Noise Solution information pack 2024

About Noise Solution

Noise Solution delivers 1:1 music mentoring programmes that fuse digital youth work, Self Determination Theory, cloud technologies and music technology mentoring. We have been independently proven to consistently improve wellbeing among young people a facing a variety challenging circumstances and barriers. Barriers like:

• School refusal

• Disruptive behaviours

• Lack of motivation or self-esteem

• Unwillingness/inability to engage

• Anxiety or depression

• Neuro diverse challenges

• Looked after children struggling to thrive

• Students at risk of exclusion

• Re-engagement with school or mental health professionals

You can see a short two-minute video about our work here. Of the last 200 young people we’ve worked with we’ve essentially seen a halving of low levels of well-being. This claim was arrived at using a validated NHS well-being measurement tool that we can benchmark against results from 60,000 other users of the same validated tool across the UK. You can see more details on our impacts in this video here.

Website www.noisesolution.org

HQ address

The Mix

127 Ipswich Street

Stowmarket

Suffolk

IP14 1BB

Phone (01284) 771156

Email hello@noisesolution.org

Referral link https://www.noisesolution.org/referral

What does a typical programme look like?

The young person is paired with a professional music mentor over 20 hours. Sessions can be digital over Zoom using our cloud based recording studio or delivered at the participant’s home or school, with the opportunity to progress to a professional recording studio for the final five sessions.

Throughout the programme, the young person and music mentor use a combination of music technology and instruments to work on a creative project as chosen and directed by the young person. The whole process is documented safely using audio, photos and videos on our own cloud-based platform, creating a digital story of success that develops with each session.

The participant can share their success with friends, family and professional keyworkers in a way that looks and feels like a social media feed, inviting those others to comment on the digital story. In this way we create a cycle of positive affirmation from people whose opinions matter to the young person. That platform is closed and available only to the trusted adults they each invite into their own private feeds.

Capacity

Experience tells us that our programmes are most effective when delivered oneto-one. We have 20 musicians currently delivering across East Anglia, and now nationally when delivering digitally.

Age range of learners

We are most impactful with participants aged 11 to 24 years old. We will work outside these parameters where appropriate, but data tells us that we are most impactful with 11 plus and interestingly that we see increased well-being impacts amongst young women.

Which students are currently offered provision

Our participant-led approach can accommodate any young person who is facing challenging circumstances, whether due to mental health, behavioural challenges, engagement challenges, family circumstances or simply transitioning between schools. The only requirement is that they are interested in making music (and the choice of musical genre is entirely up to them).

Expected outcomes for students

Improved well-being, which is well evidenced (see our website for more details) to improve outcomes related to motivation, engagement, education and health.

Referral process

Once funding has been agreed, referrals take place via an online form on our website, which usually requires a conversation between Noise Solution and the referring organisation to establish the appropriateness of the referral. There is no specific intake period. We can begin during the school term, continue over the holidays and through to the next school term, or limit sessions to only within the school term. Our experience suggests that running sessions consistently over 10 weeks provides the maximum benefit to young people.

Transport

Provision initially takes place at the participant’s home or in school, with the possibility of moving the provision to a local studio for the final five weeks.

Transport to the studio will need to be independently arranged. We do not do transport.

Pastoral support on offer:

• One-to-one support provided by personal music mentors

• Monitoring behaviour and attendance

• Support with transition

• Identifying barriers and solutions to learning and engagement

• Liaising with other professionals working with the participant

• Regularly reviewing our interventions, progress, etc.

• Signposting and referrals to additional support

All of the above are part and parcel of the one-to-one music mentoring service that we offer.

What quality assurance processes do you have?

Weekly monitoring through reports and the digital stories, alongside quarterly supervisions with music mentors. All this is supported by in-depth analysis of wellbeing data for each intervention and across the population to ensure that our work continues to impact positively on well-being.

Safeguarding

All participants and family members are able to report concerns from within the Community at any point during a set of sessions. Likewise, Noise Solution Musicians are able to flag any safeguarding concerns they may have as part of their reporting process after every session. On sending an alert, this automatically informs senior leadership and our DSL in a timely manner.

