Shelagh Young Consulting
Shelagh is an experienced consultant, facilitator and writer working mainly with third sector organisations in Scotland on leadership and governance, strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, awareness raising, evaluations and service review and design. She has a particular interest in user involvement.
She is also a qualified coach and trainer with substantial experience as a non-exec director, chair and senior charity manager. She moved from journalism into the Third Sector to take up senior management roles leading communications, campaigns and marketing teams. She has worked on change management projects both as an employee and as an external consultant.
Shelagh recently worked on an evaluative report on community food projects for Children in Scotland, developing community workshops with The David Hume Institute and on a research project with the Scottish Government and ClimateXChange addressing future challenges in social care.
Previous clients include Shelter, Adoption UK and Rosemount Lifelong Learning.
Shelagh holds a diploma in coaching skills, a CIPD diploma in training and development and an MA in Screenwriting. She has also been trained in service design techniques including user involvement. She is the author of several training packs, books and contributions to consumer and specialist publications and has trained writers in using Plain English.
As a senior manager in large UK charities including Oxfam GB and Home-Start UK, Shelagh learned a lot about strategic planning, good governance and effective communications. She became a non-exec director of the UK’s only customer owned co-operative telecoms provider in 2012. As its Chair she led a change process which resulted in it merging with a larger co-op in 2018. She knows exactly what it can feel like when the big decisions fall on you.
In more than six years of independent consultancy she has worked with a fascinating range of clients. From setting up a brand new social enterprise focused on building rural skills to helping organisations with impressive track records get back to full strength following shocks to the system such as funding crises and HR challenges, she is skilled in helping people find ways forward in challenging times.
She has extensive experience of creating easy to read reports and capturing user perspectives to help create successful funding applications and meaningful evaluations. Involving communities in service design and chairing and facilitating groups and events are among the other successful tasks and projects she has managed or partnered in over the past five years.