2025-06-30-accounts - Community Action Machynlleth And District

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Community Ac,on Machynlleth and District
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Annual Report of the Trustees and Financial Statements For the year 1[st] July 2024 to 30[th] June 2025

The Care Centre, Forge Road, Machynlleth, SY20 8EQ Telephone (01654) 700071 e mail office@camad.org.uk Website www.camad.org.uk

Registered Charity Number 1071497

Funded and supported by

Funded Supported

Powys County Council. Machynlleth Rotary Club

Powys Teaching Board. Cllr Michael Williams dec’d

Moondance Foundation Ecodyfi

National Lottery, Awards for All.

McCarthy Stone Foundation.

Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations (PAVO)

Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA)

The Trustees present their Annual Report with Financial Statements for the year beginning 1st July 2024 and ending 30th June 2025.

Charity’s Principal Address

The Care Centre Forge Road Machynlleth Powys SY20 8EQ Telephone (01654) 700071 Email office@camad.org.uk Website www.camad.org.uk

Trustees

Chair	Gordon Hughes
Secretary	Duncan Toms
Treasurer	Brenda Hughes
Other Trustees	Cllr Michael Williams to 26.7.25
	Cllr Monica Atkins to 03.06.25
	Sabrina Cantor
	Sandra Bendelow to 31.07.25
	Sarah Williams to 04.07.25
	Ronald Olden

Bankers

HSBC Bank plc Aberystwyth 19 Great Darkgate Street Aberystwyth Ceredigion SY23 1DE

Constitution. Community Action Machynlleth & District, CAMAD, was registered with the Charity Commissioners and its Constitution was adopted on 2nd July 1998. This Constitution is now very out of date and is in the process of being reviewed in consultation with PAVO, a Resolution being put to Members at the forthcoming AGM.

Registered Charity Number 1071497

Management Structure

Trustees:

A board of 9 trustees who meet at least 4 times per year.

Trustees are recruited by approaching local individuals and organisations including Machynlleth Town Council, and through occasional local advertising.

Staff

CAMAD employs a Manager and an Admin Officer both of whom are part time. It is funded with grants from Powys County Council and Powys Teaching Health Board, also from generous local donations but mainly by grants from Charitable Trusts which must be applied for on a continuous basis to enable the Charity to continue to provide its services to the residents of the Dyfi Valley.

Linda Hayward: Manager (part time)

Amanda Grundy Administrator (part time) to 28[th] March 2025

Providing a 4 days per week open door service 9.30 to 3pm. Answer phone, email, Facebook, outside of these hours.

Registered Charity Number 1071497

Statement of Public Benefit

Under the Charities Acts the Trustees are required to identify the public benefit of the work of the Charity and to define who benefits.

CAMAD is a Community Support organisation and deals almost exclusively with other voluntary organisations which are not-for-profit and usually registered Charities. It also works with statutory bodies, such as Powys County Council and Powys Local Health Board by providing Volunteers to suppor ~~t p~~ eople needing to get to hospital appointments, prescription deliveries and delivering Meals on Wheels.

CAMAD uses mainly Volunteers to help people who are less able because they have wellbeing issues, have a mobility disability or maybe are just finding that being older makes things a bit more difficult. This help may be finding a gardener or getting some shopping, in fact, anything which can't easily be done but which is a relatively simple task. CAMAD does not carry out work which should be done by a professional or which might threaten the livelihood of local traders. For example, many people with a disability would find it very difficult to change a light bulb but to call in an electrician is hardly necessary. Much of CAMAD's work in this field is concerned with community transport. With a very limited public transport system, most people can find getting to the doctor, dentist, Flu and Covid vaccinations or out-patient clinic almost impossible and getting a taxi to go, say, from the Machynlleth area to Bronglais Hospital may easily cost over £50. This may be affordable to some but if treatment is needed over a period of time it becomes hugely expensive. To help meet this need CAMAD provides a Community Car service with Volunteer drivers using their own cars. It also runs a Taxi-Card scheme which gives members access to half price taxi fares up to an annual limit, which depends on the Charity's finances. It also runs clubs for older people who live in isolation and who would otherwise not be able to socialise.

Many of CAMAD's Volunteers are older, retired people but by no means all and often they will fit volunteering into their daily lives, be it driving a train or bringing up a family. Volunteering is particularly helpful to people who have not been working for some time whether through illness, redundancy, caring duties or some other reason. CAMAD has a number of examples of people for whom volunteering with our organisation has led to paid work or just the experience has been enough to rebuild the confidence they have needed to get them started again.

