Capacity has supported its partner, We Are Juno CIC, to secure £1m in loan funding and over £600k grant funding to kick-off a transformational model of Children’s Residential care.
Every year in the Liverpool City Region over 300 new care placements are made for children into residential care, with nearly half of these being made outside of our region. On the back of these statistics in 2019, Capacity started working with local, care-experienced young people and the commissioners who are responsible for their care with the aim to develop a higher quality, non-profit driven and financially sustainable model of children’s homes for the region – (with young people’s voices at the heart of its design!)
Juno has been designed to move focus in children’s residential homes away from profit, offering alternatives in the residential market. And, as a social enterprise, it’ll use a profit reinvestment model for good, including a plan in the longer-term to put funding into projects that prevent local children needing residential care; helping to redesign better children’s homes for the future.
Capacity, as the development partner of Juno, is proud to announce that we’ve helped secure over £1.5m investment funding to get the model moving forward. These initial funders will each play a key role in helping to mobilise phase one of the project and turn Juno from an idea into a working organisation with operational children’s homes…
A big thank you to Juno’s funders:
- Wirral Council: who have provided a loan of £1m to support in establishing working capital.
- The National Lottery: who have provided grant funding of £250k over 2 years to fund independent evaluation of the project and focus on accessing additional investment and funding. In addition, they have funded key aspects of the operational model to invest in co-production with care experienced young people and Social Pedagogy training for the staff team. The National Lottery Community Fund distributes money raised by National Lottery players, who raise more than £30 million each week for good causes across the UK.
- And, The Segelman Trust: who have donated £75k over 3 years and the KPMG Foundation £300k over 3 years for unrestricted development support. Both these grants will allow Juno to invest in quality teams and buildings from the outset.
Chris Catterall CEO of Capacity said “Our team and I are absolutely thrilled to achieve not one but four different awards of funding in recent months for Juno. We can’t make this vision a reality without them believing and investing in us. We’re now rolling our sleeves up and making the transformational ideas of care experienced young people across LCR a reality”.
Over the next five years, Juno plans to open ten local homes for children, starting with their first home in Wirral to open in late 2022/early 2023. To find out more, check out the new Juno website at https://www.wearejuno.org/