Youth Access

Member Profile: The Market Place, Leeds

08 October, 2009

The Market Place is:

• a Leeds based, well-established provider of young people's Counselling, Youth Work and mental health support services for 13-25 year olds.
  

• renowned for its 'young person centred' approach in the development and delivery of services

• held in esteem by national bodies, local commissioners of young people's services, other service providers and most significantly by the young people who access and recommend the services

• is a front-runner in the development and delivery of early intervention youth support services, particularly in relation to meeting young people's mental health, sexual health and crisis support needs

• is the only service in Leeds offering the range and quantity of mental health focused, one to one services for this age range in a young person centred environment
  

Youth Access Membership
Sally Dawson, Director, The Market Place: 'The Market Place has been a member of Youth Access for several years. We find that keeping in touch with national developments and sharing good practice with similar agencies has been very helpful. In addition, the coordinators meetings are a great opportunity to get support and learn from each other.'

Innovations at The Market Place
The Market Place has developed the outcome monitoring tool 'How do you rate your life?'.  This outcome system was developed in conjunction with young people at The Market Place over a two year period - with support and input from the University of Leeds and the Mental Health Foundation. 

A full report can be downloaded from www.themarketplaceleeds.org.uk .

For hard copies of the report or to enquire about the toolkit and support package produced by The Market Place to enable other agencies to implement the 'How do you rate your life?' tool in their own settings, please contact: Lizzie Neill on 0113 246 1659 or: liz.themarketplace@virgin.net

The Market Place has a wealth of experience and expertise in high quality service user involvement. A range of feedback, response and participation systems are used and aim to embed the voices and experiences of service users into organisational development. This happens through careful and thorough dissemination of feedback to stakeholders in a variety of ways.  The young people's participation and advisory group HYPE (Helping Young Peoplethrough Experience) are a key part of this and meet regularly to work on a range of issues and ideas to support the development of services and to have fun!

What now for The Market Place?
For the last few years The Market Place has been trying to find larger, more suitable premises to move to in Leeds city centre. This has taken a lot of time, energy and resources for a small team. and has yet to be resolved. Despite this they are continuing to provide services to young people under these difficult circumstances. Similar to other Voluntary Sector agencies, The Market Place has grown in provision over the years to meet the demand but funding has not kept up with this growth. The level of under funding has long been acknowledged, however delays in the new commissioning arrangements has meant that The Market Place has been struggling financially since 2009 and is currently in the process of restructuring and downsizing to manage this current situation. They hope this will be resolved soon and look forward to clarity around local commissioning arrangements as current uncertainties are having a big impact on a lot of smaller independent organisations including The Market Place.

The Market Place would like to thank all the organisations and people locally and nationally for their continued support – particularly during the current situation - and look forward to continuing to provide high quality support services to the young people of Leeds.

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