Inspire Youth and Family Services, based at 79 Poinsettia Street in Inala, has secured a Kickstarter early intervention grant to deliver its community-led Inspire Positive Redirection Program, targeting young people aged 8 to 17 in the southwest Brisbane suburb who are already showing signs of antisocial or early criminal behaviour.
The program combines mentoring, family support and community engagement to help participants build positive life pathways before disengagement becomes entrenched. It forms part of a broader round of four Kickstarter-funded early intervention initiatives across Greater Brisbane, with Inspire Youth and Family Services joining three other community organisations sharing more than $1 million in total funding. For Forest Lake and Inala residents, the program represents a direct, locally delivered response to the challenges that have long defined this part of southwest Brisbane.
A Service Built From the Ground Up in Inala
Inspire Youth and Family Services has operated in Inala for more than 35 years, making it one of the longest-standing youth support organisations in southwest Brisbane. The organisation works with children and young people from birth to 25 years of age, offering a multidisciplinary mix of services that spans educational re-engagement, youth housing and homelessness support, bail and court support, family case management and school-based youth welfare.
Among its most recognisable community assets is The Hut, a youth outreach centre located in DJ Sherrington Park in Inala. The Hut provides a safe and creative space for young people aged 12 to 25, running educational workshops, facilitated discussions and creative engagement programs throughout the year. That kind of embedded, accessible infrastructure sets Inspire apart from externally delivered programs, giving the organisation a genuine understanding of the community it serves and the trust of the families and young people who rely on it.
The Inspire Positive Redirection Program builds directly on that foundation. Targeting youth aged 8 to 17, the program focuses on those already showing early signs of antisocial behaviour or criminal engagement, combining structured mentoring with family support and broader community connections to redirect participants toward more positive outcomes.
Why Inala and Forest Lake Need Community-Led Responses
Inala sits approximately 22 kilometres southwest of Brisbane’s CBD and carries a long history as a planned public housing suburb, established in the early 1950s to address post-war housing shortages. That history has shaped the suburb’s demographics, with socioeconomic disadvantage remaining a real and persistent feature of life for many Inala families. Forest Lake, the broader ward within which Inala sits, includes a diverse and growing residential population, and while crime across the ward decreased significantly between 2023 and 2024, the underlying pressures that drive youth disengagement remain present.
Research consistently shows that early intervention programs, particularly those embedded within the communities they serve and delivered by organisations with established local trust, produce stronger outcomes than external programs. The Inspire Positive Redirection Program’s design reflects that understanding, placing mentoring, family involvement and community engagement at its core rather than relying on punitive or purely individual approaches. For children as young as eight, early redirection can be genuinely life-changing, interrupting patterns of behaviour before they escalate into more serious offending.
Why This Matters to Forest Lake and Inala Residents
For families living in and around Inala and Forest Lake, having a well-resourced, community-led program delivered by an organisation they already know carries real weight. Inspire Youth and Family Services is not a new presence in Poinsettia Street; it has been part of the suburb’s fabric for decades, operating through the complex social challenges that many southwest Brisbane families navigate.
The Inspire Positive Redirection Program extends that long-standing commitment into a space where the need is acute. Young people who receive early, structured support are far more likely to re-engage with education, build healthy social connections and avoid contact with the justice system in later life. For a community like Inala, where many families are working hard against significant headwinds, that kind of upstream investment in young people represents one of the most practical contributions a funded program can make.
Families, schools and community members seeking more information about Inspire Youth and Family Services or the Inspire Positive Redirection Program can contact the organisation at 79 Poinsettia Street, Inala QLD 4077, by phone on (07) 3372 2655, by email at office@iys.org.au or through the website at iys.org.au.
Published 23-March-2026.
