A CHARITY working with pupils excluded from school is celebrating after picking up a prestigious business award.

One-Eighty won The Oxford Times Charity and Community Award at the Oxfordshire Business Awards on Friday.

It was on a shortlist of three competing for the award, alongside Transition by Design and Witney Music Festival.

More than 500 business leaders and their staff attended the black tie dinner on Friday at Oxford Brookes University, hosted by impressionist Rory Bremner.

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Guests used an app to choose the charity they wanted to win and One-Eighty emerged as the clear favourite.

Rebekah Sammut, development manager at the charity, said she was delighted One-Eighty had been chosen by the audience.

She added: “This recognition will help raise our profile - all our staff work very hard - this is amazing.”

One-Eighty, based at Kings Meadow on the Osney Mead industrial estate in West Oxford, is making a big difference to the lives of vulnerable young people.

READ AGAIN: One-Eighty's Make Me Smile school project

It offers intensive intervention programmes for youngsters aged four to 18 with complex mental health needs, whose behaviour causes them to be at risk of exclusion from school and mainstream society.

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Nearly 30 per cent are children in care, or adopted and 54 per cent have experienced domestic violence or substance abuse in the family unit.

Over the past seven years the charity’s intervention targets have demonstrated a success rate of between 67 per cent and 85 per cent.

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Ms Sammut received the award alongside Tom Gardiner, a trustee. He said: “This award is testament to the hard work of everyone who works for the charity, transforming the lives of young people going through tough times.”

Last year, 94 young people received one-to-one support and 35 took part in One-Eighty’s summer project.

This year the team has designed and rolled out its Make Me Smile project, a primary school mental health project delivered to Year 6 children who then deliver the same project to Year 3s.

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In a one-hour session, Make Me Smile takes away the stigma of mental health problems, helps children to see how it might be affecting those around them, and offers them ‘first aid’ skills on how to cope with these challenges.

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As a charity, One-Eighty relies on fundraising from trusts and support from local organisations to develop and deliver projects. Ms Sammut added: “Winning this award will help to spread the word of the amazing work that the team does to support young people to turn their lives around. We can’t thank everyone at the awards ceremony enough for voting for One-Eighty.”