Strategic plan 2025-30
“Without NS, the student would have become further disengaged from learning and ultimately society, as he felt undervalued and did not see himself as a learner or someone who could be taught by teachers. NS is absolutely brilliant! Phenomenal way to engage students in learning. Disengaged become engaged.”
Prepared by Simon Glenister: CEO
Welcome to our plan 2025-30
Over the last fifteen years we have regularly had the privilege of hearing participants tell us that we were the thing that worked for them when nothing else had, whilst parents have told us they couldn’t imagine where they or their child would be without the expertise of our wonderful musicians. It is nothing if not humbling when you hear people say they believe we transformed, and sometimes literally saved, their child’s life. There’s been much learning along the way; our own research alongside external PhDs and Masters students have all added to a rich understanding of how, and why, we believe we achieved those outcomes.
What started as a curiosity about the potential of music mentoring and digital tools has evolved into an internationally lauded programme enhanced by a digital platform supporting, sharing, capturing and analysing over 500 hours of monthly mentoring. That innovation, enabling us to literally see every participant’s story, is the envy of pretty much every organisation we ever talk to. External evaluation tells us our impacts are responsible for circa £6 million in annual savings for families and services through life-changing outcomes.
Yet, alongside this success, we recognise there’s much more to do. This plan outlines new directions shaped by our recent review and reflections; data, listening to our stakeholders and drawing on fifteen years experience. We hope to deepen our reach in the Eastern region, ensuring financial stability, while growing the meaningful outcomes we have which centre participants in every decision we make.
Our gratitude goes to the participants whose creativity and resilience inspire us, their families who fight tirelessly for them, and the dedicated professionals who strive so hard to make a difference.
It is our pleasure to invite you to read on to find out where Noise Solution is heading in the next few years.
Simon Glenister, CEO
Damien Ribbans, Operations Director
1. Who we are
Noise Solution is a community interest company (CIC), registered under company number 06952980, operating in the East of England. A CIC is a type of social enterprise established to trade with a social purpose or to carry out activities benefiting the community. CICs are required to ensure their assets are used primarily for the community’s benefit, positioning them within the ‘not-for-profit’ sector.
Founded in 2009 by Simon Glenister, Noise Solution’s creation was inspired by Simon’s personal experiences of overcoming significant educational challenges through music. Simon’s diverse career as a recording artist involved multiple recording deals, saw him tour in the US, Australia and all over Europe many times, while regularly appearing at major music festivals such as Reading, Bestival and Glastonbury. Alongside that he also had a career as a youth worker, and eventually social entrepreneur. The journey saw him traverse from secondary school failure, with no qualifications, to many years later, still without that first degree, being invited to complete a Masters ( MEd) at the University of Cambridge (Darwin, 2018). At Cambridge, Simon’s MEd focused on digital youth work and well-being, aligning with the ethos and practice of Noise Solution, whilst developing
Since its founding in 2009, Noise Solution has seen significant developments from many others. In 2016, Damien Ribbans joined as Operations Manager, bringing invaluable expertise and vision that played a key role in operationalising Noise Solution’s digital platform to advance its research and mission. Musicians have consistently helped us iterate the work. Additionally, special recognition goes to Semra (joined 2022), our Project Manager, whose contributions have been pivotal in streamlining pipelines and managing the organisational needs of our expanding team of musicians. There are many others.
Noise Solution’s model combines creative mentoring with a secure digital platform, all designed to improve well-being and reduce the need for further intervention among participants. Sessions focus on building positive relationships through creativity and music mentoring, with weekly highlights captured via a personalised digital story for every participant. This approach is grounded in Self Determination Theory (SDT), which emphasises the necessity of satisfying the basic psychological needs of autonomy (feeling in control), competence (feeling good at something), and relatedness (feeling connected and seen); all things SDT tells us we need to thrive. By aligning with SDT, Noise Solution’s 2
model creates the conditions that people need to feel empowered, capable, and connected. Important feelings to those referred, as they are participants facing big challenges in education/mental health and come from education, mental health or their local authority.
2. Learning from our past
Before discussing how Noise Solution can evolve and grow, we first needed to reflect on what we have done and what we have learned. Throughout this and the next chapter, we pull out key learnings into “take-away” boxes. We will return to these later when we set out our strategic aims and actions to achieve them (see chapter 4).
2.1 Our work
Until mid-2024 Noise Solution’s only offer was to provide a standard number of 10 sessions (over 20 hours). This has recently become what we’re calling our mid level intensity offer, with differing levels of engagement under development (see section 3.4). These mid level sessions are made up of two hours of music making per week, while participant and musician capture and post the best bits in their evolving digital story to be shared in the style of a social media feed with family and professionals. These sessions are delivered in the community, meaning we go to where the young person is. This can be their home, especially given many of our participants are struggling to attend school or are potentially at school on a reduced timetable. After 5 sessions we normally move sessions to a local recording studio, to enhance their experience as a musician in a professional environment.
Fig 1.Our mission, vision and values
2.2 Engagement
We have reviewed our monitoring and evaluation data to understand how our work has changed over time. We began systematic monitoring of our activities in 2016. Since then we have delivered 19,959 hours of 1:1 music mentoring. However, data in this chapter only draws on the records of participants from 2021 onwards (the last four years), so that we have a recent comparable, consistent data set to look at.
For this report we analysed 865 records. Fig 2 shows us that while our hours have been growing since 2021 (see Fig 4), some participants have been maintaining longer contact, doing more than one set of sessions, called extensions. This means we delivered more hours but worked with fewer people, as represented in 2024, in Fig 2.
This development was because we started to recognise the need to provide longer engagement. It is also one of the reasons we have adapted how we deliver sessions (see section 3.4 on High , Mid Low intensity sessions) to enable a flow between sessions that allows more time to embed the changes we facilitate.
