About Us | Includem

Our Story

Includem was established in 2000 by Sandy Jamieson, Gary Westwater and Olive Arens. Our three founding members – with over one hundred years of youth and social work experience between them – recognised that there were limits on what existing welfare and justice services could do to have a positive impact on the lives of Scotland’s children and young people.

Back then, includem’s focus was on bridging the gap between social care and criminal justice. The vision was to develop effective ways to challenge offending behaviour whilst inspiring more hopeful futures for young people. Together, Sandy, Gary and Olive had seen first hand the gaps in services and knew how they could forge a better path – through the powerful impact of one-to-one relationships, available when and where it was needed most, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Our Impact

Since 2000, we have supported over 5000
young people and their families,
across 18 Local Authority areas in Scotland

"Always there for me."

"Without Includem my family
would be living apart."

We have 5 offices and over 100 staff
providing services across Scotland

We have spent over £100,000 on providing extra support to young people through our Young Person’s Fund

"It’s life changing"

"I don’t think I would be here if it wasn’t for them."

In the last 10 years, we have answered
over 56,000 calls to our 24/7 Helpline -
a third of these were between the hours
of 5pm and 9am

"We haven’t ever had support like this where the workers really take time to understand us and my son."

In 2020, we spoke with over 200 young people & their families to gather their views and experiences, which we used to produce 3 research reports and respond to 8 calls for evidence from Scottish Government, Scottish Parliament and more.