The new Rainbow Hub in St James Street, Kemptown, is now open six afternoons a week, including Saturdays, and on Tuesday and Thursday it’s open until 8pm.
WITH around 27 volunteers having now been through their initial training, they’re already helping numerous clients who arrive with a wide variety of issues. Their volunteers provide help and guidance to individuals and where necessary refer them on to one or more of an extensive network of partner organisations for further support.
Brighton has literally hundreds of organisations, many of them charities, that exist to help people with a wide variety of needs, but understanding which organisation does what, and for whom, can be daunting.
The Hub is building a huge database of knowledge and experience of all of those organisations, so they can help people articulate their individual needs and then point them towards those providers best placed to help with specialist or longer term support.
“Think of it as your first point of contact for all matters LGBT+” says Alan Flack, the Hub Manager. “A bit like a triage service, we take time to listen to your needs and then suggest the best place to go for ongoing support and help.
Many queries we can deal with ourselves immediately, and sometimes people just want to pop in and pick up a copy of Gscene – and that’s absolutely fine too!”
In fact, both the opportunity and the challenge is the huge variety of things that people pop in with. In the brief time they have been open so far, the Hub has dealt with people wishing to report a hate crime; domestic abuse, sexual health issues (the Hub has its own HIV testing machine where you can buy a self-test kit). Other people have been in to talk about gender identity and help with coming out to parents.
The Hub has also started to host regular slots where some of the partner organisations can come and use the Hub as part of their outreach service. MindOut already have a regular Monday afternoon slot, and Pavilions and THT are also in the process of setting up regular weekly slots,
“We’ve come a very long way since the space was first handed over,” said Alan, “but we also know we have a long way to go before we achieve our vision of becoming THE subject matter experts in all things LGBT+ in our great city.”
The Hub are always looking for new volunteers – if you are interested, contact Joel Boardman, the Hub’s Volunteer Coordinator, on joel@therainbowhubmanager.com, or email Alan on alan@therainbowhubbrighton.com