Of the 865 people worked with between 2021-24, 603 (69%) either completed their sessions with Noise Solution or are still receiving sessions. This leaves 278 (31%) participants who did not complete. Anecdotally, a significant proportion of these people did not start at all. Participants who make it over the hurdle of engaging with a first session improve their chances of engagement and completion. This is an area for further investigation, to understand how we can improve this figure of non completion.
Fig 2. Number of participants worked with between 2021-24 (n-865)
Fig 3. Completion percentages of those participating (N-865).
2.3 Sessions delivered
The chart below shows that the hours delivered since 2021 has increased year on year. As mentioned above, there is an increase in longer engagement, meaning that some participants are having more sessions.
Fig 4 . Amount of hours delivered by year and the attendance status (n-865)
In 2024 we regularly had 500 hours of delivery per month (550+ in January 2025), though there are fluctuations throughout the year, often tracking school holiday periods. An internal audit of capacity estimates we are running at approximately 70% capacity for musicians, with internal staff starting to feel closer to capacity. Admin especially would benefit from more support. There is some margin to increase hours with current staffing levels.
Takeaways: Noise Solution’s hourly delivery has more than doubled from 2021 to ’24. Numbers of participants has gone down a little because some participants have been having more than 1 set of 10 sessions. There is capacity for the current musician team to deliver more sessions, Internally admin is in need of more support.
2.4 Session attendance
Alongside written reports of each session, attendance is tracked within our platform by musicians directly after each session happens. As you can see in Fig 4 above, we track if the session was completed attended or completed absent. The last category covers if the participant did not attend the session.
The overall figures for non attendance improve between 2021 (26%), 2022 (19%) and 2023 (17%) then see an increase in 2024 to 22%. The average attendance rate for the 4 years is 21%. Given our referrals are received often because engagement is an issue, we believe this to be an excellent.
All of this could be improved though. We receive session reports detailing reasons for non attendance and have recently started asking musicians to record “Did Not Complete”
(DNC) reasons for the 30% who do not complete, though there is not enough data on this yet to report meaningfully. There are opportunities in using Noise Solution’s A.I capabilities to analyse written data in the musicians reports to assess trends in non attendance. Additionally, a deeper dive into any demographic difference in DNC/attendance figures due to age or gender would be of considerable interest.
Takeaways: Our DNC rate is fairly stable. We should investigate gender and ethnicity splits on DNC/attendance data to assess trends and reasons for the 30% non completion rate, especially those who do not start at all. We could also apply Noise Solution’s AI capabilities to assess trends in reasons for non attendance provided in musicians reports.
2.5 Age
The chart below shows the age profile of all the people who completed a block of sessions between 2021 and 2024. It ranges from 7 - 56. Fig 6 shows that the majority of our work is with people between the ages of 10 and 17, with the peak, average and median age being
2.6 Gender
The chart below shows the gender profile of participants between 2021 and 2024. We have a gender capture percentage of 66.3%, which could be better. Participants are now able to self declare gender from within their digital story feed, a recent change rolled out as part of a digital story update. We’ll track if this improves our capture rate.
We see referrals heavily weighted toward young men with 69.6% stating they identify as male. We see 25% state they are female, with 25% not saying or not captured.
In 2024 we started capturing gender identity by offering participants the opportunity to self identify from a button within their digital story. Anecdotally, we think there is fairly low take up rate of this option. We’ve seen 0.8% identify as non binary and 1.7 as other, with
Fig 6. Age profile of people who completed sessions 2020-2024 (n- 865)
2.9% preferring not to say. These figures are lower in proportion than the general population (See ONS data). This is a population we are keen to support given its prominence in the low well-being statistics (see chapter 2.9).
2.7 Ethnicity
Fig 7. Gender breakdown between 2020-2024 (n-385)
Fig 8. Ethnicity breakdown (n-348)
There is a 40% capture rate of ethnicity data in the sample, which is low. We should consider enabling participants to add this data within their digital story similarly to the way they can identify gender. Analysis of 348 participants ethnicity over the last four years shows that 70.4% of those participants whose ethnicity we captured were white. As a benchmark for ethnicity across the East of England (according to the 2021 census) 81.7% are White British. This suggests that we are working with a higher proportion of black or multiple heritage participants than the national average (unsurprising you might argue given what we know about the experiences many young people of colour have of health and education). However, within our data we identify that we see extremely low numbers of Asian participants (1.2%) against the 6.4% in the same 2021 census data, and additionally we are not currently capturing Roma or traveller data.
This all suggests that there is work to do to better understand the nuance in our data, remembering that ethnicity has a strong correlation to mental ill health and to school exclusions. There would be benefit in matching our outcomes and data by location to see hot and cold spots in both outcomes and delivery.
Takeaways: The current age profile shows a peak in our data at 14. The current gender profile is hugely weighted to male participants (which needs addressing) and we’re waiting to see what self reporting does to response rates on gender. We are working with more black and multiple heritage participants than the national population average but see a significant gap in working with Asian participants, while capturing nothing about Roma/Traveller communities - all of which it would be interesting to investigate more deeply against regional location mapping of populations.
2.8 Location
Fig 8 demonstrates a change in our thinking, over time, of where we are delivering geographically. There was, prior to last year, a presumption within the team that to grow our reach and levels of delivery we would need to extend our geographic reach. The reality was more complicated and although as the map shows we could deliver more widely, we Fig 9. Shows the re focus of work to the East between 2021 to 2023.
Fig 10. Percentage of Education sector referrals by county (2022-24)
Fig 11. Percentage of mental health sector referrals by county (2022-24)
Fig 12. Percentage of local gov sector referrals by county (2022-24)
started to question whether in fact depth of delivery, (given the levels of need in the Eastsee section 3.2) would be a better approach.
The Eastern region comprises Suffolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. If we look at the three sectors of Education, Mental health, and Local government that Noise Solution receives most of its referrals from and cross reference them against the percentage of commissioning received from these sectors in each county, a picture starts to emerge of where the gaps are. Because of the relatively low level of referrals from services in Herts or Beds they appear under ‘other’ in these graphs.
