Gloucester Youth Support Team – message development and web copywriting

Working with young people is notoriously hard. Writing for them is an even greater challenge.

Gloucestershire Youth Support Team (GYST) needed to overhaul its writing, so that it could communicate more clearly and purposefully with young vulnerable people in Gloucestershire, and professionals who work with them. They called us in to help.

The first part of this assignment was carrying out an in-depth focus group with GYST’s target audience, namely young people aged 16–18 and professionals who work with them, such as the police, health services and probation services, as well as voluntary and community groups.

We carried out group discussions and individual interviews with representatives of key professional stakeholders.

The task was complex because we had to cut through the complexity of information and messages to get to the core of what GYST does and how it helps young people.

We came up with answers, developing clear messages in language that young people could understand. We held a staff training session to discuss and adapt these messages.

Our next task was to help GYST use these messages and language as a basis for its new website.

We worked with the GYST team and their contracted web developers to first plan the structure of the new website, and then rewrite the content using the messages and tone of voice we developed.

Our task was that much harder because we had to write to precise word counts and templates.

The style of writing was aimed at both young people themselves and professionals who work with them, so that they could easily find out about GYST’s services.

Feedback about the site has been very positive. The site can be found at https://youthsupportteam.co.uk/