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Social enterprise is not immune to the economic downturn - especially those which are reliant on public sector customers, such as Respect 4 Us.
It was set up in 2010 by two teachers, Dominic Boddington and Liz Easton to provide alternative education for teenagers in Norwich who had dropped out of school or were at risk of being excluded.
A number of schools send their most difficult pupils there. They have 38 students on their books at the moment, but public money is tight and some months Liz and Dominic do not know if they will get paid.
Respect 4 Us provides alternative education for teenagers in Norwich
"We've really jumped in and followed our beliefs and hoped it would work," says Liz Easton, "and it has worked but there are rocky patches. It's a bit scary sometimes but you have to have that commitment.
"It would be lovely to crack the web around all these grant structures and to have some help but not at the cost of our independence, because if we had to bend our thinking to meet somebody else's expectations we wouldn't be us."
Their approach is "education on the sly" combining map-reading skills with bike-riding, numeracy with woodwork, and literacy with cookery.
The teenagers and adults prepare and eat meals together and the staff are constantly giving encouragement - even though often all they get in return is sarcasm or bad language.
It seems to be working. At the end of last year all of the teenagers they had worked with went into further education or training.
Sixteen-year-old Levi has been going to Respect 4 Us for over a year after dropping out of school, which he says was a "waste of time."
"This is the only place I haven't been kicked out of. I was class clown at school. If a teacher told me to do something I'd just lash out and wreck the classroom but Respect have straightened me out.
"I have more respect for them than I ever had for my teachers and I've learned more here than I ever learned at school."
Dominic Boddington agrees with Andy Bradley's view that truly innovative approaches to public service are only possible when you are outside the system:
"The great thing is that we are completely free to decide for ourselves how to deal with particular situations. We're free of the national curriculum, we're free of targets, we're free of people looking over our shoulders all the time. It's an utterly fantastic place to work."
Follow The World Tonight's series of reports on social enterprises, weekdays at 22:00 GMT on Radio 4 from Tuesday 21 February or online afterwards at ........