Much of what we do is free, such as collection and delivery of prescriptions, but we do have to make a charge in some cases where we incur costs which cannot be covered by our fund-raising efforts. Where we do make a charge, it is only the cost to CAMAD of providing the service. For example, a charge of £10 is made to members of the Foot Care Club to defray the costs of nail clippers, nail files and hiring a suitable room. No profit is made from any of our activities.

The services we offer are:

Lunch Club Meals on Wheels Foot Care Community Car Service Taxi Card Scheme Prescription Delivery Women’s Support Group Wellbeing Group Signposting to appropriate agencies Recruiting Volunteers to provide these services.

Activities and Objectives

CAMAD is a Volunteering Community Support Service covering Machynlleth and the Dyfi Valley. We have been running since 2[nd] July 1998. Our catchment area covers parts of the three counties of Powys, Ceredigion and Gwynedd. It is a rural area with a widely dispersed community in many outlying villages. Public transport is limited.

Volunteering – We recruit volunteers to help provide the services we offer to vulnerable members of our community and those with health and mobility issues. These can range from Befriending to Meals on Wheels deliverers. Our ethos is to support our volunteers rather than simply placing them (unless that’s all they require). We want to ensure they get the most from their volunteering and become an included part of the CAMAD family.

Elderly Care – we have an excellent reputation for our work with the elderly, providing volunteer drivers and deliverers for Meals on Wheels twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays [a service we now manage after it fell victim to financial crisis Council cuts], a monthly Lunch Club, and a fortnightly Foot Care service using volunteers who are trained by NHS podiatrists (both practical and anatomy/ physiology)

Unemployment – We aid unemployed volunteers to find placements which both improve their employability but also afford an opportunity to try out new things and uncover skills they never knew they had. A number of the people we have helped have had depressive conditions and we extend our supported volunteering to them

Community Transport – We operate a community car service where volunteers drive clients to health and dental appointments shopping and family visits. We help with journeys to Aberystwyth, Carmarthen, Llanidloes Swansea, Wrexham, Cardiff and often to hospitals in England. People need our help partly because the transport links are so poor. Our service is vital to some who have no other way of travelling it proved itself to be invaluable with the first roll out of Covid Vaccinations in 2021.

Additionally, we run a Taxi Card scheme – for a £9 annual fee, members are entitled to 50% off their taxi journeys up to a value of £50 to £100 (depending on funds). We currently have 36 members but sadly only one taxi company, Mach Taxis ceased trading in August this year and we now rely on Peter’s Taxi to provide this service.

We organise a once a monthly Lunch Club for the elderly at The Wynnstay Hotel which currently has over 20 members. It provides a hot meal and companionship which relieves social isolation.

A social Foot care service for older people. Volunteers are trained to do basic nail cutting. Keeping feet healthy reduces the likelihood of falls in the home and helps maintain independence and social networks and currently has 32 members.

CAMAD took over the Machynlleth Meals on Wheels from PCC which was due to be scrapped due to the funding cuts. As we have organised it on their behalf for 13 years, we felt it was a service that should not be lost to the town so took it on as one of our core services.

We also offer a Prescription collection and medicine delivery service which we started during the Covid pandemic.

We also run a Women’s support Group that meets every Wednesday between 10am and 12pm with 20+ members. It is a peer support group, many good friendships have been made within the group enabling them to join other clubs together. It is a social group with refreshments, speakers and outings and has been running now for the last 8 years.

Mental Health & Wellbeing – CAMAD Pathways Project ceased in April 2023 due to staff leaving and coming to the end of the funding. We now run

a small meeting on Tuesdays between 1pm and 3pm. We have a small comfortable lounge area and communal kitchen. There is always tea and biscuits in the kitchen and informal therapeutic activities including art and general discussion.

Our principle is to offer a space where people can enjoy each other's company, confidentially, knowing that everyone who uses the service has shared similar troubles. We don't sit around talking about mental health - in fact it's a very good-humoured set-up. The point is there is the freedom to talk openly about what matters to you in social surroundings. Sometimes these things can't be talked about comfortably at home, and it's so easy to become isolated in the midst of depression.

The nearest NHS mental health support is in Aberystwyth 19 miles away, or Newtown 28 miles away. We have been endorsed by our local surgery with whom we have a good relationship in this field through running a Volunteering-On-Prescription programme (which is where we gained our credibility as effective providers of support in the area of mental health).

