Founder: Laura Bailey is an accomplished and experienced youth sector leader.

This started as a community cohesion volunteer at a Surestart Childrens Centre, delivering activity sessions to parents and children to help with wellbeing when Laura saw a need for the local community when her own children were primary age.

Moving on to a role as a Project Support Worker for a unique Big Lottery Funded Young Mums Programme for a Social Justice Charity. An opportunity to create life changing opportunities whilst working alongside statutory services to support young mums in their journey into motherhood, a project Laura felt deeply about after becoming a Mum at 19 herself and having her goal to study Sociology interrupted by a local college who told her she would never pass exams with a young baby! 

Subsequent to this Laura spent several years working as a co-ordinator for the Local Authority on the ‘Troubled Families Agenda’ engaging young people with multiple and complex needs and disadvantages to re-engage them into education through holistic and encompassing family support via an Early Help assessment and action plan.

Laura embraced this role and was quickly recruited as a casual Youth Worker also, created new sports coaching initiatives for a group of very marginalised young people in their own community. Laura reflects on her pinnacle of this role being the opportunity to accompany two tall ship ‘Voyages of Discovery’ sailing the English Coast with 24 young people.

Laura consolidated her detailed understanding of the sector, particularly around safeguarding and education practice and policies to return to Nacro in a managerial capacity; leading a team of staff within an alternative education and training centre; collaboration with the Care Leavers Team and Youth Offending contributed to effectively supporting particularly disadvantaged cohorts of young people.

Deciding that the next step in her path would be to consolidate the skills and experience Laura then returned to Education herself in 2019, studying and achieving a First Class Criminology degree. During this time Laura continued the coalface work with young people as a mentor for young people.