The Squad Trustees Annual Report 2021 - 2022
This report is designed to supplement the legal and financial information contained in the financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2022 by providing a summary of the activities and achievements of The Squad Club during this period.
The Squad provides people with learning disabilities access to a fun and social environment, whilst supporting them towards fulfilling their true potential. It is an organisation with a difference, embracing and promoting social inclusion and choice. Our beneficiaries (known as ‘Members’) are encouraged to try new activities and learn new skills, helping them to be better equipped to tackle life’s challenges. We believe our members are The Squad’s greatest assets, we encourage them to help run the clubs and support them in having a voice, both within the organisation and in their local communities.
Overview for the year
The Squad has been successful in efforts to generate fundraising revenue through various channels, namely grant funding and corporate fundraising, against a backdrop of challenging circumstances across the charity sector following the end of the pandemic. This has enabled the charity to operate with a stable financial platform for the immediate term and to begin rebuilding our reserves while continuing to deliver valuable services to our members. The Trustees and all of our team continue to work hard to ensure that this can continue.
Whilst this annual report only covers the period from 1 April 2021 to 31 March 2022, we think it’s important to report on the ongoing impact to The Squad following the coronavirus pandemic and how we have responded as restrictions were lifted in the UK. Despite social distancing and test and trace restrictions being lifted across the UK, our members and their families and carers are still at greater risk than the general public with regards to covid-19 which has led to some ongoing concerns and fears among our members about returning to face-to-face sessions with The Squad. To address these concerns, we have continued to put the safety of our members, staff and volunteers, as well as the wider community, first in everything we do as a charity. Face-to-face services have resumed but with some differences and appropriate safety measures in place to minimise risks and to ensure members and volunteers were comfortable and confident when attending in-person sessions. We also began our first postpandemic offsite trips for members as well.
We have worked to ensure we maintain the best experience possible for our members and volunteers, whilst being proactive in advertising our sessions to new members and volunteers who may benefit from becoming part of The Squad.
Overall, FY21-22 has seen the charity return closer to pre-pandemic operations as we work with our members to help them become more confident and for the charity to continue offering our members as many diverse and beneficial experiences and services as possible.
The charity would not be able to operate without our incredible staff and volunteers, who go above and beyond to ensure our members have a consistently beneficial experience and enjoy every moment of their time with The Squad.
Squad Juniors Club
Our Juniors club is for young people aged 13-25 years old.
In FY21-22 we ran 49 Squad sessions for members, with an average attendance of 19 members per session. These sessions are supported by an amazing group of volunteers, including a core group of 7 volunteers who give up their Thursday evenings to ensure the charity can continue delivering services and that our Juniors members’ needs are met.
Our members have been on many offsite trips this year, with our main trip being a visit to Central London to ride the Cable car and the Uber boat. This trip was organised and planned by the Juniors Members themselves. They planned, budgeted and organised all transport for the visit, which included 18 members, who all enjoyed their day and over half the group, had not been on the Uber boat before.
Some standout activities for the year included cooking sessions, which help Juniors Members develop their skills as set out by the Young Foundation Framework. When it comes to sessions with cooking, the members develop their confidence in life skills, and their ability to manoeuvre around a kitchen. We also ensure members are trying new foods and delicacies as part of these sessions, to offer them experiences they may not have access to at home or in other areas of their lives. All of the meals that were cooked were vegetarian, dairy-free and gluten-free, so they were as inclusive as possible for all of our members. Over 80% of the members felt they had developed their skills in the kitchen as a result of this activity session.
In the build up to Christmas 2021, a few of the members mentioned that they were worried about buying Christmas presents for their friends and family as it was a financial burden. The Juniors club therefore adapted our activity programme and added two sessions focused on present-making, with Juniors members deciding to create their own candles in jars, which the group decorated, plus created the candles from raw wax and including their own preferred scents. We then created hot chocolate cones decorated to look like reindeer, snowmen and Santa Claus.
Team games and sports are always a priority for The Squad, Sport England found that you are twice as likely to become obese and five times more likely to be morbidly obese if you have a learning disability. This is why we encourage young people to stay active. We do this by running one sport session a week. This varies from football, basketball, rounders, cricket and skipping. During the summer we hosted our own Paralympic Games giving young people the opportunity to be involved in lots of activities like the long jump, relays, badminton and javelin. We found that only 63% of our members access physical activity at least once a week.
The Squad Juniors group have had a great year with lots of different activities and opportunities for the members to get involved with, and we will continue to develop our programme to the needs of the members and the families who attend while meeting The Young Foundation Framework of Outcomes.
Squad Vets Club
The Vets Club is for members aged 25+ and is a well-established and supportive service for its members, which aims to create opportunities for members to socialise in the community and with their peers.
The Vets Club Leader, supported by a team of volunteers, continued to create opportunities for its members to socialise with peers in a welcoming environment. We believe that living with a learning disability should not stop anyone from leading an active and enjoyable life. Therefore our programme contains a great mix of activities, and we ensure that each club night provides members with an opportunity to experience or to learn something meaningful.
The pandemic continued to influence the way we held sessions at the start of April 2021. The sessions took place online, via Zoom meetings. We were fortunate to benefit from the funding secured, enabling us to buy equipment that helped us to continue the provision online. Members requiring support with equipment were provided by iPads, and mobile data. Certain members required extra support to access online meetings. This was facilitated by providing
one off coaching sessions to help to set up and demonstrate how to log in; or as a continuous 1:1 support to access online meetings on Thursday nights.
