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2023-03-31-accounts

Annual Report & Financial statements

For the year ended 31[st] March 2023

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COMPANY REGISTRATION NUMBER 03979511; CHARITY NUMBER 1088641
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The trustees, who are also directors for the purposes of company law, have pleasure in presenting their report and the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2023.

REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS

Registered charity name African Health Policy Network

Charity registration number 1088641

Company registration number 03979511

Registered office Durning Hall, Earlham Grove, Forest Gate E7 9AB

Bankers Barclays Bank plc Barclays Business Centre 1 North End Croydon Surrey

THE TRUSTEES

The trustees who served the charity during the period were as follows:

Mr Danmore Sithole – Chair Ms Tendai Ndanga - Treasurer Pastor David Owusu Mr Mabule Tema

Chief Executive Officer: Deryck Browne

Independent Examiner: TNK & Accountants Elsinore Road, London, SE23 2SH

The Trustees present their report and the examined financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2023. The Trustees have adopted the provisions of the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) “Accounting and Reporting by Charities” in preparing the annual report and financial statements of the charity. The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the accounting policies set out in notes to the financial statements and comply with the charity’s governing document, the Charities Act 2011, the Companies Act 2006 and Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their financial statements in accordance with the Financial Reporting

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Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland published in October 2019. The Directors of the charitable company are its Trustees for the purposes of charity law. The Trustees who have served during the year are listed on page 2.

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE, MANAGEMENT AND OBJECTIVES

1. Constitution, Policies and Objectives

The charitable company is a company limited by guarantee and was set up by a Memorandum of Association on 18[th] April 2000 and as charity on 27[th] September 2001.

The principal objects of the charitable company for the public benefit are:

2. Method of appointment or election of board of Directors

The management of the charitable company is the responsibility of the board of directors who are appointed and co-opted under the terms of the Articles of Association. Currently the AHPN Board of Directors (Trustees) are appointed by open recruitment and by Co-option, based on skills and experience.

3. Policies adopted for the induction and training of board of trustees Newly elected board members are encouraged to attend a series of training sessions led by the Chair of Trustee Board and the Chief Executive officer. These courses equip board members with the skills to carry out their duties as trustees. The training enables them to understand:

During induction, they meet key employees and other trustees. As part of the induction training, they are encouraged to attend appropriate external events where these will facilitate the undertaking of their role.

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4. Organisational structure and decision making

AHPN has a Board of Directors (Trustees) who are appointed by open recruitment. The work of the Board is supported by sub-committees and task groups. The organisation has operational staff headed by a Chief Executive and other members of staff as well as interns. Volunteers support various projects within the organisation at both strategic and operational levels.

5. Risk Management

The Board of Trustees have assessed the major risks to which the charitable company is exposed. In particular those related to the operations and finances of the organisation and are satisfied that systems and procedures are in place to mitigate our exposure to the major risks.

6. Public Benefit

AHPN has referred to the guidance in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing our aims and objectives and in planning our future activities. In particular the trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the public benefit and the aims and objectives they have set and cover all of these matters in the following detailed pages.

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ACTIVITIES, ACHIEVEMENTS AND PERFORMANCE

How our activities delivered public benefit

During the period AHPN continued to develop and implement its strategies challenging health inequalities and ensuring that the issues which impact the health and wellbeing of African descent communities living in the UK are addressed in a meaningful way. The staff teams within the organisation have worked on differing and dynamic projects and initiatives to strengthen and represent the health needs of African descent communities and the wider Black community in the UK.

With our blood donation campaigning project ‘Rooting for the R.0. ’ AHPN partnered the NHS Blood and Transfer service in order to disseminate information and to raise the number of African descent people donating blood. This was in order to ensure that community members living with sickle cell anaemia received correctly matched blood samples in transfusion. We aimed to inform our communities, counter stereotypes and stigma, encourage and assist in relation to blood donation perception, hold discussion/learning events and encourage blood donation registration. We:

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Our Wise Walkers Peer Support Project was an engaging eight-month low impact walking/ sports programme for mature BAME people across Enfield, Hackney and Newham (principally female) who are living with long term health conditions and experiencing isolation. The focus was on exercise and activity (principally walking, but with additional indoor activities) based peer support leading to reduced isolation, greater activity levels, connectivity and friendships, in turn resulting in better mental and physical health. Our partners in this work were Lee Valley Regional Park Authority: Active Communities Programme.

