## Street Talk
Registered charity no. 1117588
Trustee’s Annual Report April 1st 2022 - March 31st 2023
## Objectives and Activities
Street Talk’s mission is to provide professional, specialised mental health care of the highest quality to women trapped in street prostitution, women who have been the victims of trafficking, or any vulnerable woman. To listen to each woman’s personal story, to enable each woman to overcome those obstacles which keep her trapped in a life of exploitation and to enable her to live in safety and with dignity. To share the learnings accrued over Street Talk’s two decades of operation with other organisations within the sector and to promote _Therapy of Presence,_ the clinical model pioneered by Street Talk that has already enabled hundreds of vulnerable women to engage successfully with psychotherapy. To campaign and influence policy in areas relevant to Street Talk beneficiaries and to give a voice to marginalised women.
This year Street Talk has provided the following services
## **One-to-one psychotherapy for women who come to the service without a referral**
Taking place in our therapy space at Resource for London and over the phone. We are receiving growing numbers reaching out to us for help.
## **Telephone helpline for women in crisis in Camden hostels**
Originally set up for women in crisis at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, after the borough of Camden forced all rough-sleepers into hostels. Leaflets and posters were put in all the Covid Protect hotels and hostels and we continue to get a few women using that service.
## **One to one psychotherapy taking referrals from partner organisations**
We currently work with women referred by Solace Women’s Aid Westminster, WiSER Project Islington, SHP Kali Project Barking and Dagenham, Safer Beds Camden, Hibiscus Women’s Centre, as well as individual referrals from Islington Social Services and Nia.
## **Art therapy groups**
Over the course of the year, we ran four art therapy groups in Hibiscus Women’s Centre, Medaille Trust hostel, Safer Beds Endsleigh Gardens and the Chrysalis hostel.
## **One to one art therapy**
Two women had one to one art therapy. One woman with NRFP who is struggling with a psychotic illness and not accessing NHS care, and one woman who is in end of life palliative care who first came to us at a day centre.
## **Weekly Art group**
A new initiative this year was a weekly art group at Kilburn Women’s Centre which was just art for fun, community and peer support rather than clinical purposes.
## **Photography groups and exhibitions**
A photography project took place over five months in partnership with Medaille Trust. Women from the two London Medaille Trust hostels came together to do weekly photography field trips together, taking pictures, learning a new skill as well as finding confidence to travel the city and have company with new people.
An exhibition of the women’s photographs is currently on show at Resource for London until 20 May
Another exhibition featuring photographs taken by a second group who worked together for six months in the previous year took place in June in partnership with Hibiscus. Four asylum seeking women from China, Nigeria, Egypt and Sierra Leone showed their work to an invited audience. Their work remains permanently on show at Hibiscus Women’s Centre.
## **Advocacy for individual women’s rights**
The women who came to us over the course of the year had many complex needs and had almost all been failed by services in different ways. Advocacy alongside the therapy seems to provide all round support.
## **Accompaniment throughout immigration proceedings**
We provide reports to the court authenticating women’s stories which are frequently disbelieved by the authorities. Our work is to evidence that the mental health symptoms are consistent with PTSD caused by extreme fear and that the women have told a consistent story over the years which we have worked with her.
When requested by the women or by their legal team we attend court with the woman and have been called as a witness.
Alongside the practical help outlined above it is important to stress that there is almost no mental health support for people going through the asylum system. The process takes a catastrophic toll on the mental health on those put through it and our main role is to bear witness and work with women to manage the despair, terror, uncertainty and dehumanisation the system incurs.
## **Accompanying women through family proceedings**
We provide reports for the court and psychological assessments as well as accompanying women to social services case conferences as well as court.
Where we believe a woman has parental capacity, we will support a woman in her fight to be allowed a parenting assessment and to evidence her parenting capacity in other ways.
## **Accompanying women to criminal court hearings**
Reports were provided to explain circumstances and to draw attention to mental health issues and we accompanied women although the cases were still heard online this year.
## **Legal support**
Street Talk beneficiaries continue to receive legal support from Martin Stewart, a lawyer who works pro bono for up to one day each week when needed. He works on housing, benefits, crime and family matters. The therapist working with the woman will work together with their lawyer to make as strong a case as possible and where that will help to include relevant information on woman’s mental health which otherwise would not be taken into consideration.
