About us
One team.
One direct line.
The Ember Project provides supported accommodation for young people aged 16–25, anywhere in Wales. It's founder-led and run by a staff team hired for experience — the person you deal with is the person accountable for it.
Young people leaving care need two things most services talk about and fewer provide: an ordinary house that doesn't mark them out, and adults who stay. That's the whole idea. Shared houses of 2–4 on ordinary streets, or solo provision where the plan calls for it. Own lockable room, own key. One named key worker who turns up every week.
Every house is in Wales — that's where we provide the service. We take referrals from any local authority across the UK, not only Welsh councils.
The people
Who you'd be dealing with
The founders
Between them they read every referral, visit every house every week, and attend reviews in person for the first 12 weeks of a placement. Reach them on 07849 429020 or referrals@the-emberproject.co.uk — both go to a founder, not a queue.
The staff team
The people in the houses are hired for steadiness and experience — care, hostels, youth work — and some have been on the other side of the system themselves. Every member of staff clears an enhanced DBS before their first shift, gets real supervision every month, and is bound by the same house rules as the residents.
What founder-led means here
If something goes wrong you call a founder, and the person you call is the person who can fix it. You won't be routed through a switchboard or handed to someone who has never met the young person — you get the team who knows them, and the founder who answers for it.
Honesty first
We're new. We won't pretend otherwise.
We won't show you outcome charts, because we don't have years of data and won't invent it. No testimonials, no invented track record. What we'll put in writing instead: who runs the service, how fast we respond, and exactly what a young person gets — and you can hold us to all of it.
What a new provider can offer that an incumbent often can't: direct accountability, capacity that's actually available, and a practice model written this year against the current statutory guidance — not retrofitted to it.
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people
Matching for culture, not just for a bed
A young person who has arrived in the UK alone is not the same referral as a care leaver from the next town, and a placement that ignores the difference tends to fail quietly rather than loudly. We would rather say what we actually do about it than list "cultural awareness" as a training course and leave it there.
The match itself
We ask about language, faith, diet and country of origin at referral, and we consider them alongside the usual questions about age and risk. Sharing a house with someone you can talk to in your first language is not a nice-to-have — it is often the difference between a young person who settles and one who withdraws. Where we can put that together, we will; where we can't, we will tell you so rather than place anyway and hope.
Food, faith and the ordinary things
Halal or other dietary requirements are met properly, not approximated. Young people cook their own food and we shop for what they actually eat, not a standardised list. We find out where the nearest mosque, church, temple or community group is before someone arrives, and getting there is treated as part of the support, not an extra.
Language and interpreting
Nothing that matters — a support plan, a house rule, a complaint route, a medical appointment — is explained through another young person acting as an interpreter. Where a young person's English isn't strong enough for the conversation, we use proper interpreting, and we write records in language they can actually read.
The asylum process runs alongside everything
Screening interviews, substantive interviews, solicitors, age assessments, Home Office correspondence: these land on top of ordinary life and do not wait for a convenient week. Key workers help young people keep appointments, get to legal advice, and understand what is happening to them. We do not give immigration advice — that is a regulated activity and we will say so — but we make sure the people who can are actually reached.
What we won't do
Treat unaccompanied young people as a single group with a single set of needs. Assume that shared nationality means an automatic good match, or that difference means a bad one — we ask the young person. Or take a referral where we can't meet the cultural and language needs the plan calls for. Being clear about that up front is more useful to you than discovering it eight weeks in.
Scrutinise us
DBS certificates for the founder and every member of staff, safer recruitment records, insurance and policies are available before any referral is made. Visit any house unannounced. We'd rather you checked than took our word.
hello@the-emberproject.co.ukWe don't publish photographs of young people or of our houses — not stock, not silhouettes, not a street view. That's why this site is words rather than pictures. It's a safeguarding decision, not a design one.