If we look geographically at Figures 9, 10 and 11 we see gaps in education in Norfolk, Beds and Herts, which indicates relationships need building with the infrastructure there, such as multi academy trusts. We see gaps in mental health in Essex, Norfolk, Beds and Herts with some work to do in Cambridge, indicating that relationships need building with these local Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). We see good referral rates in local authorities in Suffolk, Cambridge and Essex because we sit on various frameworks (such as out of school and alternative provision in Cambridgeshire). However, in Norfolk, Beds and Herts, where we also sit on frameworks, we have yet to materialise any serious referral numbers, so relationships need building here also.
Takeaways: There is a focus on further depth of work within the Eastern Region. Suffolk and Cambridge are strong in Education and local government sectors, as is Suffolk in Mental health. Relationships with multi academy trusts in Norfolk, Beds and Herts need developing. Likewise relationships with the ICBs in Essex, Norfolk, Beds and Herts need work and relationships with those local authorities running contract frameworks in Norfolk, Beds and Herts.
2.9 Why what we do works
Noise Solution has benefitted significantly from extensive academic research conducted on its model and impact. Simon Glenister (CEO) established the theoretical foundations of the model and its alignment with well-being theory — specifically Self-Determination Theory, which Noise Solution uses extensively to guide it is design, delivery and qualitative and quantitive approaches to evaluation (See box below for a brief explanation). Simon continues to publish with recent work including ‘Youth Work, Music Production and Measurement’ as Editor and contributor, Routledge (to be published 2025) and ‘Music for Inclusion and Healing in Schools and Beyond, Hip Hop, Techno, Grime, and More (Contributor, Oxford University Press, 2024).
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a psychological framework that focuses on what drives human motivation and well-being. Developed by Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, SDT has amassed in the region of 1.8 million academic citations.
Dr Ryan is the worlds most cited psychologist . SDT highlights three basic 1 psychological needs essential for people to thrive:
1. Autonomy – The feeling of being in control
2. Competence – The sense of being good at something
3. Relatedness – The feeling of connection and belonging with others.
When these needs are met, individuals are more likely to experience changes in motivation and improved mental health.
How Noise Solution Uses SDT
Both Noise Solution’s mentoring and use of technology is deeply informed by SDT and focuses on helping its participants experience these basic psychological needs:
• Autonomy: Participants choose their musical goals and activities, what they capture and share digitally and who they share it with. This fosters a sense of ownership and self-direction.
• Competence: The program provides high-quality 1:1 mentoring with skilled musicians, enabling participants to build confidence as they master new. skills that are important to them. That progress is mirrored back at them through their personalised digital stories, while it is also shared with those important to them.
• Relatedness: Sessions are designed to build positive adult relationships with their musician, but also through the digital story with their professional key workers and their family members. Weekly reflection videos within the digital stories are designed to engage viewers to comment, so the participant feels seen as successful.
External research on Noise Solution includes a Masters dissertation by Millie Davis (2022) on how musician mentors support the basic psychological needs identified in SDT. Davis is currently extending this work via a PhD, conducting a realist analysis of Noise Solution’s impact. In 2023 Jake Jackson also completed a PhD that conducted a narrative analysis of detailed case studies of Noise Solution interventions. While in 2024, Damien Ribbans (Noise Dr Ryan bio
Takeaways: Noise Solution has used academic evidence to inform the design of its programme, digital technologies and evaluation. External research has so far agreed with Noise Solution’s assertions around SDT as an appropriate body of knowledge to draw on for these tasks.
Solution’s Operations Director) carried out research as part of a programme with Cambridge University focussed on interventions that support basic psychological needs.
2.9 Well-being outcomes
In 2024 a Cambridge company with international expertise in analysis, interpretation and communication of health data, called Costello Medical, conducted six months of independent analysis of Noise Solution’s well-being outcomes. As part of that work Costello looked in depth at the data we had collected using the Shortened Warwick and Edinburgh Well-being Scale (SWEMWBS) developed by academics and the NHS to measure well-being. Noise Solution asks participants to answer SWEMWBS’ seven questions in their first and last sessions. You can read Costello’s full SWEMWBS report here. Below is a shorter version that summarises the data we gave Costello, the questions Costello asked of it and the findings of their investigation.
SWEMWBS data was collected by Noise Solution from a total of 374 participants who had completed their programme. Overall, the majority of participants identified as male (67% of all participants versus 23% identifying as female); however, the age of participants was balanced between male and female, with an average age of approximately 14 years. 85.6% of all participants were under 18 years of age when they first started participating.
Each of the seven questions asked by SWEMWBS have five possible answers that have a value assigned to them: none of the time (1), rarely (2), some of the time (3), often (4), all of the time (5). The values from the answers are then compiled to give a score. SWEMWBS states that any change over 1 between the summed score of the start questionnaire and the summed score of the end questionnaire are considered to be a meaningful change in well-being; the bigger the positive change the better. Fig 13 shows the start and end scores for Noise Solutions SWEMWBS data broken down by gender. 12
Fig 12. SWEMWBS respondents demographic data provided to Costello Medical (n-374)
Fig 13. Changes in SWEMWBS start and end scores by gender (n-374)
At the start of the programme, mean SWEMWBS scores were typically markedly lower than the national average (of 23.5), with males having significantly higher SWEMWBS scores than females (average: 20.95 versus 18.76, respectively; p<0.001). When compared to the general population-level reports of well-being, there does not seem to be the same degree of discrepancy between males and females, suggesting that females attending the Noise Solution programme typically have a lower starting well-being than males, and to a more pronounced degree than the national averages. Starting SWEMWBS scores were also typically lower in older participants.
Overall, participants had significantly higher SWEMWBS scores at the end of the programme than at the start, such that they were only slightly below the national average (overall average end score: 22.83; mean change: 2.50; p<0.0001). We can confirm that Noise Solution’s well-being SWEMWBS results are (and remain) statistically significant.