Through discussion with the Musician, a decision is made about whether the concern meets the threshold for referral. Each referral is completed according to the Local Authorities guidelines.

Every concern is automatically logged, and these are reviewed and reported on quarterly at Board meetings, as a standing agenda item within the CEO’s report. This allows us to learn by consistently reviewing levels of reporting and any themes emerging.

Have you been quality assured by another organisation or local authority?

Noise Solution has been independently assessed by the Suffolk Quality Assurance Board, Cambridge County Council, Norfolk County Council, the NHS and Clinical Commissioning Groups. All requirements were fully met, so much so that these organisations regularly fund Noise Solution programmes for young people facing challenging circumstances.

Quantitative data

As informative as the type of case studies found below are (and we have 100s) we also need to look at quantitative approaches to impact evidence as well. This short video details how we’ve seen a halving of low levels of well-being amongst the last 200 participants we’ve worked with (using a validated NHS scale and a benchmark sample of 60,000 other responses from other organisations to the same scale).

A parents reflection

A couple of weeks ago the Mum of someone we’d worked with dropped off a piano keyboard (because we never have enough) that she’d bought her son who, having now got a job and moved abroad now no longer needed it. She explained how Noise Solution had been the catalyst for this young man to re-engage with her, his family, and his education; a complete transformation from the very negative situation when we first met him. This interview is anonymised and published with permission.

Noise Solution: Can you tell me a little bit about where John was at before he worked with Noise Solution and what your experiences were with services?

Parent: Yeah, so he had stopped going to school because he suffered from a lot of social anxiety which led to depression. He had been advised to not go back to school for the last 2 weeks of the term by his nurse. And then after that he was so anxious about going that he couldn’t actually go back, he tried a couple of times. Found the high school setting too loud, crazy, you know just too much. So he didn’t go back so we had tried home tutoring. But there’s only one home schooler in the whole of Norfolk, so it was a long way. And he wasn’t… he wasn’t actually quite leaving his room. He had become quite isolated, put on a lot of

weight because he wasn’t leaving the room and because of medication. And that’s when we were referred to CAMHs

Noise Solution: How old was he?

Parent: It started when he was 13 and I think he was 14 or 15 when he was with you.

Noise Solution: What kind of impact was that having on the rest of the family.

Parent: Horrendous, I stopped working because I wanted to be there to look after him. He stopped interacting with us a lot. Emotionally, it was very difficult for all of us, I also had counselling to help the stress of looking after him. And his sister had counselling and his little brother was really struggling at nursery, just emotionally because it affects the whole family. It becomes easy to forget to look after ourselves because we’ve got still housework, got cooking and you’ve got to look normal, everyday family stuff and with an unwell child which is very exhausting, emotionally exhausting.

Noise Solution: So how did you hear about Noise solution?

Parent: His psychiatrist suggested it because he wasn’t attending school, he wasn’t leaving the house. So she said that there were some places that she knew were available and could apply for. And he got one.

Noise Solution: In terms of your experiences with other services and this issue, was it similar or different?

Parent: Noise Solution was a breath of fresh air, it was amazing because it didn’t focus on why the child was ill. What might be the causes, it was just something for John that he could do and he wasn’t being judged, it was just something that he could do outside a family, outside of doctors, it was something that got him out of the house. And it was someone to talk to him and it was something to take his mind for a split second of everything else that was going on.

Noise Solution: What were your experiences with everything else that was going on around him?

Parent: We found that school wasn’t helpful at all.

Noise Solution: So he wasn’t engaging with school, he wasn’t engaging with anything else but he did engage with the Noise solution provision?

Parent: Yeah.

Noise Solution: Was it because he… did he have an interest in music before?

Parent: He did yeah… well, his dad it has been a D.J. Not so much now but really interested in music, John always liked the old school music like his dad liked, like Michael Jackson, Motown Michael Jackson was just his way of escaping really, he just put headphones on and just blocked everything out so. I think that’s why Noise solution was so good because it was something he was already interested in. And that just helped, I think it reminded him that there was something that could help him through other than medicine, which didn’t work for him in the end and talking to people which he found quite difficult to do. He is a very private person and he found that quite difficult to open up to people. Yeah…

Noise Solution: So what difference did you see once we start working with him?

