2023-03-31-accounts

THE CARROLL CENTRE LIMITED YEAR ENDING 31 MARCH 2023 TRUSTEE ANNUAL REPORT

The trustees present their report and accounts for the year ended 31 March 2022. As the charity is also a company, the Trustees’ Report includes the Directors’ Report.

The accounts have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in note 1 to the accounts and comply with the following:

• The charity’s governing document

• Applicable law and

• The requirements of the Statement of Recommended Practice, “Accounting and Reporting by Charities”.

Structure, governance, and management

The charity is a company limited by guarantee. The charity is governed by its governing document dated 08 October 2020. The guarantee of individual members of the company is limited to £1 for each member. The Carroll Centre has been trading for 30 years. The centre is funded by services, projects, grants and fundraising. It currently operates an on-site HCC and OFSTED registered grant funded nursery (2015), Soft Play facility (2018), Community Café, registered food preparation kitchen, food pantry, office space, meeting rooms, outdoor areas and car parking. In addition to these services it operates small and medium needs-led grant-funded projects that contribute to the overall revenue of the centre. The centre also has also managed Stanmore Community Hall that adjoins the rear boundary of the centre for 7 years.

The Trustees who are also directors for the purpose of the Companies Act 2006, and those who served in the year were:

Barbara Guthrie Rachel Aron Nicola Horsey Sue Turner Paul Breakwell Marianne Foster

Trustees benefit from an induction process including briefings on the governance of the company and charity. Trustees have access to Charity Commission Publications and to training opportunities to develop expertise.

Potential trustees are interviewed before recruitment and have to be checked through the Disclosure and Barring Service as well as Ofsted. Trustees are appointed annually at the Annual General Meeting and can be co-opted by the Board between AGMs. None of the trustees have any beneficial interest in the company.

The Trustees have assessed the major risks to which the charity is exposed and are satisfied that systems are in place to mitigate any exposure to the major

risks. The trustees appoint a Head of Centre to manage the operational work of the charity and advise the Board on financial and operational matters.

Objectives and activities

The company was incorporated on 14 January 1992. The charity was formed mainly for the benefit of the young people of Stanmore and surrounding neighbourhood. However under its new governing document, its remit is wider: to provide services, education and leisure activities for children and adults in Stanmore and neighbourhood (see below). It is essentially now a community hub for Stanmore.

The Carroll Centre aims to:

• Promote activities to benefit children, young people and families in Stanmore and the surrounding area

• Provide a safe, non-discriminatory environment in which the principles of equal opportunity are actively promoted, without distinction of gender, age, sexual orientation or race, or of political, religious or other beliefs.

• Build partnerships between the community and other agencies in a common effort to advance education and provide activities in the interests of health and social welfare, recreation and leisure time occupation.

Statement of Public Benefit derived from activities

We have referred to the guidance in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing our aims and objective and in planning our future activities. In particular the trustees have considered how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives they have set.

The focus of our activities is to work with children, young people and their families to give children the best possible start in life, inspire them to become positive, happy and healthy adults within a supportive community, and to provide a welcoming community hub for the whole community. We are committed to working in partnership with other agencies to secure the widest range of services to meet the needs of the local population. All our activities are undertaken to further our charitable purposes for the public benefit.

The Board is confident that the centre works with other organisations with shared objectives and that it continues to be well placed to deliver cost-effective services for the community. The Board is also confident that the company has a robust framework for developing the services we provide in order to make an increasingly positive impact in the local communities we serve.

Summary of core activities and services undertaken

In the year from April 2022 the centre faced further extraordinary challenges. Covid closures had substantially reduced our income and put us in financial deficit. But then the cost-of-living crisis hit us. We felt unable to increase our prices to keep pace with inflation because the bulk of our customers and clients were in the worst economic position to cope with the crisis. As a result, we were further in deficit at the end of the financial year. Despite this we have

maintained our services and continue to optimistically work on new service development and planning for the future.

Nursery

The temporary management of the nursery put in place by the then Head of Centre ended when the Nursery Manager and Deputy Manager resigned with short notice. A new nursery manager was appointed during the summer of 2022 by the then Head of Centre. Three weeks after her appointment we had an Ofsted inspection which rated the nursery as ‘inadequate’. Staff and trustees worked very hard to put things right and at the second inspection in February 2023 two areas were rated ‘good’ and two ‘requires improvement’. An overall rating of ‘requires improvement’ was given. We are expecting a re-inspection any time from September 2023 onwards. Very few families left the nursery and generally parents have been happy with the service their children received. However, we still faced real challenges to the nursery by the end of the financial year, partly because Hampshire County Council funding was not keeping pace with inflation, partly because of staffing issues and partly due to worries that numbers for those starting in September 2023 would not match previous years because of falls in the birthrate.

