## Chair’s Report
Year Ended 31[st] December 2024
Today is a formal part of our obligations as a charity, to reflect on 2024 and share our financial performance. We also use it as an opportunity to hear views on our group and share plans for the future.
So, in terms of 2024, we ran a full programme of family meetings at Whitewell Bottom Community Centre and various places, each month. All the meetings continue to be themed, and we’ve tried a few new ones this year and are always keen to hear new ideas. Over the years the average attendance of the family meetings has kept increasing from 48 in 2018 to 66 in 2024 and we have over 100 active members of the group overall, which access our services in different ways.
The themes of the meetings in 2024 included:
- Inflatables
- Drama with Tracing Steps
- Secret Garden Crafts
- Mobile Farm visit
- Family walk
- Lets Dance with Dance Syndrome
- Gymnastics with Spartac Gym
- Return of Bake Off
- Annual Pie, Peas and Fireworks
- Christmas party, with help from our lovely friends at Booth’s Supermarket Barrowford and central team who helped set up and contributed to the food. Special thanks also to our chief elf Lisa for once again sorting all the presents and of course to Santa Phil for fitting us in on his busy rounds.
The Haven family weekend in May was the biggest yet with 33 caravans booked and over 200 people from East Lancs taking part across the weekend. We had a fun-filled picnic on the Saturday afternoon and a great family party in a local venue, huge thanks to John and his girls and Hannah and her friends for all their hard work making is happen. We also had our annual trip to Blackpool Zoo where we love to see all our members sporting their T-shirts across the park.
We have loved seeing the social group go from strength to strength, established as a much-anticipated event each month for our core members who have built lasting friendships. The young people love the freedom of choosing what they do, as well as making new friends, and we are indebted to our social support team to enable this to happen, and to give our parents and carers well deserved time off.
We also provided school holiday sessions, particularly in partnership with Secret Garden Hoyles Park, and Tracing Steps. Whilst very popular with attendees, numbers have been varied so we continue to look at engaging events and most appropriate timing. Feedback is welcomed as ever.
We also ran a couple of information sessions such as one on dual diagnosis with Austism with Child Action North West. Again we are open to ideas and continue to signpost other sessions run by the national DS organisations.
We have been proud to run 3 events for our I Choose Board, with members across Lancashire and an opportunity for our young people and adults to share their views on the Down’s Syndrome Act and what they want from our group and their lives. This did lose a little momentum during the year but following a recent National summit at which we were represented brilliantly by 2 of our members, we hope to reinvigorate the group and invite local politicians and key ICB officers.
For anyone who’s new we are basically self-funded with most of our income coming from fantastic member fundraising. Given the challenges, we invested in a grant writer who obtained 2 grants for us, from the local CVS and National Lottery, totaling £24,800 over 2 years. We have also been grateful to be nominated by Booths Barrowford Store for the Pennies programme, which is bringing in funds ranging from £100 to £1000 each month since August, and we are very grateful for parent led fund raising with the central team at Booths as well.
Gingerbread socks were once again a fundraising success around World Down’s Syndrome Day, thank you to everyone who got involved in that and the Family Fun fair.
It was also brilliant once again to have one of the famous “Thompson” Quiz and Curry night in October.
Our annual family walk is always fun, around Calf Hey Reservoir, and we managed to raise another £645.00 from that event too.
The Contempo Choir in Burnley held a concert for us in December, nominated because of our lovely member Lyla, and raised an amazing £2,180.
We continue to get great feedback eg in a survey 95% rated 4 or 5 out of 5 – 83% 5/5 on value to them, but to maintain this we need to create sustainable income – which Phil will come to in a moment.
A big focus in 2024 has been continuing the education service. Hannah worked very hard both in schools and with education classes on Saturdays and was then joined by Amy in September which has worked very well.
We presented to all the Heads and SENCOs in Lancashire (reaching 600 schools) in March, which has generated great demand from schools and we now have a good relationship with the new head of SEN, Cerys Townend and will be supporting a county wide training session in June 25. Given this success we very much hope that after Hannah returns from maternity leave, we can fundraise sufficiently to keep them both on.