Of all participants, 61.0% experienced a meaningful improvement of at least one SWEMWBS point, whilst 21.4% did not experience a meaningful change; only a small number of participants showed meaningful decreases in SWEMWBS score after participation (17.6%). Akin to the difference seen at the start of the programme, at the end of the Noise Solution programme, males still had significantly higher SWEMWBS scores than females (average: 23.44 versus 21.56, respectively; p<0.001), however the average level of improvement was similar between genders (mean score change in males: +2.49; females: +2.80).
Older participants experienced significantly greater increases in SWEMWBS score than younger participants (p=0.02), offsetting their lower starting values, such that there was no significant effect of age on SWEMWBS score at the end of the programme.
The magnitude and direction of change in SWEMWBS score was significantly linked to starting score (p<0.0001), such that those with higher starting scores tended to have smaller positive, and occasionally negative, changes in SWEMWBS by the end of the programme compared with participants with lower starting scores.
Costello provided a summary of results presented in Fig 14 that gives Research questions
down the right hand side and a colour coded description of results down the left hand side. If an answer is in a yellow box it means that the results weren’t statistically significant, if the answer is in a green box then they were statistically significant.
Fig 14. Results to questions posed by Costello in response to the SWEMWBS data (n-374)
Research into national averages of SWEMWS data has collected results from over 27,000 responses to SWEMWBS questionnaires to establish national average well-being scores.
Fig 15. Transitions between high, medium and low well-being categories (n-374)
That research established bandings of high, medium and low levels of well-being that we can also use to interpret Noise Solution’s data to see if we see shifts across those boundaries.
Fig 15 shows the transition between bandings of high, medium and low well-being. Females were significantly more likely than males to be in the low well-being band compared with other bands (p<0.001). Older participants were also more likely to be in the low well-being band compared to other ages (p<0.0001); however, this was only found at the start of the
programme. Among those participants who started in the low well-being band, age and gender did not affect the band which they were in at the end of the programme.
Takeaways: We see meaningful change in well-being across all ages and gender (statistically significant p<0.0001). Female start scores are significantly lower than male. The level of change in well-being is the same between male and female. Older participants start with lower well-being but experience larger positive changes in well-being yet we rarely work with this group. Among those participants who started in the low well-being band, age and gender did not affect the band which they were in at the end of the programme.
2.10 Safeguarding
In the past senior leadership and board have expressed concern/curiosity about the lack of safeguarding flags that the organisation has seen. As a result over the last few years we’ve streamlined both training and the ability to report, concentrating on the musicians responsibility to ‘observe and report’. Musicians are able to alert senior leadership of any concerns, instantly. Many of the raised flags are minor concerns that do not meet a threshold for escalation, or things that can be (and are) resolved with quick communication with the referring organisation.
In the last two years we have seen 172 safeguarding flags raised by our musicians that were categorised as resolved, or deemed unnecessary. We have escalated 9 to child protection referrals between June 2023 and the present. We are able to track all safeguarding cases within Salesforce and review cases at quarterly board meetings.
Recent DSL (Designated Safeguarding Lead) training highlighted the need to be able to better review outcomes around what happens after a flag is raised, and this has been implemented into the system. It is to be noted that if delivery hours increase in volume safeguarding will need to be something thought about very carefully, both in terms of technology and staff structure.
Takeaway: Safeguarding reporting continues to develop with improved levels of raised concerns, instant reporting and digital case management. More growth means that systems for managing larger volumes of safeguarding reports will need careful consideration.
2.11 Social return on investment
In 2024 Costello also completed an in depth analysis of the financial value to families and services of the outcomes that Noise Solution generates. You can read the report here. It states that at a conservative estimate, Noise Solution returns a saving of £12.50 for every 15
pound spent on it because of the improvements in well-being it generates. Those changes in turn positively impact outcomes for participants like re-engagement with education, improved attendance or avoidance of mental health admission or re-admission, avoidance of exclusion, all of which have significant financial implications to participants families and services going forward. The study takes financial proxies from academic studies of costs of situations like those above, then applies weighting to the results to ensure a realistic result.
At a conservative estimate the money that commissioned Noise Solution in 2023-24 indicates a social return on investment of £6,464,875. The video in this section details what those life changes actually look like from participants experiences.
While the SROI figure is useful to open conversations the nature of internal markets in local authority and health setting means that there is no real value to a department if you can only save money further down the line - there is rarely a holistic system wide view. What tends to sway arguments is how we could positively impaction freeing up capacity for that organisation. One of the ideas recently floated (by Damien Ribbans) was that a SROC (Social Return On Capacity) study may be more impactful,
Video: Participants describing the impacts of Noise Solution, that in turn illustrates improved life chances, its economic impact and less use of services.
I.e. For every pound spent with us we can save you (insert department) X number of hours or free up Y number of staff. Something along these lines may be a more persuasive metric.
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Takeaways: Comprehensive SROI evaluation gives us the ability to give an attention grabbing figure (£6 million saved in 2023-24) but measuring impact on capacity saved may be more effective to commissioning organisations.
2.12 Satisfaction feedback
We consistently receive excellent unsolicited feedback from parents, professionals and participants. You can see some of it in the video over the page. The scale and impact of that feedback is humbling. It is useful for commissioners and grant applications certainly, but it is equally useful in highlighting to the musicians the impact of their work, helping create a sense of relatedness amongst them.
Although satisfying, little is learned from good feedback that will improve an organisation. Elsewhere, when looking at internal systems in the organisation, we focus not on what is Video: Unsolicited feedback from families, participants and professionals
right but on building reporting that highlights where things are not working - as a way to efficiently run a large logistical operation. A focus on turning that same mindset to what can be learned from participant, family and professionals experiences, that isn’t working as well as it could, would be hugely useful. Possibly helping with things like DNC rates.
Takeaways: positive feedback continues to come in but more could be done to work on gaining feedback from those sessions that didn’t work - to improve the experience and hopefully outcomes.
2.13 Financial analysis (last four years)
Fig 16 shows consistent financial growth in turnover between 2021-24.