Parent: He started smiling. Which to most people doesn’t seem like much but when you’ve been stuck in your room for months and you’ve lost most of your friends and nothing else seems to been working for him. Just getting on the keyboards and getting in a routine where he knew he had tasks to do and he had to do it before he saw you again. And he was really proud of himself for doing little things, it was a sense of pride and this sense of not being crap at stuff, even though I am not going to school I can still do stuff.

Noise Solution: OK what role did the digital blogging side of Noise Solution play for you? (Noise Solution use an online platform to share participants success in the form of an updated digital story every week, showing the highlights of each session, that family can comment on)

Parent: We found it amazing that he could do stuff on the computer and we could go on as a family and see what he’d been doing. That was brilliant because we

actually got to see pictures and videos of him doing things and enjoying and interacting with someone. And leaving comments which he must have been embarrassed of us saying to his face because we could leave it on the website… And I think my mum found that really helpful because she could tell him how proud she was of him without him being really embarrassed and not wanting to hear it, so that was really good.

Noise Solution: And did you talk about that outside Noise solution?

Parent: Yeah, we did. yeah… A lot of it we spoke about once he had started to get better. And he’d to go back on the blog and can look at it even after we had stopped doing the session. And he’d say I can’t believe how far I’ve come, can’t believe I was doing this and now I’m doing other stuff, so I think it was a huge starting point for him. Back into the real world.

Noise Solution: If it hadn’t come along… What do think would have happened?

Parent: I don’t think he would have gone on to college, I don’t think he would have gone on to get a job, he probably wouldn’t have linked up with his friends again. I think he just would have got worse and I don’t actually know if he would have been here today. It was just a stepping stone to get him out of that very dark place at the time.

Noise Solution: How important do you think the Noise solution was as a catalyst? If we’re going to scale it from one to ten and one meant it didn’t matter at all and ten meant it was amazing..

Parent: Nine, I think. Yeah-yeah. It was huge. Because he just wasn’t talking to anybody else.

Noise Solution: He became motivated (through his work with Noise Solution)?

Parent: Yeah. He came off all these medications of about 2 or 3 months, then started running. Then he started going to the gym, lost all the weight he had put on with the medication, which made him more confident to go out with his friends again. so he gradually started hooking up with friends that he had from

school. And then he went to Catch 22 which was like an education, so it was like college but students who have missed school. Then from there they took him to college interview where he did mechanical engineering at college and while he was there he did maths and English, so he passed them. Then he got a part time job in Iceland, which he hated. [laughter] Saved up money for driving lessons, did his driving lessons.

Noise Solution: Do you think any of this would have happened if he hadn’t been involved with Noise Solution?

Parent: No. It wouldn’t have happened. Thank you. We did not think that he would ever get to this point but it’s really like he’s now like he was before he got ill but better. He said “I feel better now than other people I know”. He said “I’ve done more in this last 2 or 3 years than the people that I went to school with who didn’t miss out on any school”

You can read more stories like this in our case studies document here.

Programmes and costs

We offer a variety of programmes, all centred around music mentoring but designed to provide a variety of options for engagement. Whilst the prices below are correct at the time of writing, up to date information and costs can be found on our website here.

Programme What’s included? Costs

1:1 standard programme

1:1 all studio sessions

20 hours of delivery; online, face-to-face or a mixture of those, including 10 hours studio hire in a local studio. £2,200

20 hours of delivery face-to-face in a local recording studio.

Groupwork

6 x 90 minute sessions.

For up to six participants.

Extensions

Price on request

Extensions are available for all of the above.

• All of the above programmes include:

• A dedicated, professional musician.

• Full access to professional music software.

• A secure, private digital story to share with friends, family and professionals.

• Reports after each session emailed directly to professionals.

• The opportunity to gain an Arts Award (Bronze) qualification.

£2,500