ILEAP's History

In 2000, the Project Co-ordinator began a 3 year contract and was based at Stratford District Council offices. The Co-ordinator recruited a team of part time Youth Workers to assist disabled children living in the Stratford District to enable them to participate in local Summer Schemes.

In 2001 the Steering Group handed over ownership of the project to a Voluntary Management Committee made up from Parents, Leisure Providers, Volunteers and past Youth Workers.

Later that year the project became a registered Charity and a Company limited by Guarantee called the Inclusive Leisure Education Activities Project (ILEAP).

As a Charity the ILEAP Co-ordinator applied for funding from Charitable Trusts and increased the Summer Holiday programme, to cover all the school holidays and also began to deliver a weekly programme of small group activities.

The group programme quickly developed and proved a positive way for members to meet up with their friends and have fun and for ILEAP Staff and Volunteers to learn new skills and support each other.

In 2002 ILEAP received a grant from Barnardo’s to deliver an inclusive play project for disabled children. This project replicated the Stratford Project in the Warwick District and ILEAP changed from a Stratford based Charity to one covering South Warwickshire.

In 2003, ILEAP gave a talk to a group of adults with a learning disability from Stratford College about the work they were doing for Children. The adults asked if ILEAP could help them to access leisure opportunities in the evening and at weekends and so ILEAP empowered them to form a group called Let’s Go.

The Let’s Go project allowed ILEAP to continue to support members once they reached 19 years of age and so at this time ILEAP became a Charity for both Adults and Children.

In 2004, ILEAP received three years funding from the National Lottery to continue to develop the Charity. The ILEAP Co-ordinator became the ILEAP Manager and developed the project using funding received from the statutory sector and various charitable trusts to keep developing services for disabled children and adults.

In 2007, ILEAP became the first organisation in Warwickshire to receive the Bronze level of the Warwickshire Award for Involvement Award. This award showcased how ILEAP had developed services,  based on the involvement of its member and their families.

Also in 2007 ILEAP were awarded the Stratford-on-Avon Community Sports Award in recognition of the work the Charity had done in getting disabled young people into Sport.

In 2008 ILEAP received 3 years funding from BBC Children in Need and in 2009 they received 2 years funding from Lloyds TSB Foundation, to pay for the salaries of the ILEAP Youth Workers so that they could support members old and new in their chosen leisure pursuits. This allowed ILEAP to charge a subsidised rate for their group activities of £2.50 per hour.

In 2009 ILEAP were awarded the Silver Level of the Warwickshire Award for Involvement Award in recognition of the continued empowerment of young people taking the lead in the running of the organisation.

In 2010, the ILEAP Charity were supporting over 150 members to access personalised leisure programmes during the school holidays and in the evenings and at weekends.

In 2011, ILEAP began to target people with additional needs, particularly those with a mild / moderate learning disability who were possibly falling through the net of statutory funding and who were therefore very isolated and vulnerable.

By 2012 with an ageing membership ILEAP focused more and more on vulnerable young people and adults, offering them user led leisure opportunities in the local community.

Over the previous 10 years, the ILEAP Charity had received on average approximately £120,000 per year from Warwickshire County Council, for various projects and services, enabling the Charity to offer reduced prices to all.

In 2013, with only one month’s notice, ILEAP were informed that this funding would now be paid directly to individuals and that ILEAP would receive no direct funding from WCC.

On a positive note in 2013, ILEAP were nominated as a Finalist in the Carer of the Year category of the Pride of Warwick District Awards.

At this time, the ILEAP Charity felt that the majority of its members may not be eligible for direct payments and so the Charity searched for alternative funding in order to keep prices affordable for the majority.

During 2014, ILEAP consulted members and increased the number of sessions on offer. ILEAP looked at ways they could work more efficiently and tried to make sure that sessions were well attended. Prices increased, but were subsidised, to keep them affordable for the majority at only £5 per hour.

This strategy, increased our income considerably from client fees, however ILEAP were still spending approximately £60,000 per year more than was coming in.

Fortunately over the previous 10 years, the Charity had been very prudent and accrued considerably free-reserves.

In 2015, the Trustees felt that ILEAP should continue along the same path, utilising free reserves while direct payments began to take more of an effect, as many ILEAP members were still waiting for the system to catch up.

In addition to this approach ILEAP looked at other income streams and began to develop a social enterprise idea called MarketAbility.

MarketAbility had developed from a volunteering project that ILEAP members were involved with.

ILEAP Member Volunteers, volunteered on a Market Stall at the Stratford River Boat Festival, the Leamington Peace Festival and the Kenilworth Festival. It was immediately apparent that the participants gained huge confidence from this volunteering and also awareness of the Charity increased in the local community.

