Scots youth support charity gets first class rating for improving young people’s lives 

Scottish youth support charity Includem has been awarded the Care Inspectorate’s top rating for their work in helping to improve young people’s lives.

The charity, which has offices in Glasgow, Glenrothes, Dundee, Aberdeen and Stirling, offers intensive 24/7 support for vulnerable young people and their families was given an ‘excellent’ grade for the third year running.

Inspectors were particularly impressed by the impact of their work with young people on the fringes of criminality.

“We heard about the huge impact their joint work with Police Scotland had, when the police identified and referred young people to Includem within Glasgow offending rate reduced by half,” they said in their report.

“We consistently heard from young people and their families that Includem had made a significant difference in their lives.”

Includem works with around 350 young people experiencing challenges dealing with day to day living. It offers tailored, intensive support to build confidence and social skills to help them progress towards better lives.

The service is backed by a 24/7 helpline that service users can call for instant support.

Includem Chief Executive, Martin Dorchester (pictured) said: “To gain such recognition from the inspectorate is a reinforcement for us that our intensive, trust based one-to-one approach to supporting young people facing difficult challenges in their lives really does help transform their life prospects.

“Our model of support is based upon building solid relationships of trust through this approach we are able to help young people make positive life choices and progress towards the type of future they want to live.

“It is not only the Inspectorate who are telling us this it is our young people themselves.”

Feedback from young people the charity works with included, “If Includem wasn’t in my life, my life would be two times worse. I have people I can trust. I can talk to them,” and “Both my sons have spoken to workers about things they wouldn’t speak to me about directly and then workers have been able to speak to us and it has been resolved.”

The full inspection report can be downloaded here.

Picture (c) Caledonian Macbrayne.