AHPNs North London Gardening Project secured an allotment where community members could attend and take part in gardening tasks and tending their own vegetable patches from the seedlings stage through to reaping and picking. AHPN registered 41 days/sessions of activity at the allotment involving in total 29 individuals and their families and six volunteers.

AHPN partnered the Home Office and Voice4Change in respect of their response to the Windrush Scandal. We developed our own Windrush Navigation Pack https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qGNduFnHckKH3SS_EO2-EmAaCftP2-N2/view?usp=share_link which we utilized, along with other materials, to inform our communities about the HO Documentation and Compensation Schemes, and to encourage and facilitate take-up of these. Within our six target London boroughs we reached over one thousand people with a series of virtual and physical events.

AHPN partnered Austin and Hope Pilkington Trust with our creative project Strength thru Song which enabled us, via a small grant, to provide a warm creative space for community members who had been marginalized and isolated during the pandemic and who welcomed the opportunity to make and listen to music and give and receive peer support.

As much as possible AHPN have sought to blend our peer support activities during the period in order that they compliment each other. So, for example, alongside the above we also ran simultaneous peer support activities such as our Holding Hands; Building Back Peer Support project in partnership with London Catalyst. Here, targeting the most isolated community members we recruited to and delivered a programme of activity based peer support with a mental wellbeing focus. We targeted those most isolated within our communities and offered support, empowerment, health messages and warm hubs. Also, we ran sessions on navigating health systems post-pandemic as this was flagged as a crucial issue for mature community members.

AHPN has a track record of partnering the pharmaceutical industry and encouraging equitable representation, best practice and change. During the period we worked

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with Gilead pharmaceuticals to develop programmes. We mutually realized that prevention drives for African descent communities focusing on HIV testing, late diagnosis & PrEP/U=U often took place within a sexual health 'bubble'. The T Project in a dynamic way took testing, messages, advice and resources about positive developments and, using culturally appropriate and sensitive methods promoted them to African/BAME communities in 6 East.London boroughs, normalising & driving up testing, challenging stigma & driving down late diagnosis. During the period AHPN was alive to the fact that community members were often struggling with the Cost-of-Living crisis and finding it difficult to meet fuel and food essentials payments. We examined the evidence which bore out that African descent community members in need (particularly elders) were less likely than other groups to claim assistance due to a range of factors that we researched, including apprehension and pride. AHPN partnered Independent Age and set up our national Safe Hands Project. The Project (ongoing) provided a. small-scale emergency financial support; b. larger scale emergency financial support and c. poverty impact reduction interventions to a total of approximately 900 BAME elders across the country living with long-term health conditions. With this project we drew upon the assistance of our AHPN Network of 111 trusted partners developed under our BAME Healthy Communities Programme.

Under our BAME Healthy Communities Programme, in partnership with Comic Relief and acting as intermediaries we had previously reached and impacted over 1000 individuals and distributed almost £400,000 in small grant funding to BAME led projects adversely impacted by the pandemic. As an adjunct to this important work the follow-up phase has been about further developing AHPN, strengthening the organization and ensuring positive change and sustainability. This is ongoing and will take us into 2026.

Towards the latter part of the period AHPN augmented our Safe Hands cost of living work by partnering with London Communities Foundation (under the Together for London initiative). A small grant allowed us to develop The Safer Hands Project and focus specifically on our London-based community members (within 6 specific boroughs) and allowed us to make emergency interventions at the grass roots level coupled with warm hub and lunch club provision.

Policy and Research

The focus of AHPN is the reduction of health inequalities and improving health outcomes, across specific health conditions as well as the wider social, cultural, lifestyle and economic determinants of health for African descent people. The priority health conditions for AHPN are: HIV and sexual health; diabetes; cancer; stroke; mental health and sickle cell anaemia. The wider determinants of which focus on faith, migration and poverty.

Health is an outcome, not an accident. That is the principle underpinning all of the work of the African Health Policy Network. AHPN is concerned with identifying, measuring and reducing health inequalities facing African descent people and communities in the UK, in order to promote good and equal health for all. Our work is based on the recognition that inequalities in health between different social groups

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are a product of wider inequity in society, and that promoting equity in health is therefore a question of social justice.

