At Gold Coast Youth Service (GCYS) our vision is for young people on the Gold Coast to be valued, connected, hopeful about their future and supported to realise their full potential. As GCYS continues to grow we are committed to ensuring the quality of our work supports this vision.

GCYS actively pursues and invests in opportunities, capabilities and the aspirations of young people. To achieve our vision, we offer a continuum of support, spanning from early intervention, provision of immediate care, to transition-to-independence services, underpinned by an unwavering belief in young people’s potential through an Advantage Thinking Lens. This past year has seen us continue our collaboration with the Brotherhood of St. Laurence (BSL) and we are delighted to be launching our Advantage Thinking Practice Framework and Tool-kit promoting a purpose-driven, strengths-based culture.

To create lasting change, we recognise our role not only as a service provider, but as part of a broader ecosystem of services and sectors that impact young people’s lives. We have a shared responsibility to work alongside mainstream government departments, QPS, Safe Night Precincts and community partners to shift the conditions that lead to crisis. This means leveraging every point of system interaction as an opportunity to invest in a young person’s strengths, increase their access to opportunities, and support their long-term well-being and housing stability. Advantaged Thinking (AT) is our guide in this work and shifts the paradigm away from fixing problems toward building possibilities.