BEAM
(Charitable Incorporated Organisation)
Report and financial statements for the year ended 31[st] March 2025.
Charity registration number: 1097322
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Contents
Page 3. Reference and administrative information
Page 4. Objects
Page 7. This year’s activity and events.
Page 11. Statement of financial activities and notes
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The Management Committee presents its directors’ rep0rt and audited financial statements for the year ended 31[st] March 2025.
Reference and administrative information
Charity Name Beam Staffs Charity registration number 1097322 Registered office and operational address Unit No 1 The Mills Mill Street Stafford ST16 2QZ
On November 27[th] 2024 Beam application to The Charity Commission to become a Charitable Incorporated organisation was approved. Consequently, our registration with Companies House has been removed. Beam’s Charity registration number remains the same.
Management Committee
Mr Roy Parker Chair Mr David Moreton Vice Chair Mr David Bailey Mr Simon Mountford Mrs Karin Hall Staff Representative Mrs Minnie Charlesworth
Retiring Trustees
Latifa Gower Left November 24
Company Secretary
Mr Mike Howell
Staff Team
Mr Mike Howell Chief Officer
Benefits and Inclusion Support Service
Ms Nadina Binns Senior Welfare Benefits Advice Officer Ms Julieanne Roberts Welfare Benefits Advisor Mrs Karin Hall Inclusivity Officer
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New Start 4 U
Mr Desmond Brumley Mental Health and Wellbeing Officer
Independent Living Skills Service
Mrs Janine Davies Senior Independent Living Skills Officer Mr Desmond Brumley Independent Living Skills Officer
Financial Inspector Mr Malcolm Kidd
Bankers Unity Trust Bank Nine Brindleyplace Birmingham B1 2HB
Accountant Mrs Nadia Coupland retired April 2024 Support Staffordshire from May 2024
OBJECTS
The new governing articles provide the following details
The objects are: -
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The relief of people with a learning disability, in particular by the provision of help and support for them and for their families, dependants and carers, and to prevent learning disabilities for the public benefit and to advance religion amongst persons with a learning disability; and
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To provide or assist in the provision of facilities for the recreation or other leisure time occupation for people who have need thereof by reason of learning disability with the object of improving their condition of life.
“Learning disability” means any developmental disability of the mind and any associated condition howsoever caused and whether mild, moderate or severe.
Objectives
The objectives of the charity are to make sure that people with a learning disability living in Stafford and South Staffordshire have the same opportunity as everyone else to be a fully inclusive member of their community as they possibly can.
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We aim to reduce a person’s potential for being marginalised and discriminated against because they have a disability.
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We aim to see our clients are fairly and equitably represented in areas of life and living that the non-disabled community will have a better chance of achieving in. For example, this could be employment, housing, personal health, benefits entitlement, social life and education.
Ensuring our work delivers its aims
We will consult with our users about the things we plan to do and the projects we plan to deliver. They will tell us what they think we need to do. We will ask what we’ve done well, what we’ve done badly and how can we improve our performance.
Each project will have its own set of outcomes, outputs or results that are usually required for funding purposes. These activities are regularly reviewed by the Management Committee to ensure that our funded activities are consistent with our aims.
Also, Trustees will consider our forward plans to ensure that the same tie up is present going forward as it does for past achievements, therefore ensuring that planned activities contribute to the agreed aims and objectives.
The focus of our work
The main objectives for the year continued to be those described below.
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In response to the ever-changing Social Welfare legislation to ensure that our clients get the support they need in being able to respond to the changes to their benefits regime.
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For many complex reasons our clients are seriously underrepresented in being able to find employment. We have helped many people with learning disabilities get closer to the job market.
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People with Learning Disabilities are considered to be the most lonely and isolated people in our communities. Beam has worked to reduce the unwanted consequences of those experiencing these situations.
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We have developed our Independent Living Skills Service to encourage our clients to have a better quality of home life by developing their understanding of the things they can do to have a better home life.
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All beam staff have attended training courses on many different aspects of good practice in service delivery and how the job changes with the introduction of new legislation.
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- We have, as much as possible, worked in partnership with likeminded organisations as a means of accessing the widest range of services that can be linked to the needs of our clients.
How our activities deliver public benefit
Our main activities and who we support are described below. All our charitable activities focus on the needs of people with learning disabilities and are undertaken to further our charitable purposes for the public benefit.
Through our activities clients will become better placed to take a more active role within the communities they live. They will become more likely to: -
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Find work or become a volunteer
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Have improved health and use health services appropriately
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Have a more active social life. They will have more friends and go to more places.
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Become economically active
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Develop new and improved independent living skills.
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Have improved conditions at home
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Become more involved in community activities.
The non disabled community will become more tolerant and understanding of those who are disabled and they integrate more into mainstream society.
