The Door, a leading youth charity in the Stroud district in Gloucestershire, has been awarded the coveted National Youth Agency Quality Mark at Advanced level.
The Door has been supporting young people and their families for 30 years, injecting hope into their lives by unlocking their potential and opening up opportunities so that their past does not define their future.
The Quality Mark, awarded for three years, recognises high quality youth work through benchmarked standards and indicators based on the National Occupational Standards. It allows organisations to demonstrate how they achieve high standards assessed against each indicator and gives them an opportunity to be externally validated for excellent services.
The Door’s work includes running youth clubs, which became digital during lockdown and are now becoming physical venues again. Mentoring for young people is also important to The Door, which it believes helps build resilience, vital to mental well-being. It even has an online ‘Resilience Gym’.
Laura Keegan, Quality Practice Manager at NYA commented:
“The Door believes in investing in its people and that shows massively on the ground and sets them apart from other organisations. One of the things they do amazingly well is to look after their staff. They often recruit unqualified people and invest in their skills development.
“They’re also very well organised and I particularly like their robust reporting systems – they take an evidence-based approach from their own experience.
“One thing that really stood out was the standard of their data, accompanied with news stories, clear information about staff and examples of activities that are going on. Their application had me hooked.”
Victoria Robson, Chief Executive of The Door, said: “We are absolutely delighted and proud to have been awarded the NYA Quality Mark. It is the result of a lot of hard work by all the team at The Door to demonstrate our commitment to young people and our determination to help them have a future determined by their potential, not their past.”
For more information about the NYA Quality Mark, visit Quality Mark – NYA