Counselling service Citizen Coaching CIC has received £125,000 from the Resonance West Midlands Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) Fund, helping the team provide more accessible therapy for people facing mental health challenges in the Birmingham area.

This is the eighth SITR investment from the Resonance West Midlands SITR Fund.

Citizen Coaching delivers a range of high-quality counselling, personal development coaching and anger management services, which address mental health issues, offending behaviours, addiction recovery and ‘worklessness’.

After securing social investment, the Birmingham-based social enterprise will now be able to expand its counselling team, invest in delivering more specialist therapy interventions, and also support younger clients with specialist support needs, through a new sensory play therapy space.

The investment will also help to develop Citizen’s crucial online mental health service, widening the scale and reach of their service significantly, and therefore enabling the organisation to have a much wider social impact.

Senior Investment Manager Grace England said: “Ensuring more people can access affordable and high-quality mental health support services is more crucial than ever before, so we are delighted to be supporting Citizen Coaching scale its provision through social investment from the Resonance West Midlands SITR Fund. It is brilliant to see social investment enabling Citizen to offer its vital services to more people that need them, whilst offering a wider range of more specialist interventions and support.”

Right at the heart of Citizens’ social mission is accessibility: it’s about making counselling and mental health support more accessible for people across Birmingham, regardless of their circumstances. The team now provides over 20,000 one-to-one counselling sessions a year, with 80% of these sessions being delivered completely free of charge to clients. Citizen also prides itself in tackling the long waiting times individuals often face when trying to access counselling. There can be up to a 12 week wait to access counselling in the area, but Citizen is providing a service to address this.

During a tough year for everyone’s mental health, it is brilliant to see Citizen Coaching reporting on average, 75% of their clients experienced a 'recovery' as defined by NHS statistics (the national target being 50%). 87% of anger management clients reported, even 6 months after treatment, that they experienced a noticeable or significant change positive change. It is these types of life changing social outcomes that Citizen is now looking to grow further, thanks to this SITR investment.

Founder and CEO Martin Hogg explained: “More than two-thirds of adults in the UK (69%) report feeling somewhat or very worried about the effect COVID-19 is having on their life. The most common issues affecting wellbeing are worry about the future (63%), feeling stressed or anxious (56%) and feeling bored (49%). (The Health Foundation health.org.uk) This investment from Resonance is going to enable us to increase our counselling capacity: reach more vulnerable people in these uncertain times. We will be not only be able to expand our counselling team but also equip our existing counsellors with the tools and skills they need to deliver counselling for clients presenting with loss, isolation, anxiety and long covid. We will also include add a Play Therapy Room and Sensory Room to enable children and young people with specific needs, better access counselling.”

This social enterprise believes in timely, affordable and jargon free mental health services where clients can track their own progress. Since 2005, Citizen have been dedicated to opening up mental health services with their range of courses - from anger management and coping with bereavement, to beating depression and increasing confidence.

Citizen is also recognised as a leading supplier of Anger Management training to other organisations and is a trusted partner of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, delivering professional development days to its members. This means Citizen is helping other organisations to improve the quality and accessibility of their mental health services, enabling many more individuals to improve their quality of life.  

Note: The National Psychiatric Morbidity Survey identified 23.8% of all adults (around 1 in 4) in the West Midlands Region with some kind of mental health problem

About Social Investment Tax Relief

The Resonance SITR Fund has pioneered the use the of Social Investment Tax Relief (SITR) which was introduced in 2015, and which simultaneously lowers the cost of loans for enterprises and enables the potential for competitive returns to investors.

The Resonance West Midlands SITR Fund provides a vital support scheme for social enterprises and charities that are working hard to improve vulnerable people’s lives in our communities across the region.

Resonance also operates a SITR Fund in the South West. 

For more information about investing in our SITR Funds click here. 

If you’re a social enterprise based in the South West or West Midlands and are looking for investment click here.