Our Work · Vibrant Health Advocates

Teenagers in a community centre kitchen during a Caldera cooking and budgeting workshop, focus on the young man at the hob

How we work

Meeting young people where they already are

Our work takes place primarily in schools — in Carnoustie High and five other partner secondaries across Angus — but also in community venues including Carnoustie Community Centre and the Arbroath Sports Centre.

We meet young people in the environments they already inhabit, because we know that unfamiliar settings add an unnecessary barrier. Workshops are delivered in small groups of eight to twelve, which allows facilitators to read the room, adapt on the fly, and ensure that quieter participants are genuinely heard rather than talked past.

We work hard to make our sessions feel nothing like school — there are no wrong answers, no grades, no performance pressure — while still being rigorous, evidence-based and purposeful.

Alongside our school programme, we offer a summer intensive — a two-day residential held each August at a local outdoor centre — for young people who are about to begin their first job or college placement and want an immersive preparation experience. The summer intensive has a waiting list; demand has outstripped our capacity every year since we launched it.

What we offer

Our four programmes

Each programme targets a different dimension of the school-to-adulthood gap — but together they form a coherent picture of what a confident, self-directed young adult looks like.

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Launchpad Life Skills

A six-session workshop series delivered in S5 and S6, covering the everyday essentials that smooth the leap into independent adulthood.

Launchpad Life Skills runs across a half-term block, with sessions on financial basics (reading a payslip, setting up a bank account, understanding Universal Credit), domestic health (nutrition on a budget, food hygiene, managing sleep), digital safety and housing rights. Each session is hands-on: participants cook, calculate, draft letters and practise phone calls in pairs. Session six is a ‘dry run’ day — a simulated adult morning that asks young people to manage a mock bank balance, book a GP appointment and prepare for a job interview, all before lunch.

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Mind Ready

A three-session mental-health awareness programme that builds emotional vocabulary, crisis-recognition skills and knowledge of local support routes.

Mind Ready is delivered by our trained facilitators, several of whom have personal experience of mental-health challenges and have chosen to share that openly in a structured, facilitated way. Sessions cover the difference between stress and clinical anxiety, how to talk to a GP or employer about mental health, and a mapped guide to every relevant support service available to young people in Angus — from CAMHS referral pathways to Samaritans, Mind and local peer-support groups. Participants complete a personal ‘wellbeing plan’ they can take with them.

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Speak Up

A two-session self-advocacy workshop equipping young people to represent themselves confidently in workplace, healthcare and housing contexts.

Speak Up is built entirely around role-play and real-world scenarios sourced from Angus young people’s experiences: challenging a payslip error, requesting a reasonable adjustment for a learning difficulty, appealing a college bursary decision, reporting a disrepair issue to a letting agent. Participants learn a simple three-step framework — Prepare, State, Persist — and practise it until it feels natural. A short take-home guide summarises their rights in each of the four key adult contexts and lists free legal and advice services available in Tayside.

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Peer Mentoring Circle

An ongoing peer-support programme pairing programme graduates aged 18–23 with current S5 and S6 participants for monthly one-to-one mentoring.

Peer Mentoring Circle recognises that some of the most credible guidance a school leaver can receive comes from someone who was sitting where they are just a year or two ago. Our peer mentors receive twelve hours of mentor training before they begin, covering active listening, boundaries, safeguarding and how to signpost appropriately. Matches are made on the basis of shared interests and intended next step. Monthly sessions are light-touch — a walk, a coffee, a conversation — but the continuity of that relationship across the school-to-adulthood transition has consistently proven to be one of the most valued elements of what we offer.

Beyond the classroom

Investing in the networks around young people

Beyond direct delivery, we invest in the adult networks around young people. We run an annual briefing for employers in Carnoustie and Arbroath, sharing what their new young staff are likely to be navigating and how a little flexibility and plain communication can make an enormous difference to retention and wellbeing.

We also maintain a close working relationship with Angus Health and Social Care Partnership, contributing a young-person’s perspective to their planning processes and ensuring that our work aligns with — and helps fill gaps in — the statutory provision available to school leavers in the region.

Our summer intensive — a two-day residential held each August at a local outdoor centre — brings together young people about to begin their first job or college placement for an immersive preparation experience. It has had a waiting list every year since we launched it, which tells us everything we need to know about the hunger for this kind of support.

Get involved Partner with us

Young peer mentor walking and talking with a programme participant outside Carnoustie Community Centre