Our services, who used them and how did they benefit?
Beam’s services are used by people who have a low to medium learning disability. Our people are those who mostly live independently in our community and who receive little support from the statutory agencies. In many cases a person would have been assessed as being able to make their own safe and independent day to day decisions. To access Beam’s services, we won’t ask for a formal diagnosis because this would be a barrier to effective support being provided.
The number of people with a learning disability in the area beam works in is far in excess of the number of people we support. There are no accurate statistics that show how many people live in Stafford and South Staffordshire who have a learning disability; the best we have is an estimate that 2.1% of the population fall into this category. This means that in Stafford Borough alone 2,803 individuals are potential clients, a number far beyond the total amount of people we could support during a year.
Clients benefit in all manner of ways related to the projects we have on offer. If the needs of a client don’t match the outcomes of the services, we have on offer we will do our best to find somewhere that offers the services that the clients need.
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This year’s activity and events
Beam Activities
We felt it was important to continue to organise and provide events and activities for our clients as part of our prevention of loneliness and isolation work. The funding received from University Hospital North Midlands Charities together had finished in 2023 to 2024. During the year Beam received a grant award of £10,000 from The Garfield Weston Foundation which enabled us to start providing these events again. This is what we did.
| Date | Location | Number of attendees |
|---|---|---|
| 17thSeptember 24 |
The Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. We used public transport to get there and so built an element of travel trainingand confidence buildinginto the day. |
10 |
| 22ndOctober | A trip to go pumpkin picking at Lower Drayton Farm in Penkridge. The group learnt a little bit about what goes on at a farm and were able to get close to some of the livestock. |
7 |
| 19thNovember | A session at Stafford Clay Studios where we were able toprepare some Christmas decorations. |
10 |
| 16thDecember | The Yard in Stafford was the venue of our clients Christmas dinner. Sadly, some of our group weren’t able to bepart of a similar event at home. |
25 |
| 21stJanuary 25 | We visited the new history centre in Stafford. This wasn’t a popular event; we learnt this from our client’s feedback. |
8 |
| 11thFebruary | We went bowling. Its great exercise and our clients love it. This is one of the mostpopular events |
16 |
| 19thMarch | The group went to The Black Country Museum in Dudley. We learnt a lot about our culture and heritage |
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Give me some credit – a Reaching Communities funded project.
Beam continued to support people with their welfare benefits applications. During the second year of this program all our targets were achieved. However, we wanted to do as much as we could for our clients and we found ourselves supporting people in many other areas that were linked to finances and benefits applications. The program continues to focus mainly on: -
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Universal Credit applications where people were being migrated from old style legacy benefits onto the new website-based system.
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People whose Disability Living Allowance was being stopped and they were made to apply for Personal Independence Payment.
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Appeal and Mandatory Reconsideration requests for those who failed in the Personal Independence Payment applications.
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Helping people to complete an eligibility for work questionnaire.
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Other financial related applications such as council tax, housing benefit and housing applications.
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Helping clients to have a more inclusive relationship with their community.
Outputs during the year: -
83 people had their benefits and finances reviewed 53 people were supported to connect with their community. 87 reported having improved lives
Outcomes during the year: -
71 people reported positive consequences as a result of receiving support 70 said their circumstances and situation had improved 76 said that they had added benefits as a result of being supported.
The Independent Living Skill Service
The ILS service was introduced two years ago with one member of staff working for part time on the program. It’s a commercial service which people pay for on an hourly rate. Most customers pay using their Personal Independence Payments or because they are in receipt of Direct Payments from the County Council.
The financial target when Beam started this venture was to generate sufficient revenue to meet the salary costs of one full time member of staff. We started with a very low number of clients and ended the year with twelve clients on service. The development of the service is reflected in the fact that during the year income was £33,256 compared to £19,065 the previous year.
Training Courses
During the year Beam began to develop a new partnership with Stafford College which allowed us to provide a number of training courses targeted to the needs of people with learning disabilities. This training was supplemented by the introduction of additional courses funded by the Community Learning Trust.
New Start 4 U
Beam continued to be a delivery partner in the New Start 4 U program. This project is provided to support those people furthest away from the job market to have a better chance of finding suitable employment. It does this by finding solutions to all those barriers that exist which prevent people being successful in applications they make to potential employers. This project is funded by National Lottery Partnerships Fund and will complete in October 2026.
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Gardening and Arts and Crafts Group.
Beam introduced two new activities into our program of events. Both the Gardening Club and The Arts and Crafts Group provided a valuable function for our clients to attend.
Investment Policy
Beam’s investment fund with Staffordshire Community Council has remained in place. However, the results have been disappointing with no financial gains being achieved. Trustees will review the policy during the forthcoming year.
Principle Funding Source.
