Our Story

In Touch was founded by two Chapeltown residents who wanted to use their massage skills to help local people out of pain. They volunteered at OPAL, a charity in a nearby district that supports older people to remain independent, and got some ideas for how it could work closer to home. They also volunteered for PAFRAS, a pioneering charity that supports refugees and asylum seekers in Leeds. Seeing the benefit of what they were doing, they registered as a Community Interest Company in 2013 and proceeded to run projects with Touchstone, Hamara Women’s Centre, Behno and Leeds Teaching Hospitals.

In 2017, In Touch began to enter the medical world, working with the newly established social prescribing agency, Connect Well. We set up a treatment room at St Martin’s Medical Practice, and spent a year providing free holistic therapies for local people in financial hardship. We also set up a practice at the Woodhouse Community Centre, where we were able to offer our services to people in LS6 as well. It was all going very well indeed, until the global pandemic changed the world forever.

For a couple of years, it looked as though In Touch might go under, but in 2022, one of the founding members decided to give it another go. With a new model, some fresh energy and a grant from The National Lottery, we launched the Personal Empowerment Project. PEP was run in partnership with PAFRAS and the Community Wellbeing Hub, then called BAME. It included two weekly exercise classes and free massage therapy for local people, older people and asylum seekers and refugees. It was a great success, and support from HATCH LCP and Hamara helped us to extend the project to support more people for longer.

In 2025 we received further support from The National Lottery, which enabled us to continue our therapeutic community work and add a third class - Zumba for women, in partnership with Leeds Refugee Forum.

Now in 2026 we are again looking for funding to continue our services and expand what we do. We are building our team, developing our model and working on our media presence. Watch this space for news of projects and events as they arrive!