Registered charity number 1152159
A CHILD OF MINE
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 30 June 2021
A Child Of Mine Report and accounts Contents
| Page | |
|---|---|
| Trustees Report | 1 |
| Profit and loss account | 3 |
| Balance sheet | 4 |
| Notes to the accounts | 5 |
A Child Of Mine Trustees Report 2021
The Trustees of A Child Of Mine are pleased to present their annual report and financial statements for the year ending 30[th] June 2021
A Child Of Mine is governed by its constitution, adopted 23[rd] April 2013. There are currently 7 Trustees who will be re-appointed or appointed at the Annual General Meeting.
Upon appointment, all Trustees are provided with an introduction to the charity by the Chair and others as deemed appropriate. The board of Trustees come from a range of professional backgrounds relevant to the charity’s objectives. The Trustees meet regularly, and 7 meetings were held during this financial period 1[st] July 2020 – 30[th] June 2021.
Risk Review
The Trustees have assessed the major risks to which the charity is exposed, in particular those related to the operations and finances of the Charity and are satisfied that systems are in place to mitigate any exposure to the major risks. These procedures are periodically reviewed.
Overview
A Child Of Mine (ACOM) continues to be run in a well organised and positive way. Thanks, has to go to the charity’s Trustees who all bring valuable skills and knowledge. They have continued to help raise awareness of A Child Of Mine, and its objectives. We are looking forward to expanding the charity in the coming year, bringing in new resources and increasing our fundraising activities.
Mission Statement
“To provide emotional and practical support to bereaved parents and families. To work in partnership with health professionals to improve the care and support available when a child dies.”
Objectives
The objectives of the charity as defined in the constitution are to relieve mental and physical sickness of person’s resident in England and Wales suffering from the bereavement of a child by the provision of advice and support through email, telephone, working with healthcare professionals to improve bereavement care, social media and through an online website. We also aim to promote and protect the physical and mental health/wellbeing of sufferers whose child has died in England and Wales through the provision of financial assistance, support, education and practical advice. (Financial assistance will be provided to families whose child has died under the age of 18 and are resident within Staffordshire).
Activities
A Child Of Mine has continued to focus its activities set out in the constitution. There are many activities which contribute to achieving our objectives: We provide emotional & spiritual support, financial support, advice, practical guidance, information and vital peer support directly to bereaved families after a child’s death, through group work and 1-2-1 sessions.
We strive to improve professional care for families whose child has died. We do this by working closely with both bereaved families and multi-agency professionals to help improve care and educate on the needs and experiences of bereaved parents. We further this by: the provision of information for families and professionals, attending regular meetings with key healthcare professionals, lecturing, networking, focus groups and multi-agency alliances. We partner with other relevant charity organisations to work together ultimately supporting our beneficiaries. We also sit on some prevalent bereavement groups across the West Midlands including: the regional networking group for the Child Death Overview Panel, a lay member for the Staffordshire Child Death Overview Panel and for the Black Country Neonatal death reviews, the National Paediatric Hospitals Bereavement Network, South Staffordshire End of Life Care Action Alliance, Staffordshire Bereavement Network and a Thematic Suicide Review for the Child Death Overview Panel.
For families within our area of benefit we provide small financial grants (via referral). We offer several different support groups every month, which include a ‘Stay and Play Playgroup’, for bereaved parents and their children born before or after loss. A teenage group for bereaved young people, building confidence through humour, and drop in support groups for bereaved parents, in partnership with local child death nurse specialists. These drop in’s normally run in several venues across Staffordshire. In addition to these groups, we are delighted to continue our group in partnership with Uttoxeter Cares. This is a very successful drop in session covering the east of the county for bereaved parents. We also run 2 baby loss support groups specifically for those who have lost in early pregnancy and those who have experienced a stillbirth/baby loss, the latter is a new group introduced at the beginning of 2020. All of the above groups have been run virtually due to COVID-19, we have not been able to hold any face to face meetings this year however, we do have plans to start getting our groups back in person in the Autumn of 2021.
We normally provide 2 memorial services for families within Staffordshire, these services are hosted by Penkridge Methodist Church and St Mary’s Church in Stafford. They offer a safe place to come and remember those children or babies that were lost too soon. They provide an emotional outlet and a place to meet others who have also lost children. “Such a beautiful service! Thank you so much, and for all of the support you have given” - a bereaved mother. We ran our baby loss service at Penkridge in October 2020 via a live stream due to COVID-19 and we were not able to hold our Memorial service in Stafford at Christmas unfortunately due to restrictions.
Achievements
For the last few years we have spoken about how proud we are to have been able to grow In such a difficult climate. We feel that this year has tested us more than before, as we have worked through the continuing pandemic and COVID-19. We have had to continue to adapt
as guidelines changed, we have had to become creative, changing the way we work but still being able to offer the support that is vital to our families. We are extremely proud once again to have increased our reach and to a much wider area as our support continued online. We have worked hard to keep our services and our engagement with the families we support a priority in such worrying times. We also marked our 8[th] year of being a registered charity and are looking forward to the next year ahead albeit still in very challenging times.
