Leading Lights, an innovative and imaginative, not-for-profit education and wellbeing social enterprise in Bristol, receives £75,000 investment from Resonance’s South West Social Investment Tax Relief Fund enabling them to develop their city centre hub space, create a brand-new community café, deliver a new range of much needed projects to help children and young people with social, emotional and mental health difficulties, as well as expanding their existing outreach services.

Leading Lights Education and Wellbeing Community Interest Company (LL) is a small but dynamic organisation in Bristol working with young people and children with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs, providing a range of specialist education and wellbeing niche services and support.

There can be shortfalls in some services available for young people who know what their aspirations are but who are missing out on their potential because of their needs; the loan will add significant benefits including establishing their first Leading Lights specialist hub in Bristol, which will complement their outreach services.

Their services however, are increasingly in demand from bigger statutory and third sector clients such as schools, local authorities, the NHS, charities and universities. These organisations are now looking to LL for their specialist and niche services including education support for young people who are unable to access main-stream education due to mental health needs, mentoring or therapeutic activities, and provision for widening participation or addressing learning and wellbeing needs.

There is also real demand for on-site small group services to combat social isolation faced by many young people with mental health needs.  LL’s specialist SEMH hub, named ‘Glow’, will be based in central Bristol. This space will offer imaginative expert support for children and young people of both primary and secondary school age, and their families who are disadvantaged because of (SEMH) difficulties. It provides a transformative, safe, loving, and warm space that makes a positive impact on the children, young people and their families they support.

It will offer a range of creative, imaginative and bespoke wellbeing programmes for children and young people affected by mental health which leaves them socially isolated, including small group mentoring, creative therapeutic learning programmes, advocacy drop ins, therapeutic creative writing, and parent support programmes. Positive outcomes include improved social, emotional, and mental health, reduced feelings of social isolation, ability to make friends and build supportive peer relationships and improved educational outcomes.

To enable these wellbeing programmes to be completely free for children and young people in need, LL will expand its education provision to meet paid for service demand from local authorities for children with mental health needs and will also generate sustainable revenue from a brand-new café and coffee shop which will be located within the Glow hub space! The café will serve the local community but will also become an important element in the development and expansion of their children’s programmes.

Sarah Louise Hopkins from Leading Lights says: “We are just absolutely thrilled that this amazing support that Resonance has given us will allow us to help more wonderful children and young people to thrive. Many of them have been through so many adverse experiences and fight every day to overcome the barriers that society puts in their way because of their mental health needs. They are truly inspirational and being able to finally launch Glow: our first specialist hub, having more staff and more capacity – all of which this loan allows us to do - will make a huge difference to how much we can help them to achieve what they deserve over the next few years. We are all glowing! It has given us a real chance at building sustainability for the future and to have real impact.”

Katalin Juhasz, Resonance’s Investment Manager explained: “I am delighted that the investment from Resonance will not only allow Leading Lights to meet the increasing demand for their services both from individual families and from organisations but will also enable them to develop their Bristol hub space and café, accelerating their impact sustainably through social investment at the right time.”

The Resonance South West SITR Fund is a pioneering social impact investment fund aimed at helping to dismantle poverty in the South West by investing in local social enterprises. It takes advantage of social investment tax relief (SITR) to simultaneously lower the cost of loans for enterprises and to enable a competitive return to investors.