Other plans include working more closely with LCC in terms of their break time provision and commissioning services, and we are now board members of the Lancs Parent Carer Forum Round Table which has been established to implement change post the unsatisfactory Ofsted report. We have also built links with the Integrated Care Board, particularly in relation to maternity provision and also the UCLAN maternity programme. We are also engaging with our MPs and the Rossendale and Darwen MP Andy MacNae attended a group meeting in October. We hope with all this activity we will drive improved awareness, support and focus for our members and families.
To do this, we are grateful to all our amazing volunteers, you all make a huge difference.
An important change to note, which happened towards the end of the year, was a change in some of our trustees. We undertook a review of our charity commission obligations and as a result some of our trustees chose to stand down, after many years of amazing service. We are grateful for their support and commitment and happy that they continue to be active members of the group.
We are incredibly grateful and pleased to welcome 3 new trustees to the board and to thank every trustee for your dedication and the roles you are undertaking of which we will hear more later, as each trustee has taken the lead on important topics which will help us become more sustainable and have a solid foundation on which to grow towards our ambition to support families right across Lancashire.
Thank you everyone for your support and hard work.
Rachel Shatliff Chair ELDSSG 28/4/2024
||**East Lancashire Down's Syndrome Support Group**|**East Lancashire Down's Syndrome Support Group**|**East Lancashire Down's Syndrome Support Group**|**East Lancashire Down's Syndrome Support Group**|**East Lancashire Down's Syndrome Support Group**|**East Lancashire Down's Syndrome Support Group**||**1149790**|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
||**Receipts and payments accounts**|||||||||**CC16a**|
||**For the period**
**from**|||**01/01/2024**||**To**||**31/12/2024**|||
|**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**|||||||||||
|Donations|**1,892**|**1,892**||||**-**||**1,892**||**3,895**|
|Fundraising|**11,172**|**11,172**||||**-**||**11,172**||**30,546**|
|Lottery Awards for All Grant||||**20,000**||**-**||**20,000**||**-**|
|Haven - Members Payments|**9,094.50**|**9,094.50**||**-**||**-**||**9,095**||**-**|
|Interest|**581**|**581**||||**-**||**581**||**660**|
|NHS||||**4,818**||**-**||**4,818**||**-**|
|Other|**96**|**96**||||**-**||**96**||**-**|
|Social Group income|**954.55**|**954.55**||||||**955**|||
|Education Service|**427**|**427**||**-**||**-**||**427**|||
|||||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
|||||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
|||||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
||||||||||||
||||||||||||
||**-**|**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
||**-**|**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**||**-**|
|**_Sub total_**_(Gross income for AR)_|_(Gross income for AR)_**24,216**|**24,216**||**24,818**||**-**||**49,034.37**||**35,101**|
|**A2 Asset and investment sales,**
**(see table).**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**_Sub total_ -**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**_Total receipts_**
**24,216**
**24,818**
**-**
**49,034**
**35,101**
~~—————~~|||||||||||
|**A3 Payments**|||||||||||
|Admin Costs|**2,281**|**2,281**||**-**||**-**||**2,281**||**8,411**|
|Bank Charges|**66**|**66**||**-**||**-**||**66**||**80**|
|Education|**20,296**|**20,296**||**-**||**-**||**20,296**||**336**|
|Fundraising|**2,839**|**2,839**||**-**||**-**||**2,839**||**204**|
|Grant|**1,050**|**1,050**||**-**||**-**||**1,050**||**300**|
|Haven|**12,928**|**12,928**||**2,100**||**-**||**15,028**||**7,463**|
|Holiday Club|**1,420**|**1,420**||**-**||**-**||**1,420**||**200**|
|Ichoose|**618**|**618**||**-**||**-**||**618**|||
|Monthly Meeting|**3,214**|**3,214**||**2,367**||**-**||**5,581**||**7,201**|
|Social Group|**6,084**|**6,084**||**2,310**||**-**||**8,394**||**6,620**|
|||||**-**||**-**||**-**|||
|||||||||**-**|||
|||||||||**-**|||
||||||||||||