Turnover has grown from £358k in 2021-22 to a projected £720k in 2024-25. As you can see in Fig 16, expenditure more or less tracks income, with the main costs being staff/ musicians. However, we anticipate a small surplus in 2025.
Over the past three and a half years, Noise Solution has not only impacted the lives of young adults through transformative music programs but also made significant contributions to the local creative economy. Fig 17 highlights the financial support paid to musicians and studios by Noise Solution during this period. Payments to musicians have steadily increased, peaking at £204,708.21 in 23/24, reflecting our growing investment in talented professionals who drive our programs. Similarly, studio expenses rose to £55,634.58 in the same year, showcasing our commitment to fostering quality environments for creativity and learning. This investment has continued in the current financial year and is expected to exceed the previous years.
Fig 18 showcases the distribution of revenue between local government, mental health, and education sectors over the past three years. Noise Solutions three main commissioning sectors.
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Fig 16. Income versus expenditure 2021 - 25
Fig 17. Musician and studio costs 2022-2025
Fig 18. Sector income per year
The majority of our work continues to be contract- rather than grant-based. Education is by far our biggest sector with local government increasingly becoming important. Suffolk County Council has been a consistent and significant contributor, coming in as one of the top funders each year. Its contribution to Noise Solution’s revenue peaked at £116,317.50 in 23/24, making it the largest single funder in that period, and remains robust in 24/25, commissioning £59,485 so far to date. Cambridgeshire County Council has also steadily contributed to Noise Solution’s revenue, peaking at £109,392.85 in 23/24. Interestingly, their contributions were the highest among funders in 22/23.
NHS entities like Ipswich & East Suffolk CCG consistently appear in our top funders, and notably revenue from NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB has shown steady increases in recent years. Smaller funders, such as the School for Social Entrepreneurs in 21/22 and Green Light Trust in 23/24, highlight the importance of diversification of funding sources, especially grants. This would provide stability and reduce reliance on funding from contracts from councils. These patterns highlight the importance of maintaining and expanding relationships with our long-term partners while exploring new funding opportunities. Any grants we have applied for are designed to perform as R&D spaces, i.e. we applied for a number of grants in 2024 to help us seed fund and develop our new model (see section 3.4)
Takeaways: Income continues to be mostly contract based rather than grant. Turnover has doubled in the last four years. Education is our largest sector of commissioning. Noise Solution financially contributes considerably to the cultural sector (200k plus in 2024). Suffolk and Cambridgeshire local authorities are our largest single funders currently.
3. Considering the future
3.1 Needs analysis: National
The outlook in regard to mental health, and it is corollaries such as school exclusions of participants in the UK, is far from rosy. The centre for mental health states (Fig 19) that in the last 6 years the number of participants with mental health difficulties has nearly doubled for 8-16 year olds and exceeded that for 17-19 year olds. The rise is more pronounced in young women and those who are on the cusp of adult care (see Fig 20).
Fig 19. Proportion of children and participants in England with mental health difficulties 2017-2023 (per 1,00)
Fig 20. Some research findings from a 2024 market research project for Noise Solution in 2024
3.2 Needs analysis: Local
The scale of the problem is similar in the East of England. We currently work with around 250 participants a year. If we look at the two counties where we currently deliver the majority of our work, 250 as a number pales into insignificance when you consider the 34,000 participants with diagnosable mental health challenges in Cambridgeshire alone (mental health needs assessment 2019).
In Cambridgeshire the suspension rate was 9.3 per 100 pupils (Cambridge evening news), which is a record high. In the 2022/23 academic year just one trust (Anglian Learning) suspended 246 pupils, had 1,731 persistently absent pupils, with 330 having attendance below 50%. These are not singled out because they are unusual, but because we are working with them to actively impact on that figure.
In Suffolk, before the COVID-19 pandemic, 13.1% of Suffolk pupils were persistently absent, a figure that has surged to 19.5% in recent school years representing a nearly 50% increase (UK Gov, Pupil absence). Suspension rates have more than doubled to 10.7 per 100 pupils, exceeding the national average by 15.1%. Students with Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND) face even higher suspension rates—19.6% for those with an Education, Health, and Care Plan (EHCP) and 24.75% for those without (UK Gov suspensions and exclusions). Healthwatch Suffolk conduct a survey each year of the well-being of participants in secondary education, which clearly shows well-being amongst young women and LGBTQ+ as lower than any other group (Healthwatch My future, our health phase 8, p.19).
Takeaways: There is huge addressable need in the Eastern region. Persistent absence and suspension rates have doubled in Suffolk post pandemic. Cambridgeshire alone has an estimated 34,000 participants with diagnosable mental health challenges. Young women, those transitioning to adult mental health care, and those who are LGBTQ+ cause the most concern for services or have the lowest well-being when surveyed.
3.3 Stakeholder engagements with commissioners
Market research work done by a collection of Cambridge University MBAs in 2024 investigated how we are perceived by commissioners. They highlighted a number of challenges and opportunities. These students conducted interviews with commissioners who already use Noise Solution and also a number that do not, to get a picture of where Noise Solution sits (a few of the interview findings are in the table below with the full report available here). Headline findings of that work were that:
Fig 21. Findings from Cambridge MBA’s market research of Noise Solution’s position in the market
It is worth remembering that with commissioners we already work with we have an excellent reputation. For example this podcast, where we hear from a local pupil referral unit about their experience of working with Noise Solution.
Podcast of PRU discussing their experience of commissioning Noise Solution
Video:
Takeaways: Noise Solution has been perceived as generalist service, when the work it delivers is high quality and should be considered specialist and charged as such. Group work provision should be considered. Need is growing in the 18-25 age group, especially in mental health. Gender specific work is needed, as reflected in a lack of available provision that is young women/LGBTQ+ specific.
3.4 Tiered model re-design
Commissioners opinions’ of Noise Solution can only have been based on the ‘one size fits all’ 20 hour intervention that we’ve been delivering for 15 years.
