In this Together

One of Liverpool’s longest-running charities, YMCA Together was established in 1846 as a place of hope, light and unquestioning support for those in need.

We sat down with chief executive Ellie McNeil to find out more about the organisation’s proud history and the vital work it does to help people here in Merseyside who are experiencing challenging times.

If someone has never heard of YMCA Together. How would you explain to them what is it and what it’s all about?

The City of Liverpool Young Men’s Christian Association, now known as YMCA Together, was established 177 years ago to support people at the time who were experiencing issues around poverty, worklessness, alcohol dependency and poor education. In our early days, we did a lot of work in the city with people that were emigrating and had come here to the docks.

Throughout our history, we’ve been a staple of the community and offered support for people who are experiencing challenging times. That’s changed a little bit in terms of the specific work that we’re doing, but we still aim to be alongside our communities and do whatever is required to meet their needs.

In 2023, what that looks like is support for people experiencing homelessness, domestic abuse, drug and alcohol issues, and poor mental health, mostly via a kind of supported accommodation model. We work in what we call a psychologically informed way and that means as we’re working with people, we’re thinking about what’s sitting underneath for them.

For example, homelessness, or drug and alcohol issues, they’re a symptom of something. If we just treat the symptom, and maybe take away the drugs and alcohol, or give somebody a home, that doesn’t actually solve the problem. We try to support people to think about what’s sitting underneath and what we can help them to do differently so they can have a different future for themselves.

And yourself? What is your background?

My background is in psychology. I did Applied Psychology at university and worked at Manchester Prison as an assistant psychologist. I was very interested in the number of people coming in and out of prison really quickly because of either drug or alcohol dependency. That was the area that I specialised in – thinking about addiction in all of its guises and how people’s early life and experiences can mean that they go on to become dependent on alcohol or drugs.

Prior to coming to the YMCA, the rest of my career was spent in drug and alcohol treatment services. Since I joined the YMCA nine years ago, the organisation has changed a lot but the majority of the people accessing our services will have had really difficult early life experiences and trauma. That’s the focus of my work.

Aside from the main services, what else does YMCA do within the local community which you think people might not be aware of?

With all of our services, we’re really keen to raise the profile of the work that we’re doing because there will be people in need of help and support that don’t know that we’re here. But also, part of our work is about engaging with our local communities and seeing what they need, and then what we can provide.

We’ve got Dutch Farm which is a farm in Garston with animals and we grow all of our own organic produce there. That produce goes back into services which are supporting people experiencing homelessness. The farm can be booked for community use and we work with other local charities and schools. People in our services also use the space to get back to nature and to boost their health and wellbeing and learn new skills. Our corporate partners might also come and do a day of work on the farm as a team-building exercise.

How, and in what ways, has the current cost of living crisis affected the amount of support YMCA Together is offering people across the region?

People are really struggling to make ends meet. We see that with people in our services, but we are also seeing an increasing number of people experiencing homelessness in the city and beyond. I chair the health and wellbeing network for LCVS (Liverpool Charity and Voluntary Services) and so I know from the smaller organisations which provide food bank services and more, that the need for those services has increased exponentially.

Here at YMCA Together, we are working to provide food to people using our services as well, which is something that we’ve never done in the past. Most of our services weren’t catered but over the last two years or so, because of the cost of living crisis and the impact of the pandemic, we’ve moved to provide food parcels to people using our services.

How have you managed to find the extra money required to deliver this extra assistance to people?

Funding is one of our biggest organisational pressures and we don’t have a lot of fundraising come into the organisation, so it’s one of the areas where we will work with local food partners. We get quite a lot of food donated by supermarkets that can’t sell certain items, but some of it we need to buy ourselves in order to provide a balanced diet for people and that’s where it can be really challenging from a financial point of view.

YMCA Together was last year named Best Charity to work for in the UK at the inaugural Best Companies Live virtual event. What is it about YMCA that makes it such a great and rewarding place to work?

I think we’re an organisation that is genuinely value-led and value-focused. Lots of organisations talk about their values, but for us, it feels like a golden thread through all that we do. For example, the way that we recruit staff is based on our values of strength, humility, respect, empathy and kindness – we call them our SHREK values. Also, the way that the organisation is led [is based on these values].

We know that if we are genuinely kind and caring towards our staff, then they are much more likely to be able to be kind and caring towards the people that we work alongside. The way that we behave, the way that we make sure that staff feel cared about and the wellbeing work that we do, I think all go a long way to creating that feeling that we’re a good employer.

We all spend a huge amount of time at work and it feels really important that people come in feeling excited for the day and ready to go. The work that we do can be really challenging. We see people in absolute despair and hear about people’s trauma. This is within what is an increasingly difficult climate, with the cost of living crisis and the current state of the government.

For me, it’s really important that the staff have autonomy over the decisions that they make and that they’ve got development opportunities, and that when things go wrong, we’re alongside them in the same way that we are with the people we support in the charity.

In 2022, YMCA Together was awarded the Freedom of Liverpool at the end of its 175th year. Was this honour a sign that the organisation is just as important today as it was when it was founded in 1844?

Yes and I think that’s a really nice way to put it. For us, it feels like recognition that we’re a key part of the city and a key part of our communities in the city. It is a huge honour. I think that it also shows that we are a long-standing charity in the city and that we will continue to be alongside our communities for whatever they need from us.

For more information about YMCA Together and how to access its services, visit www.ymcatogether.org.uk

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