This year we worked closely with a partner from Duncan Lewis to take the asylum case of one of our women to Upper Tribunal for the first time. We provided psychological evidence for the case.
## **Mentoring**
One to one mentoring, supporting women by accompanying the to appointments which many find very hard, accompanying them to go out from where they are living and do simple things like go to a café or for a walk in a park to improve their well being and to give them some social contact. Mentoring provides a good volunteering opportunity for women who have come through the service.
## **Referral to specialist services**
The therapists refer women on addiction services, mental health specialists, parenting classes, and other services when that would provide additional support.
## **Practical Support**
Provision of essential items for women including food or supermarket vouchers, medication, nappies and other supplies for babies, clothing, telephones, laptops, travel cards, funded partly through partnership with Family Action who provide the grants for individual women.
## **Respite from the street at St Beuno’s Retreat Centre**
Two women, one rough sleeping with no recourse to public funds and just out from immigration detention centre, and one recently discharged from hospital were accompanied by two of us from the Street Talk team to St Beuno’s for a four-day residential stay for a period of rest in September.
## **Campaigning activity**
One of the changes this year has been that we have devoted more resources to campaigning. This has been in response to the proposed changes in asylum policy. We joined Together With Refugees, an alliance of organisations in the sector, and have been busy campaigning to protect the human rights of displaced people to have asylum with dignity. We are also partnered Human Trafficking Foundation for joint campaigning.
We made the decision to focus on the campaign against the proposed changes in asylum/immigration law and to hold back on other campaigns we have been involved in previously because this matter is so critical. However we did take up the opportunity to share lived experience and case studies to the consultation with Government in partnership with the Women’s Resource Centre on the treatment of women going through family court
We organised a conference on whether therapy is reaching the most vulnerable.
Campaigning against the removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda in partnership with the Human Trafficking Foundation
We are in the process of organising round table discussion about the causes of street prostitution in partnership with the Centre for Social Justice.
## **Promoting the Street Talk model**
We work hard to share our learning, specifically about how to work therapeutically with people who are usually excluded from therapy and to promote the _Therapy of Presence_ model. Our most important goal is to evidence that people with complex needs who have come from a background of trauma can use therapy to recover.
We continue to share the book _Not Angry But Hurting_ with colleagues in the sector, we have provided consultations on the model to other organisations in the sector and take up invitations to give talks on the model.
Possibly the most significant achievement to date was when during the course of the year St Mungo’s Safer Beds engaged a psychotherapist to practise the _Therapy of Presence_ model with the women in their three hostels in Camden. We have a strategy to remain small so that we can ensure high standards of work, but we know that there are very many people we can’t reach. Encouraging others to practise the model is a way to extend the reach of the work, to scale up effectively.
## **Training**
One of our psychotherapists completed an accredited training in using yoga to work with people with long-term, deep-rooted trauma.
We successfully applied for places to take part in Stronger Voices, a six-month communications training provided by Media Trust for small and medium charities. It was a rigorous course, roughly two mornings a week over six months, but time very well spent, improving skills and confidence and making some valuable connections within the sector and beyond.
## **Anger management**
A weekly anger management session was provided for one beneficiary.In setting our objectives and planning our activities our Governors have given due
regard to the Charity Commission’s public benefit guidance.
Over the course of the year, 150 women engaged with Street Talk. Around 1600 individual contacts were made. More than 1100 hours of counselling was provided.
Quantification of Street Talk’s services is complex due to the nature of the women’s engagement, which, according to the needs of each individual, may be chaotic in the early stages, and in the long-term may be sporadic.
Street Talk’s model emphasises quality, long-term work over raw quantity of beneficiaries and this informs our strategy of sustainable growth.
## Conference
In November 2022 Street Talk hosted its first ever conference entitled _Unconditional: Is therapy reaching the people who need it most?”_
Around 100 people took part from a wide range of organisations including service users and professionals from the charity sector, the NHS, local government and academia.
The aim of the conference was to start a conversation about who is excluded from psychotherapy and other forms of care and how it can become more inclusive.
Some of the learning arising from the day:
- The need for more inclusive and accessible entry into therapy as a profession, perhaps apprenticeships
- More awareness on therapy trainings of vulnerable and excluded groups
- More awareness across professions of the needs and background of people from Gypsy Roma Traveller Groups
- It’s OK to be kind and compassionate. It is not OK for professionalism to come in the way of basic kindness and humanity
- NHS model of therapy failing so do we stop referring vulnerable people into that process? Does it do more harm than good?