We would like to thank the HCC Early Years Team for their stalwart support in relation to the Ofsted inspections

Qube and Café

Qube (softplay facility) and the cafe performed much better during the financial year 2022-23. The booking system which we had to adopt during Covid was dropped towards the end of the year which allowed us to take more children per session. Both facilities are a real boom for Stanmore.

The Food Pantry

We opened the Food Pantry in April 2022 with help from Hampshire County Council (HCC) and it continues to thrive, with over 300 members. In September we formed a strategic partnership with Winchester Basics Bank who supply us weekly with canned and dried food items to supplement our stock levels. Other supporters/donors include Balfour Beaty, Sainsburys (Badger Farm, Eastleigh town centre), CO OP (Colden Common), Munch Nutrition Winnall, Stanmore School, 6 individual community members making regular donations and Julia & Han Rausing Trust. We also secured additional funds from HCC which extended the start-up funding from October 2022 - March 2023.

HAF Holiday Playscheme (HCC Funding Stream)

Our strong performance in providing holiday playschemes for vulnerable children was recognised with further funding awarded by Hampshire County Council (HCC) for summer, Christmas and Easter playschemes 2022-23. These playschemes are for very vulnerable children and provide a lifeline for them and their parents.

Youth services

The centre has good connections with young people in Stanmore and provides support when it can but funding for formal youth support is now a rarity. In 2021 we started working in partnership with the Youth Employment Hub - a new DWP & Local Government partnership. They ran fortnightly surgeries/interviews for

young unemployed people 16-25 years at the centre. We provide volunteering and employment training for young people that they refer.

Education

The centre has a working partnership with Itchen College, and they have agreed to deliver Adult and family learning courses at the centre and online learning to people we refer. They delivered four short adult learning courses including an ESOL course for refugees and asylum seekers and Paediatric First Aid. They have several others booked and will run Job Academies to help with recruitment and staff training.

Head of Centre

The long-serving Head of Centre Jool Heler-Dixon retired at the end of March 2023. The Centre thanked her for her great contribution to the success of the Carroll Centre over the years providing as it does an lifeline for many families in Stanmore and neighbourhood. Her deputy Steve Maloney was appointed Operational Head of Centre for 6 months on a trial period.

Fund Raising

The fundraising committee met regularly and have sought funding and donations from a range of local sources and have a LocalGiving page that runs appeals for specific projects. The board are grateful to Winchester City Council (WCC), Hampshire Country Council (HCC), Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, Bookers, The Night Shelter, Winchester University, The Amber Project, Winchester Rotary, Alresford Golf Club, and 3 anonymous donors. We continue to work on raising the profile of the Carroll Centre and seeking sources of support to help with our core costs. The Head of Centre and trustees has been working on funding applications and researching funding streams for new project funding and post Covid business recovery initiatives.

Christmas Market

One of our community development activities was our continued two-day Christmas Market that we organise to provide a social occasion for our friends and families, to support and encourage small home business that developed during Covid and to fundraise for the centre. The event attracted over 19 stall holders and our own in - house fundraising stalls. We had an affordable festive menu and treats on sale at the café. The footfall was slightly lower this year and people were spending less due the cost-of-living increases. Nevertheless, we raised nearly £2.000 for the Centre.

COMMUNITY PROJECTS & ACTIVITIES

In 2022-23 we provided a range of community projects which were so vital during the cost-of-living crisis which of course continues.

• Hot Meal/Warm Bank – in December 2022 we started offering a free meal and hot drink to anyone in need and continued it until the end of March 2023. The service was open to all service users Monday-Saturday and the café was providing a daily “Carroll Special”. The funding came from a private donation & J&H Rausing Trust.

• Cook Eat & Play - In summer 2022 we ran a Crowdfunding Campaign and got matched funding from British Airways to deliver a project for 10-12 vulnerable families (HAF, Nursery & Pantry members). The sessions ran from January to March 2023. The purpose of this project was to provide

families with a platform to engage with their children on healthy eating. Families made a healthy snack each week with their children and then had a main meal provided by Munch (healthy eating café based in Winnall).

Thank you

The board continues to be so grateful to the Operational Head of Centre, staff, volunteers and partners for their goodwill and hard work in another very challenging year.

We still face great challenges both financially and in our nursery. But the trustees, staff and volunteers remain determined to make sure the Carroll Centre is a permanent fixture in the life of Stanmore and neighbourhood. Never was it more needed.