Chief Executive Officer

About Us

Open Door Scotland is a charity that has been working for over thirty years with vulnerable young people at risk of homeless. The young people may have been affected by family breakdown, are care leavers, have been physically, emotionally or sexually abused, have poor mental health or well-being, are socially isolated and will struggle to find or sustain employment due to lack of qualifications or experience.

We support the young people who come to us in a number of ways. Our priority is to provide a safe space for those in crisis and we work with them to devise a support plan to enable them to manage the transition from homelessness, cope with independent living and progress towards positive outcomes. A support plan is tailored to individual need and can include: welfare advice, budgeting, cookery skills to encourage healthy eating on a budget, education and training, employability skills and volunteering opportunities. We also aim to give each young vulnerable individual practical support. This can include furniture, a household pack with basic toiletries and cleaning materials and a food pack. Many of the young people come to us with nothing more than a small bag of clothes so this practical support is essential.

We offer the following core services:

1. Craighill residential accommodation – a ten bedded supported accommodation in the Craigshill area of Livingston providing housing support services to young people aged 16-25 years old
2. Care experienced visiting support – visiting support to circa. 11 young people in supported accommodation throughout West Lothian
3. Outreach support to care experienced young people – visiting housing support, regardless of accommodation status supporting all care experienced young people in West Lothian on a referral basis from West Lothian Council’s Children’s Services
4. Visiting housing tenancy support for unaccompanied asylum seeking children – visiting support to 21 unaccompanied asylum seeking children specific identified accommodation in West Lothian
5. Outreach service – providing holistic outreach support to young people aged 16 – 25 years old at risk or experiencing homelessness. This service encompasses one to one support, an employability service, a volunteering project and health and wellbeing service

Mission Statement

Open Door operates as an enabling and empowering organisation. The approach to our work is innovative and multi-disciplinary in the skilled and effective delivery of safe secure accommodation and support to young people at risk of homelessness between the ages of 16 and 25 years.

We are looking to review this mission statement and one of the roles of the incoming CEO will be to re-set and agree this with the team and the board.