- The importance and equal value, even enhanced value, of creative therapies which don’t rely entirely on language
- The importance of placing lived experience at the heart of services. Don’t speak for people.
- We need to challenge the concept of deserving and undeserving
- It’s OK to do things differently. Therapists are too constrained by the limitations of their training which is reductionist.
- We constantly need to question whether a service is there for the benefit if the client or the professional.
- History, what happened to previous generations is important.
We felt the conference was a success and the feedback received was overwhelmingly positive. There is a definite appetite for a follow-up event in future.
## Achievements and Performance
Each of the 150 women who had contact with Street Talk over the period has reported some positive outcome. These may include ‘hard’ such as managing addiction, exiting abusive relationships, exiting street prostitution, getting off the street and into accommodation, moving from supported accommodation to independent living, etc.
However, for many of the women, these outcomes are distant goals. Street Talk has learnt that, ‘soft’ outcomes which may seem insignificant (e.g. simply engaging with service or attending an appointment with a therapist), will, given time, eventually lead to hard outcomes.
The overall aim of Street Talk’s work is to enable women who have been brutalised to encounter their own humanity. When women feel entitled to live in safety and with dignity the hard outcomes follow. It is constantly challenging to quantify outcomes. Small acts of kindness go a long way in recovery from trauma, but they are almost impossible to measure. Below are the outcomes we have been able to measure.
None of the women who took part in one-to-one therapy or art therapy would have been able to access therapy through any conventional practitioners. All would be excluded for reasons such as addiction, homelessness, learning-difficulties, chaotic lifestyle or poor self-advocacy. The fact these vulnerable women with complex needs saw a therapist is, in and of itself, arguably Street Talk’s most significant outcome
## Financial Review
|**Income**|**£173,000**|
|---|---|
|Trusts and Foundations|£107,000|
|Award Grants|£35,000|
|Donations and Fundraising|£11,000|
|Major Donors|£10,000|
|From Solace Women’s Aid/WiSER Project|£10,000|
|**Expenditure**|**£151,000**|
|Salaries, Pensions and Tax|£98,000|
|Sessional Staff|£40,000|
|Staff and Volunteer Expenses|£5,000|
|Admin and Overheads|£5,000|
|Practical Support|£3,000|
|Total cash funds at end of year:|£204,000|
Street Talk’s top funders over the period were Tudor Trust, Segelman Trust, The Aurum Charitable Trust, and The London Community Foundation.
The Trustees are satisfied that there are no uncertainties about the charity’s abilities to continue as a going concern.
## Reserves Policy
Street Talk’s policy is to aim to hold reserves equal to at least six months operating costs in order to guarantee safe cessation of therapeutic services, which was the case at the end of the reporting period.
## Structure, Governance and Management
Street Talk is a registered charity. The governing document is the Constitution. Trustees are selected by the Board.
## Trustees
## _Aoife Ritchie_
Works in NHS mental health services and completed her psychotherapy training placement with Street Talk.
## _Charlotte Littlewood_
Works in NHS mental health services and completed her psychotherapy training placement with Street Talk.
## _Colleen Rhodes_
Former service user.
## _Fatima Ba_
Former service user.
## _Keran Burris_
Former service user.
## _Rebecca Hammond_
Business owner/operator.
_Sophie Jones_
PR professional.
## Consultants
_Simon Dodds (lawyer)_
Advises on strategy and development.
_Dr Jan Birtle (psychiatrist)_
Advises on the clinical model and sharing the learning.
_Eileen Aird (psychotherapist and supervisor)_
Advises on clinical standards.
_Thomas Humphrey (marketing)_
Advising us on communications strategy for sharing the clinical model across the sector.
## Staff
Director, clinical supervisor, psychotherapist Pippa Hockton
Operations, fundraising and reporting, communications & compliance Oliver Hockton
Art Therapists Catriona Alderton Vera Howard Beata Somogni (training placement)
Psychotherapists Amanda Chapman Karl Svars Rose Campbell Shirley Sutton Sandi Baiju Alison Caldow Tuesday Benfield Laura Guy (training placement)
## Partnerships
Aside from external and independent referrals, Street Talk also works in partnership with the following organisations.