Our objective is to continue finding funders who appreciate the need for core cost assistance, which is growing harder and harder. Yet these unrestricted funds are essential to the running of our day-to-day vital services. Our endeavour is to do as much as we can for the community at a time when UK and Welsh government, and local authority funding is diminishing. There are no other organisations in our community offering the same types of support we do

CAMAD’s Activities from July 2024 to June 2025

(Note: We do not have figures for prescription deliveries.)

Foot Care Service	(twice a month)
Members: 17	Sessions: 26	Volunteers: 2	Staff: 1
Lunch Club(Monthly)
Members: 22	Sessions: 12	Volunteers: 2	Staff: Admin only
Women’s Group(weekly)
Members: 15	Sessions: 50	Volunteers: 0	Staff: 1
Taxi-Card
Members: 20	Journeys: 109
Meals on Wheels(twice weekly)
Members: 15	Meals: 1077	Volunteers: 3	Staff: Admin only
Community Car(when required)
Members: Anyone.	Journeys: 91	Volunteers: 6	Staff: Admin only
Mileage: 7426
Destinations:
Hospital	Dentist	Opticians	Other
Bronglais	Aberystwyth	Aberystwyth	Dolgellau
Glangwili	Machynlleth
Gobowen	Newtown
Newtown	Rhayader
Shrewsbury	Dolgellau
Swansea
Telford

Acknowledgements.

The Trustees would like to thank all of our funders for their support throughout this year and in years past, without it CAMAD would not be able to provide services vital to our community and to provide employment to local people where there is very little. It is becoming harder to attract funding for general running costs, but we have been successful for the last 27 years, and we hope to continue into the future by giving value for money and continuing to provide much needed help to the more vulnerable members of our community.

Our staff have worked to their usual high standards and, as Trustees, we recognise their dedication and hard graft. It is not easy to keep so many balls in the air and know what to do with a Community Car request at the same time as ordering meals for Lunch Clubbers at the same time as cutting toe nails in Foot Care etc etc. To Linda we say a big thank you for all that you do and for your dedication and commitment to the work of CAMAD. Thanks also for all her work to Amanda Grundy, our former Admin Assistant, who left us to take up another post earlier this year.

We would also like to thank Prof Russell Davies for inspecting CAMAD’s Annual Accounts.

Finally a big thank you to our Volunteers. It is amazing how willingly they give their time to help others. Our Community Car drivers take people to hospital appointments all over the country and our Meals on Wheels Volunteers drive around getting hot meals to people while they are still hot. And we should not forget the skills of those who trim nails, not by any means as easy as it might sound.

Michael Williams and Monica Atkins

We were all deeply shocked and saddened by the untimely deaths of Councillors Michael Williams and Monica Atkins. Both had been long time supporters and Trustees of CAMAD, indeed Michael had been with us since day one. They will both be missed, not just by CAMAD, but throughout Bro Ddyfi.

“ The reason Volunteers are not paid is not because they are worthless, it’s because they are priceless”

CAMAD

‘Volunteering Community Support’

Independent examiner's report to the trustees on the unaudited financial statements of Community Action Machynlleth & District.

I report on the accounts of the charity for the year ended 30 June 2025 as follows:

Respective responsibilities of trustees and independent examiner

As the charity's trustees you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts, you consider that the audit requirement of section 43(2) of the Charities Act 1993 (the Act), as amended by section 28 of the Charities Act 2006 does not apply and that an independent examination is needed. It is my responsibility to examine the accounts under section 43(3) (a) of the Act, as amended; to follow the procedures laid down in the General Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 43(7)(b) of the Act, as amended; and to state whether particular matters have come to my attention.

Basis of independent examiner's statement

My examination was carried out in accordance with the General Directions given by the Charity Commission. An examination includes a review of the accounting records kept by the charity and a comparison of the accounts presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accounts, and seeking explanations from you as trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit and consequently no opinion is given as to whether the accounts present a 'true and fair view' and the report is limited to those matters set out in the statement below.

Independent examiner's statement

In connection with my examination, no matter has come to my attention:

(i) which gives me reasonable cause to believe that in any material respect the requirements

to keep proper accounting records in accordance with section 41 of the Act; and
to prepare accounts which accord with the accounting records and to comply with the accounting requirements of the Act have not been met; or

(ii) to which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

...........................................................

A R Davies, BSc Lond, MSc, DPhil, Oxon

Emeritus Professor, School of Mathematics, Cardiff University, CF24 4AG.

Date: 20th October 2025.