengths Together) Hub in Newport and Aspiring Champions Hub in Rhyl, we are supporting women with lived experience of homelessness, poverty, addiction and abuse to gain skills, confidence and qualifications.
• Help for children and young people - County Lines in Cymru supports young people aged between 10-18 involved in exploitation and County lines in Cardiff and Vale, ensuring their safeguarding and supporting them to achieve stability and positive progress. We also work in two schools in Gwent providing early interventions and preventative work with young people at risk of violence and criminal exploitation.

Central to our approach is lived experience. We train and employ people from the same communities as those they support, bringing credibility, cultural competence and professional expertise. This trauma-informed, relational model reduces inequalities, strengthen communities and ensure services are designed around the people they serve. Through a Strategic Volunteering grant, we have been able to develop a Lived Experience Portal connecting

St Giles Cymru has developed some of our most innovative partnerships in Wales.

• Through the Welsh Government’s Taith initiative, we are engaged in a mutual learning exchange with a partner organisation in Norway, supporting shared learning and system improvement.
• Our partnership with National Trust Cymru enables people with lived experience of disadvantage to train as heritage volunteers at Aberdulais Falls in Neath, supporting employability, wellbeing and community connection.
• In north Wales, our work with Adferiad delivers Y Pantri, strengthening food security and local support networks.
• Through a strategic volunteering developing our Lived experience Portal, sharing good practice and promoting opportunities.

We are grateful to our partners, and particularly to the Welsh Council for Voluntary Action. Through the Welsh Government Strategic Volunteering Grant, we are developing pioneering opportunities that place lived experience at the heart of service design and delivery across Wales.