We are always proud to be acknowledged and respected by our peers, including the bereavement teams within the main Children’s hospitals across the UK and, being regarded as the “go to charity for child loss” by the palliative care team in Great Ormond Street. “ I hold you in high esteem and think what you do for bereaved parents is phenomenal. I will continue to promote your work with A Child of Mine.” - Bereavement Service Manager at Great Ormond Street.
We are honoured to continue our position on the National Paediatric Bereavement Network which has been meeting monthly online throughout the pandemic. This is a huge testament to the work we are doing and has enabled us to develop new key relationships with other children’s hospitals across the country, and also gives the group a parent voice. Our work with the Child Death Overview Process (CDOP) has grown this year and we are honoured to be working more closely with the specialist nurses to provide education for student nurses and other agency staff. These relationships help us develop and further our aims as a charity, and they are vital for us to move forward to provide the best possible support we can.
Our work with the Bereavement Team at Birmingham Children’s Hospital has continued with a strong relationship. The team there have had some personnel changes and it has been good to work with the new members. We regularly receive family referrals from them within our area of benefit and we still provide talks on their study days. The feedback from this is always outstanding and proves that a parent’s experience is extremely valuable to help professionals improve their care and relationships with families. “ I found this really helpful to support me in saying the right thing to parents who are going through a bereavement.” - Family support worker.
This year we launched the first ever National Bereaved Parents Day on 3[rd] July. We know that there are many awareness days for loss over the year, with baby loss awareness week in October probably the best known. However, we wanted to acknowledge and join together every bereaved parent whether they had lost in pregnancy, or after at any age. The day was a huge success reaching over 350,000 people, it was great to see people across the country acknowledging the day and sharing posts on social media and photos of their children.
Working with local business’ is extremely important for us as it helps develop relationships within our community and ways in which we can work together for mutual benefit. This year has been no exception and we must acknowledge and thank the following companies for their support: This is Fitness, who very generously support the charity and regularly arrange challenges for their members as fundraising events for ACOM throughout the year.
Tony’s Ices continue their support towards the charity with a percentage of their charity icecreams coming back to ACOM. Unkown Marketing, , Carthy Accountants, Networkin, Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s have all helped to support the charity in some way this year and we hope to continue to build on these relationships in the coming year. We are also looking at writing a bereavement policy for businesses to use if a member of staff loses a baby or child. We are working with Employment Law Solutions to be able to put this in place and then offer this to local companies to help them best support their employees in the case of such a tragic loss.
During 20/21 we have supported directly over 652 people through signposting, peer/emotional support, information, or by attending one of our groups. This is an increase of 22% on last year with which we are delighted and is evidence that the charity is succeeding in meeting its objectives. We are reaching more families at a time when they need it most and are seeing an increase in referrals through healthcare professionals, word of mouth and through our social media pages.
This year has once again been incredibly difficult due to COVID-19. However, as a charity we have continued to adapt the way we work and raise funds. We are still holding all of our Support Groups albeit virtually, these groups have been well attended and also allowed us to expand our reach. One of our Miscarriage groups saw families from across the country and even one international attendee. We are hoping that some of our groups will be back face to face in Autumn 2021 and the majority we aim to be back in person by the beginning of 2022.
As we have not been able to hold our playgroups for the younger children and our groups for the older children we wanted to still keep engaging with them somehow. We continued the first half of this year to send out a small gift for all of the 48 children we regularly support each week. Some of these gifts have been donated to us and some we have sourced. The feedback has been incredible and we are so happy that we can still keep supporting these families during such restricted times. However, due to funding later in the year we did make the decision to slow the frequency of these gifts. We have held an online quiz each month for the older children and when restrictions allowed we have met up outside for a walk and a hot drink, which the families have found valuable.
We have also established a resource library that our families can utilize. The library is a work in progress but has a large variety of books about different kinds of loss and written from different kinds of perspectives, mothers, fathers and grandparents. We have found the library has been a great support for our families that couldn’t afford to buy a book, or who just wanted to try reading a few different books without committing to buy. We lend out the books to any family that feels it would be of help.
Fundraising has also been very different this year and due to COVID we reluctantly postponed our annual charity ball once again. The ball is our main fundraiser bringing in over £11,000 in 2019. As with our charitable activities we have had to adapt quickly and look to grant funding to continue our work. We have been able to secure some restricted pots of funding and also were successful in receiving some lottery funding again. COVID-19 has had a big impact on us in regards to fundraising as we have not been able to hold any
events in the community so grant funding has been made priority until we can get back to more traditional ways of raising funds.
