Teenage Helpline, a peer support charity for young people, has rebranded as Youth4Youth with the aim of better reflecting its emphasis on early intervention.

The charity, which provides peer-led support to young people aged 10 to 25, has rolled out the name change as part of a major rebrand, which also includes a new logo.

Josh Towers, the charity’s chief executive and who founded it in 2011 aged 14, said the name change was intended to recognise how therapeutic support services had evolved since the charity’s launch.

He said: “While ‘helpline’ felt right at the time, we no longer feel it is truly reflective of our approach to supporting young people today.”

“Helplines are often seen as a last resort, when issues such as mental health hit a breaking point, but what Youth4Youth truly wants to promote is early engagement – and conversation – to stop this point ever being reached.”

Towers added that the new branding allows the charity to be “friendly, comforting and welcoming, rather than clinical or corporate”. 

The new look “encourages day-to-day support and a conversational approach, long before the point of crisis,” he said.

The charity consulted its youth advisory committee – five people aged between 14 and 25 – about the changes, who Towers said “all felt very positive about the new branding”.

“They were in full agreement that the brand Teenage Helpline was less representative of those we were looking to support as the services had evolved over time.”

The charity spent about £3,000 on the rebrand and worked with the South Yorkshire-based public relations agency Altitude. 

The agency led on the development of the new name, brand guidelines, logo, social graphics and captions, and is supporting the charity with outreach, said Towers.

More than 1,500 volunteering hours were also spent on the rebrand, he added – particularly from the charity’s IT team, who built the new website and improved functionality to assist young people in engaging with the charity.

Youth4Youth is also planning to introduce a new chat feature this year, which will allow young people to speak with their mentors via its website.