Working at Barca-Leeds
We love what we do and we're passionate about making a difference to the lives of the people we work with.
About us
Barca-Leeds was formed in 1994 by a group of Bramley residents who wanted to make a difference in their community. Local residents could see for themselves the impact that high unemployment and low aspirations were having on their community. Today, we still stick to our founding principles of providing person-centred support that connects people to services that meet their individual needs.
We're a thriving team!
Founded
Years in the community
Team members
Our history
1994 - 1998
Barca-Leeds was founded in 1994 and has its origins in Bramley Parish Community Projects supporting West Leeds in disadvantaged council estates. We initially provided youth work and community work.
In 1995, we also founded the country's first community based needle exchange.
1999 - 2000
Using our holistic approach we established further areas of need in our local communities.
We were successful in our first National Lottery Bid to provide community work at Fairfield Community Centre including an after school club.
We also ran educational projects: Pathway to Learning and Lifelong Learning.
2001 - 2003
Barca was involved in setting up West Leeds Health Learning Network and contributed to Leeds Womens Day. We have been celebrating Womens Day for over 20 years.
Our drugs project expanded to include counselling. We expanded our Youth team to deliver a youth inclusion project and also purchased Manor House in 2003.
2004 - 2013
We developed our counselling model supported and delivered by volunteers.
We had additional funding to support development and expansion of our family support work as well as our employability and youth work.
2014
We merged with West Leeds Healthy Living Network in 2014 to deliver health and wellbeing projects.
2015 - 2016
In 2015, our portfolio of work expanding rapidly. We continued to deliver youth, community and drugs work but also had public health projects like financial inclusion and social prescribing.
2017-2018
We entered a partnership project in 2017 called WYFI, which delivered street outreach work with people disengaged with other services in the city. This was the start of our Housing Navigators model and we started delivering supported housing with Engage Leeds in 2018.
2019 - 2021
During the pandemic, we delivered Covid response support to people in West Leeds, including people that were clinically extremely vulnerable.
Our internal staff groups formed to discuss and led on important issues.
2022 - 2024
In 2022, we began our journey to develop ourselves as a Trauma Informed organisation.
2024 marks our 30th anniversary of delivering transformational services across Leeds.