We have continued to take forward the foundations laid down by our established and published Policy Position document and continue work on the six main health conditions set out therein. Our policy work continues to be funded at the margins of some of our more substantive projects and campaigns work.

We have contributed to policy discussions with local and national Government representatives, policy makers and major pharmaceutical companies including Gilead and Merck, Sharpe and Dohme. We have brought a policy perspective to the work that we have carried with the Home Office on the Windrush Scandal. AHPN sat on the HO Windrush Community Engagement Sessions, and with our NHS partnerships we have attended roundtables on the issues of blood donation, sickle cell anaemia and the need for greater numbers of donors of colour and greater supplies of R0 type blood.

The specific AHPN work supported by Gilead to explore and promote the normalisation of HIV testing alongside testing for other conditions has successfully fed into AHPNs campaigning work to challenge HIV stigma, promote the take up of PrEp amongst African descent communities and champion the principle of U = U, Undetectable Equals Untransmissible.

For much of this reporting period (ten months) AHPN has held the Chair of the One Voice Network, a policy collaborative of national Black health community organisations. One Voice Network (OVN) is an independent coalition of 12 Black-led grass-roots community organisations. OVN provides clear vision and strategic leadership and a unique platform for black communities to play a more active role in HIV policy and practice.

The mission is to:

shared, to shape the health and care services that are intended for them.

One clear example of how OVN, with AHPN and partners has influenced Government policy is the below change to discriminatory blood donation regulations – a change for which we vigorously campaigned . the change was made following meetings with DHSC.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/12/a-welcome-change-to-discriminatory-blooddonation-rules

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Additionally, AHPN has continued to provide policy direction and policy interpretation within front line health interventions for African descent communities. This involves Peer Support initiatives & programmes, Mentoring, Point of Care testing/health campaigns/Awareness raising/Anti Stigma & Discrimination initiatives/Mental health & Wellbeing strategies. The metrics utilised in monitoring and evaluating policy development and project work has yielded good quality information which has fed into our policy directives. AHPN has contributed to several conferences (physical and virtual) and policy discussions/ round tables on a national and international basis regarding the above.

Previous AHPN Annual Reports had expressed a desire to organisationally develop and strengthen AHPN around certain key functions:

At the close of the reporting significant progress had been made on the direction of travel against these objectives as a result of a burgeoning partnership with Comic Relief which has seen a continuation of funding for organisational development and strengthening purposes.

On the international front AHPN was represented Interest International Conference on HIV Treatment, Pathogenesis and Prevention Research in Kampala, Uganda during May 2022. A joint conference research poster was presented on behalf of both AHPN and the One Voice Network. This was extremely well received.

MEMBERSHIP & NETWORKS

AHPNs Community and Engagements lead officer continues to develop and facilitate programmes to enhance organisational membership. Along with the AHPN Grants Officer they have been instrumental in developing networks that include over 100 BAME community based organisations (CBOs) and the AHPN service user network ( Ffena ) with over seventy members nationally. Both networks receive regular newsletters and augment the work of AHPN with views, consultations, feedback and critique. The CBO partners network was developed and nurtured as AHPN under its BAME Healthy Communities Grant Programme partnered Comic Relief to fund grassroots BAME organisations in the eye of the pandemic.

Ffena, our dedicated service user Network, continues to grow and strengthen and has held several national events during the period. These have covered a range of

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wellbeing and health equity issues including the take up of Prep, late HIV diagnosis, HIV stigma and the role of U=U. Ffena has proved a great source of volunteers who have contributed to the work and development of AHPN.

The following contribution was penned by one of our key volunteer peer support leads:

“Our service user group, Ffena, has developed a strong network of volunteers during this period. We had projects we noted our members would have special interest in. Our Volunteers were so active during our gardening project. It was a total hands-on project where members took total responsibility for their own pieces of land and made sure that they maintained it the way that pleased them. Volunteers were engaging with group members to make sure the harvest was good by helping out with ideas to maintain their projects. We had a bumper harvest and more volunteers registered for this year.

