YOUNG PEOPLE continued GIVING OUR RESIDENTS THE BEST START AT UNIVERSITY Working with our Resident Ambassadors and our interns from the 10k Black Intern programme, we’ve focused on helping our residents settle in. This includes a programme of inclusive and meaningful events, and updates to our Community Living Guide to reflect the values that are important to our residents. We continue to improve and embed our student assistance programme – a 24/7 counsellor-lead helpline and app – which provides self-help tools and access to support. We have seen increasing usage and can identify from the data the main worries our residents have such as sleep, anxiety and their general wellbeing, so we incorporated these into our campaigns. IMPROVING INCLUSION AND ACHIEVEMENT Since founding the Unite Foundation in 2012, we have donated over £16 million to directly support more than 800 care-experienced and estranged young people with up to three years of free accommodation. In 2024, 95 new scholars joined the Unite Foundation community, and the cumulative total of Unite Foundation scholars who have successfully completed their studies and graduated reached 399. The work of the Unite Foundation effectively levels the playing field between Unite Foundation scholars and non-care leaver students. Further details are available here https:// thisisusatuni.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ Unite-Foundation-JiscAnalysis-Report-_Final.pdf. We understand that the transition to university, including living somewhere new, can be daunting and, sometimes, challenging. Our research highlights worries and expectations about fitting in, finances and adjusting to student life. This has sharpened our focus on the individual difficulties faced by some of the young people living with us, helping us provide a supportive environment to enable them to navigate challenges and reduce barriers to settling in. It is important that we continue to explore and remain responsive to nuanced challenges, such as socioeconomic background, race and neurodiversity, so that we strive for an equitable experience for all young people. This year we introduced a pre-arrival disclosure form, inviting residents to tell us about any additional needs or where they might need additional support. This encouraged neurodivergent students to let us know about sensitivities, allowing us to be more proactive in supporting their stay. Our Resident Ambassador programme has been strengthened with earlier recruitment and structured training. It provides a valuable opportunity for residents to earn alongside their studies. We aim to recruit a balanced team that truly represents our resident community. As part of our recruitment campaign, we worked with the Unite Foundation to guarantee interviews for care-experienced and estranged students. We continued to develop our Support to Stay framework, and enhanced the training our teams received, to meet the needs of our residents. Over 90% of our frontline teams have completed learning sessions on student support and CARE, our customer service programme. We continued to work with our university partners to support students facing financial difficulties, maintaining food pantries and issuing Aldi grocery vouchers to our most at-risk students. We commissioned leading think tank, the Social Market Foundation to deliver a report on the barriers facing care-experienced and estranged students. THE UNITE GROUP PLC Sustainability Report 2024 GOVERNANCE APPROACH PROGRESS SOCIAL IMPACT LOOKING FORWARD APPENDICES Our key ambitions and targets “ For anyone, but particularly care- experienced and estranged students, not having to worry about money is huge, because care leavers are likely to have little, to no, parental support. That then reduces financial stress and allows you to concentrate on your course.” Ambition 2022 2023 2024 Actual 2024 Target Progress Maintain support to Unite Foundation £1.7 million £1.8 million £1.9 million £1.8m On track 100% of properties to have Resident Ambassadors 50% 85% 91% 100% On track Our key ambition and metrics in this area are set out below (additional metrics and targets are in Appendix 3): UNITE FOUNDATION SCHOLAR 08 GOVERNANCE APPROACH SOCIAL IMPACT LOOKING FORWARD APPENDICES PROGRESS