INSTITUTE OF RECOVERY FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA (IRCT)
ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENT FROM
01.06.24 to 31.05.25
Charity Number 1156924
INSTITUTE OF RECOVERY FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES
Trustees
The trustees during the period 01.06.24 and 31.05.25 and to the date of this report were:
Mr GJG McAllister Resigned 18.09.25
Mrs S Duncan
Mr J Reid
Mr J Fayle Resigned 18.09.25
Mr A Palmer
Mrs ES Darton Mr C Bennett Ms C Agius Appointed 21.11.24 Ms J Vaughan Appointed 22.02.25
Registered Ofice
Office 1 Shrieves Walk Stratford upon Avon Warwickshire CV37 6GJ
INSTITUTE OF RECOVERY FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES
FOR THE PERIOD 01.06.24 TO 31.05.25
The Trustees are pleased to present their Annual Report together with Financial Statement for the purposes of the Charities Commission.
Structure, governance and management
a) Constitution
The charity was registered as a charitable company limited by guarantee and was set up by a Memorandum and Articles of Association and became a registered charity on 22 November 2013. The trustees got the approval of the membership to change the registration structure and the charity became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation with voting members other than its charity trustees in accordance with a CIO constitution on 31.08.23
b) Method of appointment or election of trustees
The management of the charitable company is the responsibility of the trustees who are elected and co- opted under the terms of the Constitution
c) Policies adopted for the induction and training of trustees New Trustees are on appointment supplied with copies of all documents necessary and relevant guidance in order for them to understand their role. All Trustees have been chosen with a view of them providing the charitable company with a range of skills expedient to setting up, developing and managing the running of the Institute of Recovery from Childhood Trauma (IRCT).
d) Organisation structure and decision making The Board of Trustees meets monthly and between board meetings, necessary decisions taken and actions are the responsibility of the Chair.
- e) Risk assessment
The trustees have assessed the major risks to which the charitable organisation is exposed, in particular those related to the operations and finances of the charity and are satisfied that systems and procedures are in place to mitigate exposure to the major risks.
Objectives and activities
The objects of the Charity are as follows:
*For the public benefit, to relieve the needs of and promote the mental and physical health of people who have suffered childhood trauma with particular focus on their recovery from that trauma, and
- For the public benefit to promote the education of the public and professionals and specialists in the field of childhood trauma on issues relating to the mental and physical health of (children and young) people who have suffered childhood trauma, including through undertaking or promoting research and making useful the results of such publically available. For the purposes of these objects "childhood trauma" may include (but is not limited to) sexual, physical and emotional abuse and neglect or exposure to domestic violence and war experiences.
INSTITUTE OF RECOVERY FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
FOR THE PERIOD FROM 01.06.24 TO 31.05.25
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES
Achievements and Performance
Trustees
We have been fortunate in maintaining a strong core group of trustees during this period. Although we have lost two trustees who found that they could no longer find the necessary time to retain the role, we recruited two new trustees who have filled some skill gaps for the Board. All our trustees are active in taking a lead in their area of expertise and assuming responsibility for delivering on our objectives. We also recruited a volunteer to assist with social media and another to support the administration for the Board of Trustees.
We have the ongoing support of our Patron Baroness Butler Sloss who has generously extended her tenure repeatedly while we search for another Patron from the House of the Lords. However, we are delighted that Munira Wilson, Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham & Whitton, agreed to become a Patron and support our links with the House of Commons. These links enable us to hold events in the House of Lords and also facilitate our lobbying activities to improve services for traumatised children.
Lobbying
In July 2023, we were appointed as the Secretariat for the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Childhood Trauma which offered us the opportunity, together with other likeminded organisations, to bring issues to the attention of MPs from all the political parties and gain support for policy changes. We organised three meetings during 2023 but unfortunately the General Election in July 2024 demanded the dissolution of all the APPGs as well as disrupting the possibility of hosting planned events in Parliament. Following the election of the Labour Government, Wera Hobhouse (Lib Dem MP) who had been the Chair of the APPG for Childhood Trauma, was unsuccessful in reconstituting the APPG so there was no role for IRCT as Secretariat. However, during our tenure as Secretariat, we were able to create links with many organisations with similar ambitions and were able to continue to collaborate on lobbying activities. In the run up to the General Election we were part of the Party Manifesto Influencing Group which included representatives from almost 100 organisations working actively together to influence the manifestos of all the Political Parties. As might be expected, IRCT was continually promoting the importance for all services to be trauma informed.
In July 2024, to inform our lobbying during this period, IRCT prepared a policy document entitled ‘Policy Proposals to Promote Healing for Children who have suffered Serious Trauma’, which we distributed widely. In this document, we sought to summarise our proposals for policy changes in all areas of children’s services. We believed that our recommendations would transform the opportunities for children to heal and recover from trauma they had suffered.
Following the General Election, we continued to be busy with lobbying activities in collaboration with many other national children’s charities to promote awareness of the needs of vulnerable and traumatised children and the necessity for all services working with children to be better informed and supported to meet these needs. We have continued to grow these links to enable us to have a louder voice and hopefully more impact in making demands to make children a priority at a local and national level. IRCT was part of the DfE - DHSC Advisory Group updating the Statutory Guidance for promoting the health and
wellbeing of Children in Care and Care leavers. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill was the main focus of our lobbying efforts during the latter part of the financial year as part of a powerful cross sector effort calling to put children’s rights at the heart of UK law and place Child Rights Impact Assessments (CRIAs) on a statutory footing. This would create a duty on Ministers to consider children’s rights at all times.
Our campaign to reduce and work towards the complete lack of any need to permanently exclude children from school and to create a more inclusive environment has continued to gather momentum and there is now a growing groundswell of opinion that this is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently. We also continued to promote our ‘right to recovery’ campaign.
Events
Our Events programme for 2024/25 was severely disrupted by the General Election. We were able to hold a postponed Best Practice Forum in the House of Lords in October 2024: ‘Creating an Inclusive Environment to promote Recovery from Trauma: Relational Practice in Action’ . This included presentations looking at relational trauma informed approaches in educational settings and foster care. The event was very well attended and received. We continued this theme later in the year when we held an event looking at ‘Establishing a Complex Trauma Pathway in CAMHS.
We aim to capture the ideas that emerge from our Best Practice Forums and find ways to disseminate the information further. One example of this is the roundtable discussions we have been holding following a Best Practice Forum we held in November 2022 with the aim of establishing some shared principles services can use to help them assess what they are doing is making a positive impact towards helping the children in their care to recover. We are now close to publishing a paper on the results of this.
Going Forward
We will be continuing all our activities and building on our successes to date. Our next campaign is to push for the development of a National Trauma Strategy for England.
INSTITUTE OF RECOVERY FROM CHILDHOOD TRAUMA
REPORT OF THE TRUSTEES
01.06.24 to 31.05.25
Financial Statement
5419.8 Balance at 31/05/24 5
Transactons from 01/06/24 – 31/05/25
| Income | Expenditure | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Item | Amoun t |
Item | Amoun t |
| Conference/Workshop Receipts |
673.00 | Business Support | 823.66 |
| MembershipSubscriptons | 4473.8 4 |
Website Hostngand Support(Wordpress) | 288.00 |
| Donatons | 819.48 | Zoom Subscripton | 155.88 |
| Trustee expenses | 146.83 | ||
| Cateringcosts | 70.20 | ||
| Total | 5966.3 2 |
Total | 1484.5 7 |
Balance at 31.5.25 9856.60