Our volunteers engaged actively in our Safe Hands project by helping out distributing food hampers to our older members with mobility issues. Some took the initiative to make calls during the week as well as support them to hospital appointments. Peer support was most effective this year . Volunteers also took part in local community events by manning stalls and distributing leaflets and fliers on the streets. Our hospital visits were so effective as members supported each other during difficult times. Our best buddying group of volunteers were there to support members who were bereaved here and out of the country. Our monthly exercise classes were very much attended and members participated fully. We also had a volunteer to check on blood pressure onsite. All these activities are shared on our most effective SUPPORTIVE NETWORK WhatsApp group which is a resource that connects all of our members from all over the UK. This network is a platform where everyone can share vital information as well as ideas they find necessary for the others. Our zoom meetings are worth mentioning and very impactful for our community. We have also noticed that the older community members seem to lose interest in the watsapp group and prefer to be contacted individually and privately. That is done as per their wishes by the Community Engagement Officer. AHPN encourages and depends on its volunteers who are involved in most projects. They believe in communities taking the lead in grass roots decision making . Most activities are beneficiary centred and this positively impacts on volunteering and empowering communities for the best outcomes. We are looking forward to continuing this work to impact communities as per their needs”.

AHPN is indebted to our supporters, Comic Relief, East End Community Foundation, Austin, Hope, Pilkington, The Home Office, The NHS, Hackney Giving, Hackney CVS, Lee Valley Authority, the National Lottery, Independent Age, MSD Pharma, London Communities Response, Gilead Pharmaceuticals, Viiv Pharmaceuticals, Jannsen, Hackney Borough, MIND, MacAids Foundation, London Catalyst, Barrow Cadbury, Coop Foundation and others for the dedicated support that have given us throughout this period which has enabled our ongoing work.

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Financial Report and Funding

AFRICAN HEALTH POLICY NETWORK

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES (INCORPORATING THE INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT)

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2023
Unrestricted Restricted Total Funds Total Funds
Funds Funds 2023 2022
Note £ £ £ £
INCOMING RESOURCES
Incoming resources from
generating funds:
Voluntary income 50,227 217,505 267,732 114,808
Investment income - – - –
------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------
TOTAL INCOMING 267,732
RESOURCES 50,227 217,505 114,808
------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------
RESOURCES EXPENDED
Charitable activities 117,326 104,177 221,503 (268,851)
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------
TOTAL RESOURCES
EXPENDED 117,326 104,177 221,503 (268,851)
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------
NET INCOMING
RESOURCES FOR THE
YEAR/NET INCOME FOR
THE YEAR (67,099) 113,328 46,229 154,043
RECONCILIATION OF FUNDS
Total funds brought forward 73,429 21,771 95,200 249,243
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TOTAL FUNDS CARRIED
FORWARD 6,330 135,099 141,429 95,200
==================================== ==================================== ==================================== ====================================

The Statement of Financial Activities includes all gains and losses in the year and therefore a statement of total recognised gains and losses has not been prepared.

All of the above amounts relate to continuing activities.

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AFRICAN HEALTH POLICY NETWORK

BALANCE SHEET

YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2023
2023 2022
Note £ £ £
FIXED ASSETS
Tangible assets 1 1
CURRENT ASSETS
Debtors - 15,197
Cash at bank 229,623 127,198
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------
229,623 142,395
CREDITORS: Amounts falling due within one year (88,194) (47,195)
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------
NET CURRENT ASSETS 141,429 95,200
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------
TOTAL ASSETS LESS CURRENT ASSETS 141,429 95,200
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------
NET ASSETS 141,429 95,200
==================================== ====================================
FUNDS
Restricted income funds 6,330 21,771
Unrestricted income funds 135,099 73,429
------------------------------------ ------------------------------------
TOTAL FUNDS 141,429 95,200
==================================== ====================================

TENDAI MARJORIE NDANGA

Treasurer

Charity Registration Number: 1088641 Company Number:

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AFRICAN HEALTH POLICY NETWORK

Report of the Accountant's to the Members of AFRICAN HEALTH POLICY NETWORK

We report on the accounts of African Health Policy Network for the year
ended 31 March 2023.

As the charity's trustees you are responsible for the preparation of the
accounts.

Basis of Independent Examiners Report
Our examination was carried out in accordance with the General Directions
given by the Charity Commissioners. 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 usual
items or disclosures in the accounts, allied to the seeking from you as
trustees’ explanations concerning any such matters. The procedures
undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an
audit, and consequently we do not express an audit opinion on the view
given by the accounts.

Independent examiner's statement

In connection with our examination, no matters have come to our attention:

31 December 2023

TNK & Accountants
Elsinore Road
London
SE23 2SH

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