Featured Member - Start360

Start360 provides a range of services and interventions in the areas of health, justice and employability.

They offer a diverse range of interventions from family support, counselling, mentoring, and advocacy through to group work and intensive residential experiences. This extends to supporting, encouraging and facilitating young people and vulnerable adults to overcome their difficulties in terms of mental health, substance use, offending behaviour and other risk-taking activities.

The organisation currently employs more than 100 people and has offices in Belfast, Derry, Ballymena, Lurgan, Omagh and Enniskillen. In addition, they have teams located in Hydebank, Maghaberry and Magilligan. Their staff are made up of youth workers, teachers, counsellors, social workers, nurses, accountants and a range of other professionals.

Start360 services are often cross-cutting and cross-referring, but can be grouped broadly into the categories of Health, Justice and Employability.

Health

Health services include the DAISY drug and alcohol services for young people and the AD:EPT drug and alcohol service for people in custody, Hidden Harm services for young people who are impacted by alcohol use within their family, our Community Alcohol and Drug Information service, our N-GAGE One Stop Shop in Ballymena and the AD:EPT2 throughcare service for people leaving custody who need help with alcohol issues. We also deliver mental health services, through the Protect Life Strategy, for young people and Lads2Dads, an innovative support service for young men denied access to their children.

Justice

Justice services include the Mentoring and Advocacy Service in Hydebank, our ADJUST throughcare service for young offenders and the EDGES service which works to provide earlier intervention for young people coming to the attention of the authorities.

Employability

Employability services include the Cool Choices programme in partnership with CoolFM, our Switch Onto Employment service for young people in the Belfast area and our GRIT REY challenge residential and mentoring programme.

Training

Start360 offers a wide range of training to youth workers and other professionals. These include Mentoring Skills, Peer Education, Youthwork qualifications, Motivational Interviewing and Dealing with Challenging Clients. Get in touch to discuss your training needs so Start360 can develop a bespoke programme to suit you.

Start360 is currently seeking Board Members, Ambassadors and Young Ambassadors.

To find out more about what Start360 does and how to get in touch, visit www.start360.org or find them on Twitter: @start360org.

Change starts here.....

Start360 on NICVA membership:
"As a NICVA member, Start360 is a regular user of facilities including room bookings, as well as working closely with NICVA on a number of policy issues. We chair the Policy and Lobbying Forum and the Justice DMG. We contribute to a number of events including Policy Hacks and have recently been working with NICVA to look at ways of addressing issues around procurement policy."