“Connecting people to nature and each other”
Trustee Report 2020 - 2021
Reference and administration details
Charity name : Forest School SNPT Charity number : 1087964 Address : Bishop’s Wood Countryside Centre, Caswell, Swansea, SA3 3BS
Trustees
Jessica Kidd – Chair Deborah Hill Timothy Orrell
Project Manager
Holli Yeoman
Structure, governance and management
The organisation changed to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation in September 2019.
Trustee selection method
New trustees are appointed by the existing trustees and approved at the Annual General Meeting by a majority vote.
Additional governance issues
The management committee seeks to ensure that the trustee body reflects the diversity of the wide needs of Forest School and the charity’s work with children and young people and the natural environment. The aim is to have representatives from the Local Authority, Education, Environment and Outdoor Learning, as well as clients and service users.
Organisational structure
The charity employs a Project Manager who is responsible for ensuring the charity delivers its services and meets its targets, along with the other 2 permanent staff, both Forest School Leaders, one Project Lead and one Training Lead. There are a further 8 leaders and assistants who work on a sessional basis and usually approximately 5 volunteers. All staff are part-time.
Objectives and activities
Charity objects
The objects of the CIO are to promote the benefit of children and young people in Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot and neighbouring areas by providing facilities for education and recreation outdoors and indoors with the aim of improving lives of all children and young people
Charity aims
Forest School provides opportunities for individuals of all ages and abilities to grow in confidence, self esteem and independence in special woodland settings, where they are supported in their learning and encouraged to explore the environment and appreciate nature.
What makes Forest School special is its concentration on regular repeat visits, ideally over a whole year and the ethos of child-initiated learning and high staff: child ratio, enabling individual's learning needs and styles to be supported. Woodlands are a fantastic learning environment, they are exciting, robust, resourcerich and safe (as long as properly managed and risk assessed).
Sessions are run by a team of qualified Forest School Leaders, Assistants and volunteers. The activities cover a broad range from woodland crafts and arts, bush craft, cooking, tool use, woodland management and conservation, play and environmental education topics.
There is also a commitment to supporting and training others to provide similar activities and benefits, and we offer a training programme ranging from INSETs in schools to accredited qualifications for individual Forest School Leaders and Assistants.
This year we have reviewed our aims and vision in light of the developing terrain of outdoor learning and climate crisis, and arrived at a new focus for the next three years, which will champion more explicitly the value of nature connection and the therapeutic elements of our work.
Charity activities
Our provision is divided into projects, which we deliver directly to participants, and training, which enables others to become practitioners in the field and carry out their own delivery.
Projects can be going into schools, or bringing them out to one of our sites for regular, usually weekly, sessions. We also provide one-off programmes of activities for school ‘trips’. Other grant-funded work can be working with specific groups with their own disadvantage or need, for example creating more accessible activities for those with physical disabilities, or work in a geographical community such as partnering with a local ‘Friends of’ the Park.
Playschemes form another core part of our project activity, offering open access outdoor play, supported by the Local Authority’s Play Team. There has been
increasing focus on funding for under 5s projects which are run as parent and toddler sessions, and are our most popular cohort at the moment.
Training is another branch of our work, with courses where individuals come to us to form a group to be trained in an Agored Cymru qualification running up to 4 times per year. Training teachers within their own setting is also an important part of spreading the message and empowering those who already work with children and young people to use the outdoors to greater benefit.
Achievements and performance
It has been an unusual year due to the pandemic, although not altogether bad, with some quite positive surprises.
We suspended all of our activity from April, with delivery staff on furlough and the Project Manager on reduced hours. We were grateful to receive covid emergency funding from two different sources, one was the Moondance Foundation, and the other was the Welsh Government. These, and the furlough income, helped us to ride out the lack of activity. There was also a local grant specific to making activities covid-safe which helped a lot with readiness to re-open.
Another plus was that we were one of the first organisations to be up and running again as things opened up due to the extra level of safety in our work taking place outdoors. There was in fact extra funding in the summer to get kids out playing and back in contact with the world and each other, which gave us a busier than usual schedule for August.
The training side of our work was also transformed as our training partner developed a blended course, where trainees could work through the theory part of the course online at home in their own time. The demand for this was huge, and meant we had a very busy autumn delivering the practical days. We also ran our first entirely online course, a new qualification training Forest School Leaders to Coordinate an Outdoor Curriculum.
Funders of our two big project grants were flexible about us postponing delivery, and we had an unusual (for us) piece of work where we were contracted by Powys Education Service to deliver one to one sessions twice a week for almost the whole year with a child who wasn’t able to attend to school.
Our grant for core costs, in its second year of a tapered 3-year arrangement, was set aside for development in agreement with the funder, Garfield Weston, as the books had balanced without needing to include it in covering our core costs for this year.
In support of future development, we engaged the help of Social Business Wales in facilitating a review of our governance and organisational strategy. It felt like a natural time to review, with the forced stop and a bigger picture across the world of re-assessing priorities and focusing on what’s important. It led to a commitment to clarify our vision and to recruit some new trustees to add energy and skills to the management committee.