_Chrysalis Project (St. Mungo’s Broadway)_
Two hostels exclusively for women involved in street prostitution in the London Borough of Lambeth.
_St Mungo’s Safer Space_
Enhanced support for women involved in street prostitution across three hostels and one drop-in centre in the London Borough of Camden.
_St Mungo’s Hammersmith Women’s Hostel_
Hostel for so-called difficult to reach women in Hammersmith.
_St Mungo’s Kilburn Women’s Hostel_
Hostel for women with complex needs in Brent
## _Human Trafficking Foundation_
Street Talk has taken part in joint campaigning with HTF in previous years but we are working more closely with HTF providing clinical supervision to the LEAP group and training in trauma to their team.
## _Medaille_
Hostel for women who have escaped from traffickers in East London. Street Talk takes referrals from the hostel for psychotherapy and remote one-to-one art Therapy.
## _Hibiscus Women’s Centre_
Day centre for vulnerable women, including women involved in street prostitution, women in the criminal justice system, women who have been trafficked, asylum seekers and those who have no recourse to public funds in the London Borough of Islington.
## _Solace Women’s Aid / The WiSER Project_
Service for hard-to-reach women who are extremely vulnerable but not able to access other women’s services, sometimes because they are from a culture where asking for help is not permitted.
_Solace Women’s Aid / Westminster Housing First_
Offering intensive support to women who are “hard to reach” very much modelled on the WiSER Project with Islington Solace.
## _Single Homeless Project / Project Kali_
Housing First project offering intensive, wrap-around support to women with complex needs who have experience of homelessness.
## _Resource for London_
Resource centre for charities in the London Borough of Islington.
## _Media Trust_
Supporting small charities with communications.
## _Women’s Resource Centre_
Organises an alliance of activist women’s organisations to campaign for women’s rights.
## _Family Action_
Provide small grants and supermarket vouchers to 20 partner charities of which Street Talk is one.
_The Centre for Social Justice Alliance_
Sharing lived experience and learning from small charities to influence government policy **.**
_Together with Refugees_
An umbrella campaigning organisation.
_St Beuno’s Retreat Centre_
Welcomes Street Talk women of all faiths or no faith for periods of respite from the street.
_Debevoise & Plimpton LLP_
Law firm offering pro bono advice and legal services to Street Talk.
## Declarations
The trustees declare that they have approved the above report.
Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees
Rebecca Hammand Trustee 17/1/2024
**Charity Name Street Talk**
**No (if any) 1117588**
**CC16a**
## **Receipts and payments accounts**
**For the period** Period start date **from** 4/1/2022
Period end date 3/31/2023
**To**
## **Section A Receipts and payments**
||||**Unrestricted**
**funds**||**Restricted**
**funds**||**Endowment**
**funds**||**Total funds**||**Last year**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||||**to the nearest £**||**to the nearest £**||**to the nearest £**||**to the nearest £**||**to the nearest £**|
|**A1 Receipts**||||||||||||
|Tudor Trust|||**30,000**||**-**||**-**||**30,000**||**30,000**|
|Citi Bank / London Impact Awards|||**30,000**||**-**||**-**||**30,000**||**-**|
|Segelman Trust|||**27,500**||**-**||**-**||**27,500**||**-**|
|Aurum Trust|||**15,000**||**-**||**-**||**15,000**||**15,000**|
|Donations & Fundraising|||**10,874**||||||**10,874**||**17,205**|
|Major Donor|||**10,000**||**-**||**-**||**10,000**||**15,000**|
|London Community Foundation / Together
For London|||**-**||**10,000**||**-**||**10,000**||**-**|
|Solace Womens Aid|||||**9,760**||||**9,760**||**9,480**|
|The CSJ Foundation|/ Borrows Trust||**-**||**8,500**||**-**||**8,500**||**-**|
|London Community Foundation / Dodds
Trust|||**-**||**7,000**||**-**||**7,000**||**7,000**|
|Impact 100 London|||**5,000**||**-**||**-**||**5,000**||**-**|
|LondonQuaker Service Trust|||**-**||**5,000**||**-**||**5,000**||**5,000**|
|Societyof Retreat Conductors|||**-**||**3,120**||**-**||**3,120**||**-**|
|Royal Warrant Holders Association Charity
Trust|||**-**||**1,000**||**-**||**1,000**||**-**|
|Other|||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**34,400**|
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|**_Sub total_**_(Gross income for AR)_|||**128,374**
||**44,380**||**-**||**172,754**||**133,085**|
|||||||||||||
|**A2 Asset and investment sales,**||||||||||||
|**(see table).**||||||||||||
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