|**_Sub total_ **|**50,796**|**50,796**||**6,777**||**-**||**57,573**||**30,813**|
|**A4 Asset and investment**
**purchases, (see table)**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**_Sub total_ -**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**_Total payments_**
**50,796**
**6,777**
**-**
**57,573**
**30,813**
**_Net of receipts/(payments)_**
**- 26,580**
**18,041**
**-**
**- 8,538**
**4,287**
**A5 Transfers between funds**
**-**
**- -**
**-**
**-**
**A6 Cash funds last year end**
**47,823**
**- -**
**47,823**
**43,536**
**_Cash funds this year end_**
**21,244**
**18,041**
**- 39,285**
**47,823**
~~—————~~
~~===>>=~~|||||||||||
## **Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period**
|||||**Unrestricted**
**Restricted funds**|**Restricted funds**|**Endowment**|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|**Categories**||**Details**||**funds**||**funds**|
|||||**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**||**to nearest £**|
|**B1 Cash funds**|**21,244**
**18,041**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**21,244**
**18,041**
**-**
**_Total cash funds_**
HSBC Charity Account
~~Se~~||||||
|||(agree balances with receipts and payments account(s))||OK
OK||OK|
|||||**Unrestricted**
**Restricted funds**|**Restricted funds**|**Endowment**|
|||||**funds**||**funds**|
|||**Details**||**to nearest £**
**to nearest £**||**to nearest £**|
|**B2 Other monetary assets**|**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
~~===>~~||||||
|**B3 Investment assets**|**Fund to which asset**
~~**belongs**~~
**Cost(optional)**
**Current value**
~~**(optional)**~~
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**Details**
~~—==—~~||||||
|||**Details**||**Fund to which asset**
**belongs**
**Cost (optional)**||**Current value**
**(optional)**|
|**B4 Assets retained for the**
**charity’s own use**|**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
~~=====~~||||||
|||||**Fund to which**
**Amount due**||**When due**|
|||**Details**||**liability relates**
**(optional)**||**(optional)**|
|Signed by one or two trustees on
behalf of all the trustees
**B5 Liabilities**|**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
**-**
Date of approval
12th October 2025
Signature
Print Name
Rachel Shatliff
~~mae~~||||||
## **Independent examiner's report on the accounts**
## **Section A Independent Examiner’s Report**
|**Report to the trustees/**
**members of**|Charity Name
East Lancashire Down’s Syndrome Support Group|Charity Name
East Lancashire Down’s Syndrome Support Group||
|---|---|---|---|
|||||
|**On accounts for the year**|31/12/24|**Charity no**|1149790|
|**ended**||**(if any)**||
|||||
|**Set out on pages**|1 - 2|||
I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (“the Trust”) for the year ended 31/12/2023.
- **Responsibilities and** As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation **basis of report** of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”).
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 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 **examiner's statement** come to my attention (other than that disclosed below *) in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect:
- accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Act or
- the accounts do 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 order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
* _Please delete the words in the brackets if they do not apply._
|**Signed:**
**Date:**10/10/2025
**Name:**Paul Greenwood
~~—~~
~~Pe~~|**Signed:**
**Date:**10/10/2025
**Name:**Paul Greenwood
~~—~~
~~Pe~~|**Signed:**
**Date:**10/10/2025
**Name:**Paul Greenwood
~~—~~
~~Pe~~|**Signed:**
**Date:**10/10/2025
**Name:**Paul Greenwood
~~—~~
~~Pe~~|
|---|---|---|---|
|**Relevant professional**|Senior financial Manager|||
|**qualification(s) or body**|Manchester City Council|||
|**(if any):**||||
|||||
|**Address:**|1538 Ashton Old Road|||
||Manchester|||
||M11 1HN|||
1
**October 2018**
**IER**
**Section B Disclosure**
Only complete if the examiner needs to highlight matters of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts: directions and guidance for examiners).
**Give here brief details of any items that the examiner wishes to disclose** .
2
**October 2018**
**IER**