Internally, there’s been a growing awareness that this provision wasn’t always flexible enough or long enough for very complex cases. Also at the other end of the spectrum, sometimes participants were finishing the provision too early, dropping of the end because of funding running out and potentially squandering any gains made. The thinking also included a desire to help solve organisations issues around their own capacity, the most common anecdotal feedback we have from professionals.
In light of this, alongside deep reflective work with Tom Brown (external consultant) and the MBA’s research project with commissioners we launched a restructured service in May 2024. Here is a film we’ve created to demonstrate this new wider offer to commissioners.
Video: Setting out Noise Solution’s offer including it is new tiered service offer
In fairly simple terms the three-tiered offer looks like this
• High Need: Intensive, individualised mentoring with a higher level of collaborative input when engaging with families and professionals and focus on transition/deescalation to the Mid tier model. More hours (32), to establish the vital relationship needed for success. Deescalation to Mid need intended.
• Mid Need: Continuing that which we know works (our previous offer), focused one-toone support combined with studio sessions, with a view to de-escalation to the low need offer. Participants can also start here.
• Low Need: 6 month mentoring, once a month, as well as offering term-time group work opportunities. Maintaining the important element of 1:1 relationship alongside opening up opportunities for greater opportunities for relatedness with peers. For those who require that little longer.
When rolling this out, we should be mindful not to replicate or negatively impact on other quality organisations operating across our footprint and collaborate where possible. But, to date, conversations setting the new offer out have been very positively received by senior leaderships of Suffolk ICS and Cambridgeshire County Council and Suffolk Children’s services.
Takeaways: We now have a comprehensive end-to-end offer from high to low need that we can move participants though (up or down) flexibly. We can provide part of the ‘solution’ (mindful of other organisations expertise) to organisations challenges around capacity - improving outcomes for participants and commissioning organisations.
3.5 AI analysis and Transceve
As you’ll have seen in this plan, analysis of impact and access to its data has always been at the forefront of Nose Solution’s work. Work around AI and video analysis (see video below) has seen us win numerous national awards. This technology will have a significant impact on Noise Solution’s ability to demonstrate its outcomes and understand all the data that it holds within its systems. Data collection for AI analysis is about to go live (hopefully Q1 2025 once legals are complete). The initial reporting opportunities are staggering, let alone the longer term potential.
Having incubated this work, Noise Solution is about to spin out a sister organisation, called Transceve. The proposal is that Noise Solution will retain majority equity in that company in exchange for the IP that it has developed. The intention being that the focus it takes to work on that technology is transferred to the new company, enabling Noise Solution to focus on its own mission. If Transceve is successful, Noise Solution will benefit financially going forward (either through exit funds or ongoing dividends), ideally relieving pressure on our core funding requirements.
Video: Noise Solution’s development of AI technology applied to our digital stories
Things are progressing apace for Transceve. We recently had strong interest (dependent on further due diligence and passing an investment panel) of £400k investment, with additionally a number of social organisations keen to be part of an early development 25
Fig 23. Slide from Transceve’s deck
phase (with up to a potential £100k collective contribution to partake). If initial projections prove correct, given the amount of up front development already in place, there is potential for Noise Solution to start to see returns by 2026. It is an important part of Noise Solution’s identity to be innovating and being ‘ahead of the pack’ in this regard. Noise Solution will still be a prime ‘test bed’ for Transceve ensuring this continues.
Whilst hugely exciting, the implications of this in the short to medium term relate to the amount of resource it takes to manage that work, with the biggest hit being experienced by Noise Solution’s operational management capacity.
Takeaways: Noise Solution is spinning out a new company to focus on AI analysis of outcomes data (3rd sector specific to begin with). It has received strong interest in investment. If successful, by 2026 it is hoped that this will be cross subsidy of Noise Solution’s mission through (as yet) undetermined dividends (protecting against financial pressures in the sector). The impact will mostly be on operations capacity, as It means we lose our Operations Director to the new operation. We will still be a prime test bed for Transceve’s R&D.
3.6 Considering the future: Horizon scanning
The following are taken from just a few recent articles from the Guardian:
“Local authorities, schools and families often clash over special needs arrangements, but all agree the system is broken. An accounting fudge known as the statutory override, which has allowed around £3.3bn in deficits linked to special needs overspends to be kept off council balance sheets since 2020, is due to expire in 2026". (Guardian, dec 2024)
“Meanwhile, soaring demand for Send support – there has been a 140% increase in children with EHC plans since 2015 – means councils have been forced to overspend their high needs budgets, often relying on independent schools to provide specialist places. Those with the biggest deficits have been able to exclude them from their main revenue budgets using a “statutory override”. When this expires in March 2026, the PAC says 66 local authorities (43% of councils that cover education) are at risk of breaching their duty to set a balanced budget, and so would be effectively bankrupt, with an estimated £4.6bn cumulative deficit. Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, the Conservative chair of the PAC, said: “This is an emergency that has been allowed to run and run. It is long past time the government took action matching the gravity of this situation.” (Guardian, Jan 15, 2025)
And
“..children’s needs have increased at the same time as the support that’s been available to them over the last decade has drastically decreased. We’re now spending huge amounts of money, from authorities that are on the edge of bankruptcy, on a very small number of children who fall into crisis, and on any level that’s not sustainable.” (Guardian, Dec 2023)
Government is likely going to need to address massive local authority overspending in SEND. However, these challenges are also an opportunity for an organisation that can demonstrate it is efficacy in the way that Noise Solution can, where so many organisations cannot.
Additionally, when scanning various sources (Gov.uk, Times, NHS England and Financial Times), the current governments priorities (in bold) for participants education and mental health include Integration of Mental Health Support in Schools. Delivering evidence-based interventions for mild to moderate mental health issues and assisting in developing wholeschool approaches to mental health and wellbeing. Curriculum Reforms to Enhance Engagement. Incorporating arts and vocational subjects to re-engage students who may feel alienated by a predominantly academic focus. Addressing School Absenteeism. Improving student attendance and educational outcomes by enhancing coordination between schools, parents, and authorities. Expansion of Mental Health Services. This includes increasing funding and resources to meet the growing demand for mental health support among participants, ensuring timely access to appropriate services, and integrating mental health care within community settings to provide comprehensive support.