ILEAP initially used the Market Stall as a fundraising and information point, but quickly realised that it had a lot more potential.

A user group discussed what we might be able to sell in order to make a profit for the Charity, whilst giving our members purposeful opportunities that increased their skills and built their confidence. A skills audit was undertaken and identified that sewing and crafts may be the way forward.

With this in mind, ILEAP increased the skill level at arts and crafts sessions and purchased an adapted sewing machine. Pre-cut patterns were prepared and could be easily completed by members, even those with the most complex needs could play a part and take ownership of our products.

Our first product was a simple to make, “shabby chic” tissue holder. These sold really well to Parents and Carers and ILEAP were soon building stock and had items to sell on our Market Stall and so MarketAbility was born.

In 2016, the lease became available at The Kenilworth Centre and thanks to a grant from National Grid “Bringing Communities to Life” ILEAP decided to develop MarketAbility into a new day time service. At the same time, a few of our members were leaving College and had been asking for purposeful activity during the day.

The “Shabby Chic” theme was embraced and we began to introduce new products and very soon our Market Stall was looking more and more professional.

As more members started to join Marketability, the session developed and we started to learn additional skills through activities like cooking, shopping and gardening.

In 2017 MarketAbility became ILEAP MarketAbility Skills4Life, and we hoped that this initiative would not only provide purposeful activities for our members but also become a new income stream enabling ILEAP to become more sustainable.

Thanks to a grant from the Stratford Town Trust, we were able to bring MarketAbility to our Stratford sessions and have a stall at the local craft Market. Similarly, a grant from Kenilworth Town Council and Kenilworth Rotary enabled us to open a little shop and develop the Garden at The Kenilworth Centre and display our products to the wider community. We also sold our first order to a shop in Leamington called the Stagey Fox.

Alongside our new social enterprise initiative, ILEAP have continued to increase capacity and frequency of our weekly sessions and at present deliver over 750 sessions per year, offering over 9000 opportunities for fun and friendship.

We hope to make the Charity sustainable by focusing on the price point and capacity and frequency of sessions, and develop fresh user-led projects such as Assisted Holidays, Community Café, Festival Friends, Peer Mentoring.

Rest assured we are doing all we can to sustain our service by submitting grant applications and working towards a social enterprise model in order to keep our services affordable for everyone.

Hopefully our target group will now be receiving their direct payments, promised in 2013, and we have weathered the lack of resources by utilising our free reserves in a strategic and timely way.

 In 2018, ILEAP plan to update the website to make it easier for people to book and pay for their activities. This will free up administration time, allowing us to apply for grants for new initiatives, and to record data in a safe and secure and usuable way.

We have recently been awarded the 2018 Pride of Stratford “Carer of the Year Award” and were finalists in the 2018 Touch FM Pride of Stratford Award,

Our website at www.ileap.co.uk has been a game changer, enabling ILEAP to adapt activities, trial new sessions and forecast income and expenditure more accurately. We are able to set attendance levels in line with staff availability and offer clients the opprtunity to plan and book in advance. Once a member of the Charity, customers are able to book and pay for their activities and receive automated receipts for their records.

Our journey through Covid during 2020 and 2021 made us more aware of our ability to quickly change, adapt and innovate when presented with unforeseen challenges. This instilled a new confidence and empowered us to look more closely at our organisation and make the necessary changes and improvements to ensure we were better prepared for the future. 

The ILEAP Treasurer, recognised the excellent work being done at ILEAP, with the limited resources available and envisaged that by freeing up the time of our CEO to focus on more strategic tasks we could improve the organisation considerably and put things on a more secure footing for the future. 

Along with the support of the other Trustees, this new perspective and the associated investment in our infrastructure was well considered, as we felt that by allocating resources to pay for the above we would be better placed to meet the needs of our members in the future and that succession planning now rather than in 5 or 10 years’ time was a more prudent and sensible approach.

We understood that we rely too heavily on the skills and dedication of our key staff and felt that should anything happen to any of them we would struggle as an organisation to continue. In addition, we felt that it was time to review the contracts of our sessional staff and reward them for their dedication and hard work with improved terms and conditions that better reflected their role and the changing employment laws and guidelines that were anticipated later in the year.

To this effect we employed the services of a third-party Human Resource and Payroll Agency to help us to implement the new contracts and navigate the complex holiday pay equation for our sessional staff.