We have certain designated funds set aside to support specific projects and pieces of work and cannot be used for the general running costs of the charity. We hope these designated funds will increase in the coming year as we start working on new projects and partnerships. We are working more to extend our professional education/lecturing which will enable us to provide additional value to support our charitable activities in the future. This year we have continued working closely with the Child Death Specialist Nurses in Staffordshire, providing joint training/education to student nurses. This has been well received and we are working on more joint work with the Child Death Overview Panel (CDOP) to educate professionals working with a bereaved family.
The Future
We are very much looking forward to the next 12 months and growing ACOM further. Building on our services and relationships with healthcare professionals and increasing the communication and reach within the community and nationwide. We continue to have restrictions put upon us by COVID but we will keep adapting and keep looking at new ways we can keep engaging, connecting and supporting our families.
We aim to look at further developing our support, and in particular the mental health and wellbeing of our families. We have seen first-hand the impact that COVID-19 has had amongst our parents and siblings. We aim to look into offering wellbeing workshops, pamper days and other ways to support our bereaved families and to improve their wellbeing.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has been involved in the charity to date. To our fabulous trustees, supporters and volunteers without whom, we would not be able to make such a difference to our families lives.
Warren Dix
Chair 8[th] December 2021
A Child Of Mine
Statement of Financial Activities (including Income & Expenditure Account for the year ended 30 June 2021
| Notes Incoming Resources Donations & grants Other income Total incoming resources Resources expended Resources expended 2 Other expenses 2 Total resources expended Net income for the year |
Unrestricted funds Restricted funds 2021 2021 £ £ 82,679 10,300 82,679 10,300 50,442 4,116 - - 50,442 4,116 32,237 6,184 |
Total fund 2021 £ 92,979 - 92,979 54,558 - 54,558 38,421 |
Unrestricted funds Restricted funds 2020 2020 £ £ 41,838 25,510 14 41,852 25,510 29,587 27,786 - - 29,587 27,786 12,265 2,276 - |
Total fund 2020 £ 67,348 14 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 67,362 | ||||
| 57,373 - |
||||
| 57,373 | ||||
| 9,989 |
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A Child Of Mine Balance Sheet as at 30 June 2021
| Notes | 2021 | 2020 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £ | £ | ||||
| Fixed assets | |||||
| Tangible assets | 3 | 1,829 | - | ||
| 1,829 | - | ||||
| Current assets | |||||
| Debtors | 4,743 | 3,827 | |||
| Cash at bank and in hand | 109,979 | 73,664 | |||
| 114,722 | 77,491 | ||||
| Creditors: amounts falling due | |||||
| within one year | (639) | - | |||
| 114,083 | 77,491 | ||||
| Total assets less current | |||||
| liabilities | 115,912 | 77,491 | |||
| Net Assets | 115,912 | 77,491 | |||
| Unrestricted funds | |||||
| General funds | 4 | 100,037 | 67,800 | ||
| Restricted funds | 4 | 15,875 | 9,691 | ||
| Retained Funds | 115,912 | 77,491 | |||
| - | |||||
| - |
These accounts are prepared in accordance with the special provisions of Part VII of the Companies Act 2003 relating to small entities.
Approved by the management committee on 8 December 2021 and
Warren Dix (Chairman)
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A Child Of Mine Notes to the Accounts for the year ended 30 June 2020
1 Accounting policies
Basis of accounting
The financial statements have been prepared under the historical cost convention, and in accordance with the Companies Act 2003 and the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting and Reporting by Charities issued
Fund accounting
Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the charity.
Restricted funds are subjected to restrictions on their expenditure imposed by the donor or through the terms of an appeal.
Depreciation
Depreciation has been provided at the following rates in order to write off the assets over their estimated useful lives.
Office and other equipment 20% straight line
2 Resources expended
| 3 4 |
Support groups Charity ball Wages and pension costs Office hire Travel and other expenses Fund raising Printing, postage and stationery Publications and information packs Insurance Just Giving charges Other expenses Deprecation Advertising Professional fees Tangible fixed assets Cost At 1 July 2020 Additions At 30 June 2021 Depreciation At 1 July 2020 Charge At 30 June 2021 Net book value At 30 June 2021 At 30 June 2020 Movements in funds Restricted funds Donations & grants Unrestricted funds Donations & grants Other income |
At 1 July 2020 £ 9,691 66,237 1,563 67,800 |
Incoming resources £ 10,300 82,679 - 82,679 |
Unrestricted funds £ 1,994 35,625 - 711 1,647 9,306 111 849 199 50,442 Unrestricted funds £ - Office and other equipment £ 1,935 1,829 3,764 1,935 - 1,935 1,829 - Resources expended £ 4,116 50,442 50,442 |
Restricted funds £ 4,116 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4,116 | |||||
| Restricted funds £ |
|||||
| - | |||||
| Total £ 1,935 |
|||||
| 1,935 | |||||
| 1,935 - |
|||||
| 1,935 | |||||
| 1,829 | |||||
| - | |||||
| At 30 June 21 £ 15,875 |
|||||
| 98,474 1,563 |
|||||
| 100,037 |
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