We are, I believe (and the MBA research agreed) well regarded in terms of outcomes for participants, technology, delivery and outcomes analysis, making differences and savings to services that we can demonstrate. Our approach is designed to positively impact on well-being in ways that connect between schools, parents, and authorities. As such, we align with many of the priorities of the current government. It would be prescient to both emphasise this to large commissioning bodies such as the ICBs locally (where we can act as a demonstration of what’s possible with technology) and politically, for example lobbying for involvement in the all party APPG for creative health, a cross-party parliamentary body driving national policy, where Noise Solution is already used as an example of good practice and for which it turns out our newly elected MP (Peter Princely (Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket) sits upon.
Part of this work of visibility raising will involve better coordination of social media posting/ campaigns, something we have already started to develop through a pro bono relationship with the famille agency
Takeaways: Local authorities are financially under strain (caused by SEND overspend). Access to EHCP plans and the local authority budget it gives access to are under review/threat. Alternatively, the new government has priorities that all align with Noise Solution’s mission and delivery. We are in a good position to take advantage of that. Higher visibility in political conversations such as the APPG on creative health is desirable.
3.8 Considering the future: Risk Register
We have a standing item risk register at Board and it details concerns about such things as organisations copying or undercutting us, repetitional risk, senior leadership leaving and commissioning dropping off. I feel recent political developments also need highlighting and adding to the register.
A government paper is expected to strongly recommend that all alternative provision must be registered within a local authority framework agreement before being commissioned. We are already compliant with this (across all six counties). As a regulation it may go some way to decreasing the large numbers of organisations that exist in this space. If you look at Suffolk’s AP directory you see 55 registered organisations, but many others also exist. There have certainly been concerns raised about the quality of some of these organisations. As an AP provider there is a risk of being tainted with the same brush, however our reputation, hold on data and our outcomes again stand us in good stead. If we should start to look at wider geographical expansion further down the road, these frameworks would need to be the first step when moving to a new area. Mitigating any negative association is about maintaining our reputation as a premium service, great outcomes, process and evidence to demonstrate the fact.
The government paper also intends to deliver funding reform through the introduction of a new national framework of banding and price tariffs for funding, matched to levels of need and types of education provision set out in the new national standards; “Providers will have clarity on how much funding they should expect to receive for delivering support or a service, whilst ensuring the right pricing structures are in place, helping to control high costs attributed to expensive provision”. This is more of a risk if that pricing structure is significantly below what we currently deliver for.
Another risk, easily mitigated, is the distance physically both between staff. While home working works well and many aspects are welcome, there is a risk that we may become isolated and fail to benefit from those times the team come together. As part of that mix we need an appropriate office space to bring commissioners that demonstrates the right level of professionalism.
One way to help mitigate all a number of these risks while keeping senior leadership accountable to this strategic plan, is to invest time in growing the board of Noise Solution. Strengthening its governance. Areas that would benefit from heightened knowledge
include specific focus on finances; education and youth development; social work and child protection; mental health and well-being; creative industries; business and social enterprise leadership; legal and compliance; finance and risk management; community representation and policy and advocacy.
Takeaways: There is risk of being tainted by the number and quality of alternative provision out there. We need to continue being seen as a premium service. We need a professional space to bring commissioners to demonstrate that professional level. System wide ceilings on AP services may be more challenging. To help mitigate these risks there should be a proactive growing of the specialist advice available on the board.
Each of these take away boxes, from every section, has been used to help inform the design the following strategic aims chapter (section 4)
4 Strategic aims
Aim one:
We will ensure that high quality music mentoring is available to more people who choose it across the Eastern region.
Why we will do this
We are pleased to have seen our number of sessions more than double between 2021 and 2024. However, while we have good reach in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, we are more patchy in Essex, and less present in Norfolk, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. Our reach in all areas varies according to sector; for example, we are stronger in education referrals in Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, and we receive good referral rates from the health sector in Suffolk.
Over the last 2 years we started to experience more participants returning for a second or third block of sessions. This meant that while we were delivering more hours, we worked with slightly fewer participants.
Older participants start with lower well-being but experience larger positive changes in well-being, yet we rarely receive referrals for this group.
We believe we have capacity in our current team to deliver 30% more sessions.
What we will do to achieve this aim
We will:
1. Improve our understanding of population spread and profile of need across the Eastern Region.
2. Using this information and our own reach data we will target those areas where we want to improve reach.
3. In year one of this plan, we will target multi-academy trusts in Norfolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. We will evaluate our progress to inform growth in years two to five.
4. In year one we build on our relationships with mental health trusts and commissioners to identify pathways to music mentoring for over-18s, establishing a strategy for launch in year two.
Aim two:
We will work with more women, LGBTQ+ people, minority ethnic communities, neurodiverse people and disabled people.
Why will do this
We see meaningful improvements in wellbeing for the people we work with across age, gender and ethnicity. We have a stable rate of people completing a block of sessions at around 70%, but we could do more to understand reasons for not completing, and if there are differences according to age, gender or ethnicity. We note that we are currently not gathering data about people’s neurodiversity or about disability or other health needs.
The current gender profile is weighted towards male participants. This may be as a result of our larger number of referrals from the education sector. On average, young women have lower wellbeing rates when they start working with us than young men. Male and female participants see similar improvements in wellbeing after attending Noise Solution sessions.
We began offering an option to self-identify as trans/non-binary about 18 months ago, and we therefore have limited data about how we are doing for this group. Between 2022 and 2024 we ran a successful group for LGBTQ+ participants. We know from regional population data that trans/non-binary participants experience significant challenges in regards to wellbeing and other outcomes. We do not gather data about sexuality. In 2024 we began working with The Kite Trust to improve our understanding and engagement with the LGBTQ+ community.
Our ethnicity monitoring gives us information about less than half of the people we work with. This suggests that we have a low reach to the Asian community. We need to improve our monitoring to capture some communities, such as Gypsy/Roma/Traveller.
