Guiding Young Minds (GYM) grew and developed from the charity ASSIST Trauma Care; a specialist therapeutic organisation dedicated to supporting people who have suffered psychological trauma. GYM is now a therapeutic service which recognises that young people caught up in gangs and knife crime have often experienced adverse childhood events.
The GYM Youth Bus
A mobile outreach solution born from the comprehensive Youth Endowment Fund evaluation of GYM community provisions between 2019 to 2022; this collected and evaluated of GYM outcome data, plus carried out interviews with young people, parents, teachers and social workers.
As a deployable solution, GYM operates from Youth Buses and becomes part of the prevention solution with local authorities and multi-agencies within Police & Crime Commissioner and Community Safety Partnership structures across the Midlands and South East.
GYM Youth Bus outreach sessions take place in town squares, parks and even by the side of the road. For example, Coventry council has given us a key and permission to access all the parks in Coventry, which they do in school holidays as well as during after school hours.
The GYM Youth Bus operates as a mobile youth club transporting a variety of sports and games equipment, which are set up in each area for the use of local young people without cost, and can travel to different communities where there is a lack of youth provision.
From 2026, across 9 marketplace areas of the East and West Midlands, the objective is to build social value collaboration with business suppliers through their contracts; a fleet of GYM Youth Buses forming part of a long-term exploitation and violence prevention approach within some the hardest to reach communities.
Any business supplying into the emergency services, councils, NHS and criminal justice services can collaborate for social value with GYM.
Click below to make contact and raise an SPO as part of your bid.