Nuorten Ystävät ry

(The Friends of the Young association)

Address of the organisation:

Torikatu 28

90100 Oulu

Finland

Phone number:

+358447341516

Website:

www.nuorten-yst.fi

Contact person:

Lassi  Kangasluoma

lassi.kangasluoma@nuorten-yst.fi

About the organisation

The Friends of the Young is a Finnish organization that provides nationwide social services related to child welfare, disability, substance misuse and mental health. These services support and complement the publicly provided services in these areas. The Friends of the Young group’s own Pohjola School and Martti Niemelä School as well as various partners in special vocational education provide a high standard of individually tailored learning.

The Friends of the Young has got dozens of operating units and development and pilot projects all over Finland, each of which strive to offer a better tomorrow for children, young people, families and disabled people as well as people recovering from substance misuse or from a mental health problem. The main focus of our development projects is social employment.

The Friends of the Young Group works with approximately 700 different people annually. In child welfare services and services for the disabled the age range is mostly from 7 to 17. In our other services the age distribution is much wider.

The Friends of the Young Group offers a wide range of settings to people facing different kind of challenges. In child welfare services our main competence is working with the most challenging child welfare clients. In our services for the disabled we have developed the rehabilitation of people with autism and Aspergers syndrome. We have also innovated new open-care services for young people with mental health problems and to people with dual diagnosis.