The lowdown has been awarded a Youth Investment Fund grant to extend and refurbish its building and expand its youth service offer to young people across Northamptonshire
The lowdown is a mental health charity providing free and confidential support services to young people aged 11-25 living in Northamptonshire. They aim to provide a caring, non-judgemental environment where young people are supported fully on their journey towards positive emotional health and wellbeing regardless of ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexuality, economic condition, or perceived disadvantage.
But this vital young people’s service is struggling to keep up with growing demand. They want to be there for every young person who needs specialist support across Northamptonshire. A grant from the Youth Investment Fund will help the lowdown be there for even more young people, and make their building more accessible. It will also fund a new Youth Advisory Board, empowering more young people to be at the heart of their service.
The lowdown has been awarded a transformational Youth Investment Fund grant to extend and refurbish its Kingswell Street Building and expand its youth service offer to young people across Northamptonshire. It is very welcome news for young people supported by the lowdown who will benefit from the generous funding and means that the lowdown will have the capacity to support around 3,000 young people per year when the project is complete.
Most of the funding is granted for capital expenditure and will enable them to almost double their capacity. The rest is awarded to provide new youth services for 11–18-year-olds to support young people on their journey towards positive emotional health and wellbeing.
The lowdown is one of 43 youth services in England to benefit from the first wave of Youth Investment Fund grants. A grant of £1,292,064.00 over two years will transform the lowdown services for young people. The lowdown is keen to get the building works started as soon as possible as they have already run out of space. They have seen, and are still seeing, a 20% year on year increase in demand for their services since 2020.
We are delighted to be awarded the funding to increase our capacity and service offer for young people in Northamptonshire as demand for our services has quadrupled over the last four years. Our Kingswell Street location is a discreet, trusted, safe, non-judgemental space and has been since we opened in 1989, hence the need to further develop this site. Our new Youth Advisory Board will help us scope and develop our new services to ensure they meet the needs of the young people who will use them.
Sharon Womersley
CEO for the lowdown
The new services, which are planned to be rolled out from Spring 2023, will include a new Youth Advisory Board which will feed into the new service offer of youth activities and wellbeing groups to support and empower young people to make positive changes in a safe, friendly and non-judgmental environment.
The funding will also go towards improving accessibility to the services offered by the lowdown, and the infrastructure of the organisation to cope with its expansion.
The lowdown is a wonderful place to go for any issues worrying young people. The lowdown is very good at what it aims to do, supporting young people with their mental health. Every day they positively impact a young person's life. The lowdown has supported me in different ways through its counselling service, with its 1:1 support. The counsellors know how to handle all situations and always offer the best support based on their client. The lowdown has also supported me through the wellbeing cafe with workers always greeting you with a smile and finding ways to support you whatever your needs. It would be beneficial for the lowdown to receive more funding as this means they could add to resources they have, increase space and their counsellor numbers, and help even more young people.
One of the young people supported by the lowdown