The Vets resumed face to face provision in June 2021 with carefully tailored outdoors activities, each of which were meticulously planned and robustly risk assessed. The activities were tailored to provide a balance of recreational, but also educational and culturally enriching activities.
The Squad would not be able to exist without the support from the dedicated volunteer teams. The Vets Club Leader interviewed the group’s volunteers and responses below provide useful feedback from their perspective.
Why do you volunteer with Squad?
'I’ve volunteered with various charities most of my life, I think it’s important to give back to the community. I am an autistic adult and I felt that the Squad is an ideal charity to support. I was one of the original volunteers I left & came back & it still feels like home, the members appreciate you being there with them, even if you don’t do or say much. It’s a regular routine familiar setting for us all'
'I originally volunteered for some of the usual reasons (spare time, wanting to give something back to the community, etc, etc). But now I volunteer because it’s such fun…the members and volunteers are ALWAYS able to have fun together, whether we’re stuck at home on Zoom or out and about in London'
Have there been some unexpected moments that surprised or challenged you during your time with us?
'Lockdown was challenging for all of us, but one thing that has surprised me is that I've never heard a single member complain and they are always happy, whatever we plan for them - online or face to face'
'How we adapted during the pandemic to using Zoom and arranging for it to be inclusive to all members, even if that meant going to their homes to help them get online, something we all take for granted, something some members don’t usually do'
Finances
The Board of Trustees takes its obligations to responsibly manage our finances very seriously.
During the 2021-22 financial year our plans around income generation were affected as the UK emerged from the pandemic and restrictions were lifted, which created a challenging environment for charities of all types, and impacted both our ability to fundraise and also our service delivery. During the final lockdown at the start of the financial year when our service delivery was focused on sessions delivered primarily to members online via Zoom, our expenditure also reduced meaning the charity’s finances were not impacted as detrimentally as they could have potentially been in the circumstances, due to some of the fixed costs associated with running face-to-face sessions being lower than planned, such as reduced transport costs as members were no longer travelling to in-person sessions.
As we returned to in-person service delivery later in the year, our fixed costs returned to close to what they were pre-pandemic, however we did scale back on some of in-person events we had run in previous pre-pandemic years due to our members and volunteers still becoming accustomed to the return to face-to-face sessions without restrictions. Thanks to the dedicated support of our Club Leaders and Volunteers, the charity continues to run at a noticeably reduced annual cost base with no significant impact on our service delivery.
As with previous financial years where the charity’s fundraising had been affected by the covid19 pandemic at the start of the financial year, however we were able to secure income via charitable grants and through a new corporate partnership where The Squad was nominated as corporate charity for a business whose employees fundraised for us throughout the year. We are immensely grateful to all those who have supported us during this very challenging period.
Conclusion
More than anything else, we are delighted to see The Squad’s membership continue to enjoy the services that we provide and to give continued excellent feedback regarding the impact that the charity has on their lives and wellbeing.
We would like to take this opportunity to formally thank the Club Leaders of the Juniors and Vets Clubs and our dedicated volunteers, for their continued hard work and support. Finally and most importantly, to our members, who continue to provide the inspiration and motivation to help us grow and succeed.
CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Thtrsquad Cl Receipts and payments accounts CC16a For th• period 01104r21Y21 Tty 31103r2022 Section A Receipts and payments Ilnrestricted nds RestrE¢ted fvnd• Endowment fund• 147t&l fundB La•ty•8r A1 R•e•ipts Grants- JuniLV5 Reslrithl GAnts.Vets Re5trkknJ Grants. UnresbidEd 1QOOO 9.703 50D 1.06 144 673 Donauans 1rt8r881 Incl& 16 21• AR) 11Mfj7 10,000 17 17.D35 A2 Awot and Inv•slm•nt ul••. Sub total 17,038 •nts Insuran 137 1)7 1624 Sades. Junw8 Ch S8larlè8- Vam Club 6.805 6.108 2.793 S21 461 6.106 JunloT¥ Cknb E¥pensts luic Buil V8t8 Club Expentei Olher Eynse 4n 11.673 Sub (otsi 10.371 •M 20,071 A4AM•t•nd Snv••lm purchases. Isw trbl•l d eases In7 Sub total 17n Net of rncelpts/(paymwts) . A5 Transf•rn betw8en fvrNIs A6 ¢h fuTKls last yeav fjnd Cash funds th15 yearend 41.060 ¥J•• CCXX R1 accounts rss) 31101r2W
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period Unrestrlcted funds Restrict•d funds Endowmént tonvFst E B1 Cash funds CAF Currenl 335 4817 Pwl 160 Total cash funds 29.763 4617 Unmtriet•d funds to n•ar•Bt£ furKIs trj n•arnst£ funds Lhl$1m8 Fundto wfvleh 83 Inv••tm•nt •u•ts Nfft Vund lowhlch Coltlopdw B4 Auots retslned ftr the charlty'• own use N(M FLM¥d to lthb 85 Ll•blllU•• PAYWNIC pble -XXX R2 accourd8 (SSI 31101r2
sigr by ¢)fiè or two InJ8ta•8 on Ixhaifof all th¢ trustees Signature Prfnl Name Dale of aDDroval Phil Catt 81.Ql.ZoI3 Guarnnttts and dobt 10 guar¥nte•s h•v• bo oivon by Squad Club ICIOI. pot•nli81 liality under Ihe guaf8nl•a .$ ouNtsndSr¥4 01 lh¢ y¢or ¢nd dale of 31 MArth 2022. No debt 18 outsianding at the yèar ènd datè. 31 Marth 2022, whith li 0d by Thè Squad Clth ICIOI and which ¢$ secured by an express charge on any assets ol the CIO 3110112023