12 October 2005

The lottery has granted £500,000 to develop a website that gives advice to young people.

Youthnet will use the money to develop the site, askTheSite.org and increase the number of young people accessing confidential advice services to get hold of reliable and trustworthy advice.

It will also allow the expansion of the range of response systems, which include both professional advisors and advice from peers aged from 18 to 25 years old.

"This funding will ensure that we reach more of the most disadvantaged young people in the UK, who will have immediate access to the support they say they need on the issues that effect them - in a way that is accessible, confidential and responds to their desire for anonymity," said Fiona Dawe OBE, chief executive for Youthnet.

Youthnet aims to provide young people with frank and balanced information and around 250,000 young people visit the site every month. On occasions when the site has been heavily publicised, this number has risen to 1.2 million.

Askthesite.org also introduced mobile text message alerts last year, so users would know their question had been answered and was accessible on the web.

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