Through the year Beam’s principal funding source continued to be from Reaching Communities for the welfare benefits advice service. Trustees are aware that this source of funding is completes in August 2026 and are looking to develop new income streams.
New Start 4 U replaced Building Better Opportunities but is a much smaller project and therefore income is considerably less.
Reserves Policy
Beams trustees have reviewed their reserves policy during the year and made the following allocations to designated funds.
The Trustees have allocated a restricted reserve fund of £ 200,393.
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£ 47,400 to cover winding up costs in the event of an unplanned and unexpected shutdown.
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£ 152,993 to cover twelve months running costs to be used in the event of further funding not being available.
Governing document
The change to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation has meant the Governing Documents have changed to a foundation model constitution.
Recruitment and appointment of the directors
Beam will ensure that people who have a learning Disability lived experience will be part of the trustee group. At present we have people on the group who have a learning disability and also people who work with those who have a learning disability.
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Organisational Structure
Beam is a Registered Charity and a Company Limited by Guarantee. Our internal structure can be shown by the following diagram: -
----- Start of picture text -----
Board of Trustees
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----- Start of picture text -----
Chief Officer
Benefits Advice Independent Isolation and Building Better
Service Living Service loneliness Opportunities
Senior Welfare ILS Officer Shared Mental Health
Benefits Officer Responsibility Support Worker
(Gardening
Club)
ILS support
Officer
Welfare Inclusion
Benefits Officer
Support (Arts
Officer and
Crafts)
----- End of picture text -----
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Statement of Financial Activities for the year ended 31 March 2025 Section A Income and expenditure
| N o t e |
Unrestricted Funds £ |
Restricted Income Funds £ |
Endowment Funds £ |
Total Funds £ |
Prior year funds £ |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income | ||||||
| Donations | 235 | 235 | 1300 | |||
| Charitable activities | 154,067 | 154,067 | 176850 | |||
| Membership and subscriptions |
270 | |||||
| Equipment | 10529 | |||||
| Services | 52,403 | 52,403 | 9200 | |||
| Other | 4,564 | 4,564 | 10569 | |||
| Total | 1 | 57,702 | 154,067 | 211,269 | 208718 | |
| Expenditure | ||||||
| Raising funds | - | - | - | - | - | |
| Charitable funds | 240,534 | 240,534 | 226,319 | |||
| Separate material expense item |
||||||
| Other | ||||||
| Total | 2 | 240,534 | 240,534 | 226,319 | ||
| Net income for reporting period |
211,269 | 208718 | ||||
| Tax Payable | ||||||
| Net Income after tax |
211,269 | 208718 | ||||
| Net gains on investments |
||||||
| Net Income | 211,269 | 208718 | ||||
| Extraordinary Items |
||||||
| Transfer between funds |
(29,265) | (17601) | ||||
| Net Movement in Funds |
(29,265) | (17601) | ||||
| Held fund | (9,258) | (8336) | ||||
| Total funds brought forward |
||||||
| Total funds carried forward |
3 | 207,663 | 236928 |
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Statement of Financial Activities for the year ended 31 March 2025 Section B Balance Sheet
| N o t e |
Unrestricted Funds £ |
Restricted Income Funds £ |
Endowment Funds £ |
Total Funds £ |
Prior year funds £ |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed Assets | ||||||
| Intangible assets | ||||||
| Tangible assets | ||||||
| Heritage assets | ||||||
| Investments | ||||||
| Total Fixed Assets |
207,663 | 236,928 |
| Current Assets | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash reserves | 28,054 | 48,529 | ||||
| Creditors | 5,468 | 3,629 | ||||
| Debtors | 2,671 | 364 | ||||
| Investments | 182,406 | 191,664 | ||||
| Cash at bank & in hand |
45,264 | |||||
| Total Current Assets |
207,663 | 236,928 |
Notes to the accounts
1. Income
Total income for the year was £211,269
Reaching Communities were Beam’s most significant funder as the benefits support work continues in its expanded form with grants of £113,363
Income generated from the Independent Living Skills service increased to £33,256
Income from room hire increased to £19,147
2. Expenditure
Total Expenditure for the year was £240,534
The most significant area of expenditure continues to that of salary costs. This has increased during the year as trustees made an improved cost of living award due to the high rates of inflation.
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Subsequent to salary costs, expenditure associated with our office with regard to rent and service charges was the second highest area of expenditure.
3. Net Movement in Funds
The total deficit for the year is £29,265. This is represented by: -
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An operational deficit of £11,356
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A loss on the held fund of £9,258
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A salary award costing £8,651
Total assets are the end of the year are £207,663. The value of the held fund at this point was £182,406 giving cash reserves of £25,257
Beam will ensure that sufficient funds are reserved to cover all liabilities and redundancy costs in the event of an emergency shutdown
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