||**_Sub total_**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|||||||||||||
||**_Total receipts_ **||**128,374**||**44,380**||**-**||**172,754**||**133,085**|
|**A3 Payments**||||||||||||
|Salaries,Tax & Pensions|||**87,962**||**9,940**||**-**||**97,902**||**86,313**|
|Sessional Staff|||**7,143**||**32,760**||**-**||**39,903**||**26,760**|
|Staff & Volunteer Expenses|||**4,635**||**-**||**-**||**4,635**||**2,888**|
|Practical Support & Service User|||**1,037**||**1,680**||**-**||**2,717**||**1,425**|
|Events & Conference
Expenses|||**1,500**||**-**||**-**||**1,500**||**401**|
|IT,Phone & Web|||**1,367**||**-**||**-**||**1,367**||**1,053**|
|Printing& Postage|||**751**||**-**||**-**||**751**||**523**|
|Fees & Membership|||**640**||**-**||**-**||**640**||**530**|
|Publicity& Marketing|||**394**||**-**||**-**||**394**||**-**|
|Training|||**275**||**-**||**-**||**275**||**7**|
|Art Materials|||**261**||**-**||**-**||**261**||**-**|
|Insurance|||**117**||**-**||**-**||**117**||**117**|
|GroupActivities|||**95**||**-**||**-**||**95**||**-**|
|Meetings|||**85**||**-**||**-**||**85**||**-**|
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
||**_Sub total_ **||**106,262**||**44,380**||**-**||**150,642**||**120,017**|
|||||||||||||
|**A4 Asset and investment**||||||||||||
|**purchases, (see**|**table)**|||||||||||
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
||||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
||**_Sub total_ **||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|||||||||||||
||**_Total payments_ **||**106,262**||**44,380**||**-**||**150,642**||**120,017**|
|**_Net of receipts/(payments)_ **
**A5 Transfers between funds**
**A6 Cash funds last year end**
**_Cash funds this year end_ **|**22,112**||**-**
**-**
**151,000**
**151,000**|**-**
**-**
**-**|**22,112**
**-**
**181,861**
**203,973**|**13,068**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||**-**|||||**-**|
||**30,861**|||||**-**|
||**52,973**|||||**13,068**|
## **Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period**
|**Categories**
**B1 Cash funds**
**B2 Other monetary assets**
**B3 Investment assets**
**B5 Liabilities**
**B4 Assets retained for the**
**charity’s own use**
Signed by one or two trustees on
behalf of all the trustees|**Details**
Lloyds 02305716
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
**Details**
Signature
**_Total cash funds_**
(agree balances with receipts and payments
account(s))|**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**52,973**
**151,000**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**52,973**
**151,000**
OK
OK
**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Cost (optional)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
Print Name
Rebecca Hammond
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**Unrestricted**
**funds**
**Restricted**
**funds**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Fund to which**
**asset belongs**
**Fund to which**
**liability relates**
**Amount due**
**(optional)**|**to nearest £**
**Endowment**
**funds**|
|---|---|---|---|
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**Endowment**
**funds**|
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||||**Current value**
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||||**When due**
**(optional)**|
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||||Date of
approval|
|||Rebecca Hammond|12/19/2023|
|||||
**Independent examiner's report on the accounts**
## **Section A Independent Examiner’s Report**
**Report to the** Street Talk **trustees On accounts for** 31[st] March 2023 **Charity no** 1117588 **the year ended Set out on pages** Receipts and payments accounts CC16a pages
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31[st] March 2023.
**Responsibilities** As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in **and basis of** accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”). **report**
I report in respect of my examination of the Trust’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 Act.
## **Independent** I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to **examiner's** my attention in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that **statement** in, any material respect:
- the accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Charities Act; or
- the accounts did not accord with the accounting 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.
**Signed: Date:** 13-JAN-2024 **Name:** René Albert van Velzen **Relevant** I am familiar with charity R&P accounting through my role as treasurer for a charity. **professional qualification(s): Address:** 5 Lupton Street NW5 2JA London