Northern Ireland Alternatives - Belfast

Background Northern Ireland Alternatives (NIA) is a community safety organisation that since its inception in 2000 has delivered all of its services based on a model of restorative practice. It addresses the problems of low-level crime and anti-social behaviour by attempting to fix the broken relationships between victim, offender and the community. NIA is accredited by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and has protocols in place with a number of statutory organisations that inform and enhance its collaborative work with the statutory sector at community level. Intensive Youth Support (IYS) The Intensive Youth Support is the model Alternatives use to meet the needs of young offenders and to provide mechanisms to encourage them to make positive change. Participants are usually aged between 10-18 and are predominantly male. Mediation And Community Support (MACS) MACS brings together the NIHE and NIA in a partnership that helps to create safer and more cohesive communities. The project is already committed to rebuilding and strengthening a positive sense of well-being, harmony and community confidence. It provides an example of a community- inspired and community- led model, which provides a non-violent alternative to conflict in communities that retain a deep legacy and culture of systemic violence. Restorative Adult Practices (RAPs) Alternatives RAPs is responsible for the oversight and delivery of restorative programmes to adult adjudicated offenders referred by the Probation Board of Northern Ireland. Family Services Many families within our communities face a number of issues, and Alternatives recognizes the need for personalized support that supports each family member. The stronger our families are, the stronger our communities will be. As such, we work as part of a Family Support Hub, which works to improve access to early intervention family Support services by matching the needs of referred families to family support providers within our communities. Schools Work Northern Ireland Alternatives has worked hard to build and maintain long term relationships with all of the schools within our service areas. This part of our focus, aims to promote and develop programs which deliver education and awareness of restorative practices within primary, post-primary, and alternative education provision schools. Youth Prevention Central to Northern Ireland Alternatives work has been providing opportunities for young people to participate more fully within their community. It is essential that young people have an understanding of and an opportunity for playing a more positive and constructive contribution to community cohesion. To this end Alternatives have provided a range of interventions and activities that are designed to be preventive, diversionary, developmental and educational. Youth Safety Network The Youth Safety Network aims to promote the safety and well-being of young people, their families and their communities through a process of engagement, participation and service delivery. We aim to deliver practical youth led responses to locally identified need. The project aims to engage with the most hard to reach, disaffected and excluded young people within communities across Northern Ireland to establish localised Youth Safety Partnerships. NEETS & Employability Services While some young people within our communities excel in their educational pursuits, and go on to find full employment, others have a difficult time, fall behind, and eventually leave school with little or no qualifications. Without these, our young people often find themselves unable to successfully compete for jobs, and fall by the wayside, becoming at-risk for involvement in anti-social behaviour, development of addictions (both drug and alcohol), and most of all, “poverty of aspiration.” The START programme reaches out to unemployable young people aged 17-25, with the goal of making them employable. The program is 14 weeks long, and teaches important life skills and employment ethics. START is offered at Greater Shankill, East Belfast, and North Down.