What we will do to achieve this aim
We will:
5. Improve and consolidate our monitoring system whilst maintaining participants’ autonomy and positive experience
6. Our board will regularly review our reach to all communities and identify areas needing improvement
7. Communicate with commissioners about our good impact with women
8. Identify and target referral sources to improve referral rates for women
9. Working with the Kite Trust, we will use year one of this planning period to decide how we will improve access to Noise Solution for LGBTQ+ people
Aim three:
Our income will grow, with diversified income sources that protects us against financial risk
Why we will do this
We have had strong financial performance, and our turnover has doubled in the last four years. Income continues to be mostly contract based rather than from grants, and Suffolk and Cambridgeshire local authorities are our largest funders at the moment. Grants we have applied for are designed to perform as R&D spaces.
We have identified the following risks to our financial stability:
• Local authorities are under financial strain. Specifically, local authority EHCP budgets are under review/threat
• System wide ceilings on alternative provision services may be applied by central government
We also have some causes for optimism:
• Noise Solution is spinning out a new company to deliver AI analysis of outcomes data creating potential for cross subsidy via dividends
• We have some untapped sources of commissioning; local authorities in Norfolk, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex, and health commissioners in general, adult services and high needs funding.
• We anticipate potential in new central government priorities on participants, mental health and digital services and engagement with education.
What we will do to achieve this:
We will:
10. Diversify our income, targeting new commissioners and funding sources (see 2 to 4 under aim one)
11. Identify and apply to grants to further develop approaches or systems (as R&D opportunities)
12. Support the development of Transceve
Aim four:
We will develop our growing as story-tellers to influence and inspire
Why we will do this:
We are getting much better at communications and promotion, making better use of social media and networking. There is a tendency for Noise Solution to be seen as a generalist service, however, when in fact we deliver high quality specialist work with people who have complicated and entrenched needs. We’re good at it and the stories are compelling - if told sensitively.
The ambitions set out in the three aims above will require us to continue to focus on our profile because:
• We should champion the stories and achievements of the people we work with, and the way we worked with them. Promoting a strengths-based view of people facing challenges
• We have new service offer that we need to promote; high need individualised work and group work
• We want to reach communities that we have previously not reached
• Transceve has potential to provide solutions to us and others in our sector, in turn improving our profile, reputation and income.
• We have a successful and impactful offer, which is developing and improving all the time, which can meet the rising needs that communities and commissioners have (including financial return on investment)
• We need to promote and celebrate our quality in the context of a profusion of lower quality alternative provision.
• Our work aligns with the priorities of national and local governments and we need to connect with politicians and commissioners such as the all party political group on creative health
What we will do to achieve this:
We will:
13. Write a communications strategy, clarifying our messages, audience and platforms
14. We will review our key messages annually
15. We will invest in more projects that amplify the voices and experiences of the people we work with, focusing on the voices of women, LGBTQ+ participants and people from minority ethnic communities
16. We will map out key people and organisations who we want to influence and will form relationships with them
We will ensure that we have the right people and tools to deliver on this plan
Why we will do this
As a team we are strong on our digital resources and skills, and this improves our efficiency and ability to demonstrate our worth. Our bespoke digital resources are aligned with our model of work and outcomes. Our internal processes are responsive and help us to maintain quality. This means that our team is able to stay small, and this does mean we are vulnerable to fluctuations in workload.
Our team currently lacks administrative capacity. We are also about to lose our Operations Director to Transceve. The growth planned in this document means we will need to increase our team size.
Our board works well but is currently too small, and we lack some key skills to achieve this plan.
The investment we have made in the Transceve engine has great potential to take our already strong monitoring and evaluation practice to a new level. We are interested in developing our thinking on return on investment, considering how our work saves not only money but capacity in statutory services.
We have recently improved our systems for logging safeguarding concerns and case management.
We have moved premises several times in the previous two years, and we currently do not have an adequate office base in order to be able to bring the team together and to invite commissioners and potential funders and partners.
What we will do to achieve this
We will:
17. Develop a new administrator apprentice role
18. Train our Finance (now Operations) Manager to take over some operational functions
19. Map the capacity gaps in our team as we grow and recruit accordingly
20. Develop and grow our board
21. Recruit a chair for the board
22. We will establish an office base
Appendix 1: Draft delivery plan
Task Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4
Aim one
Map population and our reach
Profile Education population and need across eastern region
Profile mental health population and need across eastern region
Target areas Norfolk, Essex Herts, Beds
5
Profile Local gov population and need across eastern region
Target referrers Multi-academy trusts Mental health trusts and ICS Local government
Aim two
Improve monitoring Scope out new monitoring questions on gender, ethnicity, sexuality and health needs
Board EDI monitoring Establish annual cycle EDI monitoring and improvement
Improve reach to women
Improve reach to LGBT people
Aim three
Write/ create video (Clare W) commissioner briefing about success with women and girls (education focus)
Review data Run joint project with The Kite Trust
Begin new monitoring, Spec A.I analysis of internal data
Target one less well reached community
Communicate with mental health trusts about reach to women
Target one less well reached community
Review reach to women, LGBTQ+, older participants
Target one less well reached community
Target one less well reached community
Diversify our income; grants Map outcomes to grant givers and increase grant applications to 12 per year
Diversify our income: commissions
See above Develop use of high needs funding
Support Transceve Marketing support Support to DR
Aim four
Write a comms strategy Review Famille pro bono socials strategy
More targeted comms projects
Film about work with women
Target influencers
Map influential relationships and promote key messages
Film about work with LGBTQ+ people
Film promoting to less well reached community
Film promoting to less well reached community
Film promoting to less well reached community
apprenticeship provider and recruit apprentice
Board development
Map skills gap
Recruit
Recruit chair Write role description
Recruit
Office
Identify office for 2-5 people
Review board skillset and function
Review board skillset and function
Recruit chair
Identify office for 6-10 people
Identify office for 15-20 people