Our team of 25 sessional staff were appraised and offered contracts based on their regular shift patterns and their request for additional work, and this in turn enabled holiday entitlement to be calculated, which was a huge milestone. In addition to this we separated the many roles of our CEO and allocated some of them to two new posts, with the aim of freeing up some time for our CEO to work more strategically on new initiatives that would add value and generate income.

Firstly, a new part time Finance post was created to take care of all banking and finance tasks, which were previously undertaken voluntarily by the ILEAP Treasurer and the ILEAP CEO. This also added another level of financial security and ensured that future conflicts of interest were avoided.

Secondly, a part time Project Co-ordinator post developed and helped to take pressure of the CEO by undertaking many of the time consuming, ordinary tasks enabling our CEO to focus on more strategic tasks going forward. Finally, a part time admin post picked up all remaining ordinary tasks and gave the Project Co-Ordinator some options to delegate when required.

Having the above in place by April 2022 was a fantastic achievement and quickly paid dividend. We were able to quickly review our policies and procedures and decided to invest in a Quality Compliance platform that would keep current and future policies up to date and adapt them when new legislation was introduced. This platform enabled staff to have access to all policies from their mobile devices and allowed us to monitor their engagement and identify gaps and maintain accurate records. Alongside the new policy framework, we also invested in staff training and delivered a mix of online and in person training, prioritising first aid, epilepsy awareness and health and safety, before more targeted topics such as autism and challenging behaviour. Going forward we will have a matrix of staff training and qualifications and be able to target specific staff for specialist training as well as monitoring expiry dates and renewal timeframes.

During the pandemic we adapted our offer and introduced many new successful initiatives that added value to our program. As we began to reintroduce services, we were able to bring back tried and tested sessions alongside some of our new initiatives such as online zoom sessions, out and about sessions, 1:1 and smaller group work. This revised and improved program was thoroughly costed and budgeted and we had a clear picture of our finances and were able to clearly separate our core and operational costs in a way that made it possible to introduce more profitable sessions alongside heavily subsidised ones, designed to reward current members and generate interest from new customers.

The solid foundations laid over the previous 12 months have enabled ILEAP to reach new heights in 2023. Our strategy of delivering smaller, more personalised group sessions more frequently has been well received by our members and their families.  

An additional benefit of this approach that we had not fully considered was the positive impact this would have on our Staff and Volunteers. The combination of the introduction of new Staff contracts with improved terms and conditions, the additional training and the regular shift patterns have created a strong and supportive teamwork culture characterised by the shared belief that ILEAP can move forward most effectively when cooperation and collaboration are put at the heart of planning, thinking and decision making.

This positivity and renewed enthusiasm have given the sessions this year a energy and a vibrancy, making them a welcoming and safe space to be for our members old and new. 

The eclectic mix of characters and personalities from existing and new members alongside the support from the Staff and Volunteer team and increasingly the positivity from the wider community has created something very special.  

We encourage visitors to our sessions so that you can see the above first hand, just let us know in advance and we will provide a safety briefing and make you most welcome. This may spark the fuse that gets you into Volunteering and leads to improved mental health and wellbeing. Our members love a new face, and we have friendly member ambassadors who are super keen to show you around and talk you through our journey.  

Our investment in our core team of Trustees, CEO, Finance and Project Coordinators is paying dividend, and the opportunity to work collectively on new project ideas is strengthening our offer considerably.

Our strategy prior to the pandemic was to try and become sustainable by charging a market price for the activities, a strategy proposed by Warwickshire County Council back in 2013.  

However, with the cost-of-living crisis and the increasing demands on household finances, combined with the long delays families with disabled children are experiencing in getting assessments from a stretched social care system, ILEAP are gradually implementing a new approach by offering high quality experiences at more affordable prices. 

To help with this we are applying for more and more grants from charitable trusts to support our work and are thrilled to have been awarded a substantial three-year grant from the National Lottery Community Fund. 

With the retiremnet of our Finance Co-ordinator in 2024 we have outsourced our finance functions to a third party Accountant to mirror our approach to both HR and Compliance Management. This more efficient strategy is working well and has improved saftey and aided our succession plans. We have refreshed our board of Trustees and are in the process of updating all of our policies and procedures and our staff training so that in 2025 we will have reinforced and updated our strong foundations and empowered our workforce helping to safeguard our stakeholders.

Alongside these improvements we continue to offer more frequent sessions to smaller groups and are working hard to offer subsidised session to encourage new members from different age groups to access opportunities to build confidence, raise self esteem and promote independence whilst making friends and having fun.

If anyone has any time to apply pressure to Councillors, Fundraise, Volunteer, Skill Share, please get in touch. Thank you.