Financial review
Policy on reserves
The aim of the organisation is to maintain reserves to enable it to continue and expand the services currently provided and develop new projects in the future. Our policy is to aim to maintain a reserve of three working months as well as a reserve for statutory redundancy of £9,255 as at 31st March 2021.
Further financial details
Our principal sources of funds this year have been from the three covid grants, smaller project grants from City and County of Swansea Childcare and Play Team, and the one to one work with Powys Council. Other income has come from fees from training.
Declaration
The trustees have declared that they approve the report above.
Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees:
Signature Name Jessica Kidd Position Chair of trustees
Forest School Swansea Neath & Port Talbot
1087964
Receipts and payments accounts For the period 4/1/2020 3/31/2021 To from
Section A Receipts and payments
Unrestricted Restricted Endowment Total funds funds funds funds to the nearest to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ £
to the nearest £ to the nearest £
A1 Receipts
----- Start of picture text -----
- - - -
Grant Income - 32,570 - 32,570
Project Fees 13,887 - 13,887
Training Fees 11,923 - 11,923
Donations 50 - 50
Bank Interest - - -
Other Income 332 332
- - -
26,192 32,570 - 58,762
Sub total (Gross income for AR)
A2 Asset and investment sales,
(see table).
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total - - - -
Total receipts 26,192 32,570 - 58,762
A3 Payments
- - - -
Staff Costs 5,778 23,854 - 29,632
Self-employed Staff Costs - 5,450 5,450
Travel 306 - - 306
Volunteer Expenses - - - -
Project & Training Costs 5,543 - - 5,543
Equipment 2,188 2,063 4,251
Maintenance & Improvements - -
Postage, Stationery & Printing 605 605
Telephone 441 441
Computer Costs 1,047 1,047
Insurance 1,255 1,255
Accountancy & payroll 2,198 2,198
Office Rent 1,000 1,000
Membership & Subscriptions 304 304
Miscellaneous 601 601
- - - -
Sub total [ 21,266 ] 31,367 - 52,633
A4 Asset and investment
purchases, (see table)
- - - -
- - - -
Sub total [ - ] - - -
Total payments 21,266 31,367 - 52,633
Net of receipts/(payments) 4,926 1,203 - 6,129
A5 Transfers between funds - - - -
A6 Cash funds last year end 33,438 31,784 - 65,222
Cash funds this year end 38,364 32,987 - 71,351
----- End of picture text -----
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Unrestricted | Restricted | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Categories | Details | funds | funds | ||
| B1 Cash funds | Lloyds Bank CAF Bank Cash |
Total cash funds | to nearest £ 38,164 - 200 38,364 |
to nearest £ 2,500 30,487 - 32,987 |
|
| (agree balances | with receipts and payments account(s)) |
OK | OK | ||
| Unrestricted | Restricted | ||||
| funds | funds | ||||
| B2 Other monetary assets | Details | to nearest £ - - - - - - |
to nearest £ - - - - - - |
||
| B3 Investment assets | Details | Fund to which asset belongs |
Cost (optional) - - - - - |
||
| B4 Assets retained for the | Details | Fund to which asset belongs |
Cost (optional) - |
||
| charity’s own use | - - - - - - - - |
||||
| Fund to which | Amount due | ||||
| B5 Liabilities | Details | liability relates | - - - - - (optional) |
Basis of preparation
During the year the charitable company (04194600) converted to a CIO. This conversion took place on 9th September 2019 and the charity registered with the charity commission as a CIO - charity number 1087964. These financial statements have been prepared under the princ accounting and on a receipts and payments basis. For disclosure to the user, the comparative has been prepared under the accruals basis a company for the comparative period.
Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees
Signature
Print Name
----- Start of picture text -----
CC16a
----- End of picture text -----
Last year
to the nearest £
25,464 24,350 21,788 510 22 170 - 72,304
72,304
37,197 8,481 1,834 254 5,219 869 401 703 454 412 1,248 3,035 - 30 93 - 60,230
60,230 12,074 - 53,147 65,221
Endowment funds to nearest £ - - - -
OK
Endowment funds to nearest £ - - - - - -
Current value (optional) - - - - - Current value (optional) - - - - - - - - -
When due (optional)
y is now only ciples of merger as the charity was a
Date of approval
INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S REPORT TO THE TRUSTEES OF FOREST SCHOOL SWANSEA, NEATH AND PORT TALBOT
Independent examiner’s report to the trustees of Forest School Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot (‘the Charity’)
I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the accounts of the Charity for the year ended 31 March 2021.
Responsibilities and basis of report
As the charity trustees of the Charity, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’).
I report in respect of my examination of the Charity’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the 2011 Act.
Independent examiner’s statement
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:
-
(1) accounting records were not kept in respect of the Trust as required by section 130 of the Act; or
-
(2) the accounts do not accord with those records.
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
Henry Lloyd Davies Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales Bevan Buckland LLP Chartered Accountants Langdon House Langdon Road SA1 Swansea Waterfront Swansea SA1 8QY
27[th] October 2021