2023-03-31-accounts

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Trustee Annual Report and Financial Statements For the Year Ended 31 March 2023

Charity Number: 1158349

Mental Health Charity (CIO) Arch-Way Project, Arden Road

Halifax

West Yorkshire HX1 3AG

The Trustees present their report with the independently examined financial statements of the Arch-Way Project (CIO) for the year ended 31[st] March 2023. The charity was founded in 2012, and established as a registered CIO in 2014, and became a CIO in 2014. This report covers the activities of Arch-Way Project CIO for the period from 1[st] April 2022 to 31 March 2023.

Introduction

This past year has been a positive one for us at the Arch-Way Project. After such a challenging but successful year from March 2021 – April 2022, we have developed, made changes and additions where possible for the benefit of our guests. The developments have been well received and our guests are accessing new and exciting projects which help them to build confidence, self-esteem, and make better, healthier lifestyle choices.

Back to Being Me

Back to Being Me is our ever-growing project, currently accessed by around 90 individuals, although not all at once!

We have tweaked and introduced new interventions over the past three years to best accommodate those who access the project. There’s something for everyone within this project, so much variety that often people are unsure of what to get involved in first. We offer a number of interventions to get involved in such as:

• Guided Meditation, delivered by one of our volunteers.

• Singing Group – helping to increase confidence and self-esteem.

• Tai Chi Class, delivered by a trained professional with over 10 years of teaching experience.

• Film Club (All Together Now) – showing classic and modern films.

• Creative Writing Group – helps to increase confidence and showcase writing and poetry.

• Pilates – delivered by a trained professional with 8 years of experience working with working age adults and the elderly to help promote better mobility through light exercise.

• Art Group (Express Yourself) – One of our longest running interventions, this group is relaxed and welcoming to all who attend and take part.

• Drama Group – Delivered by one of our volunteers, with a degree in Drama and Acting. This is a brand-new intervention and a very popular one – we are hoping to extend this project so that our beneficiaries can enjoy and experience.

The funding for this project is restricted and was granted to us by The Big Lottery.

Past Times

Past Times is our oldest running project; created in 2013, it has been extensively developed and over the years we have seen it flourish into our most well-attended project. We provide live music, a quiz, games of bingo and a raffle. In addition to this, we opened a luncheon club in May 2022 to promote healthier eating habits within the elderly and those who are isolated. People tend to skip meals or opt for quick, easy, and cheap microwavable meals because they simply do not enjoy eating alone. We devised a course of action to combat this factor by creating a luncheon club in a setting which is familiar so that they are no longer eating at least one of their meals per day, alone. Past Times is one of our most popular projects and we see on average around 60 people each week. We were hoping to reach 80 attendees by summertime but after speaking to local residential homes, there are still safety measures in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic which means that some of these residential care homes are unable to attend because of the vulnerability of the residents. We are hoping this will change by the end of the year.

We have been in partnership with Huddersfield University to develop an ‘Arch-Way Project Model’ with a PhD student from the university interviewing attendees and collating the data to then create a model so that other organisations can set up their own Past Times project. This will be recognised as an Arch-Way Project intervention where other organisations can look at the model and run their own event to help combat loneliness and isolation in their own communities, to further reduce the number of people who are isolated and in need of human contact and engagement.

Due to the ever-growing cost of living increases, we also started to promote the Past Times project as a ‘Warm Welcome’ space. ‘Warm Welcome’ is an initiative to connect people, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic, to help support them and reconnect people, in a ‘warm space’, where people come to stay warm and access facilities that may not be available to them due to the cost-of-living increases. Rather than stay at home and pay extortionate prices to sit at home, they can come to the Arch-Way Project and use our facilities which helps them reduce their bills.

The funding for this project is restricted and was granted to us by The Big Lottery Reaching Communities fund.

The Hub

The Hub is another one of our very popular interventions. We provide Indian head massage, hand massage and multiple beauty treatments for our guests. These treatments are very well received, and we’re fully booked up every week.

We applied for funding to employ a trained Reiki practitioner to provide treatments for our guests. These treatments help to relax our guests and it is a very popular addition to our interventions.

The treatments are a fantastic addition to what we do, each of our interventions are designed to better the mental health of our beneficiaries and by providing a relaxing massage session, reiki, or beauty treatment, it helps to increase the self-esteem of our guests.

The funding for this project is restricted and was granted to us by The Big Lottery and is part of the ‘Back to Being Me’ project.

New projects

Mindful Miles is a new project which started in December 2022. A member of our staff team meets a small group of guests near to our headquarters for a one-mile walk in the morning before attending Arch-Way Project. This project helps to promote a healthier lifestyle and get people up and out in a morning for some light exercise. This compliments our other interventions, with it promoting a healthier lifestyle and making better choices in terms of health and wellbeing.

Our little helper, Rosie, on the ‘Mindful Miles’ walk!

This project is cost-free.

Drama group is a new intervention that started in January 2023 and has been hugely successful. The group is delivered by a semi-professional actor and helps to build confidence and allows our guests the opportunity to showcase their creativity. The drama group have performed at a couple of our Open Minds Night events and at our AGM which was very well received by those who attended.

Our guests taking part in the Drama group.

Angelic Reiki (The Hub) is a new intervention, introduced in March 2023. This branch of The Hub project has become a vital part of what we do here; our guests look forward to their treatments every week and the practitioner is fully booked up until the end of the year.

This new intervention has been funded by Awards for All (Big Lottery) and is restricted to the running of this service.

Volunteering

Because we’re seeing more people access our projects, we have increased our volunteering opportunities for the Back to Being Me and Past Time projects; we now have 8 volunteers on board and each one of them greatly improves the running of these projects and helps us to better deliver our interventions so that everyone feels supported.

Our volunteers are a vital part of the team, helping us with each project we run. Now that we have 8 volunteers on board, helping to deliver and plan projects and work events.

In December we worked in partnership with RSA. They helped us set up our Christmas Party and spent the day setting up, helping to cook and prepare meals, make refreshments throughout the day, and sit and talk with our guests.

Many of our guests in the past, and present, have begun volunteering which we find to be a great help and is benefiting them by improving their confidence and self-esteem. Many of our volunteers have found paid employment and other volunteering opportunities. They are a huge part of what we do and for them to find other work opportunities is part of what we want to achieve.

We will continue to work with members of the community and other organisations to increase opportunities which greatly benefit the running of our projects.

Promotion

Promotional Video – To try and attract more individuals to our projects, we had a promotional video recorded featuring our interventions and short interviews by service-users and members of staff. This video helps the public understand what we do at the Arch-Way Project and how beneficial our interventions are to our service-users. We did this as a means to raise awareness and funding for day-to-day running costs.

Appeal – Shortly after our promotional video was recorded, we made an appeal video to help us raise money for monthly running costs due to the possibility of running out of funding. This video helped us to spread awareness around what we do and the vitality of our services and interventions.

Phoenix Radio – We went live on Halifax’s local radio station to promote what we do, and we spoke about our projects and interventions, so that we could increase our reach and awareness around what we do.

Social Media Prescence – We have been increasing our reach on social media, so that more people have access to information about what we do and how we do it, for the purpose of signposting and ensuring more people are aware of what we do. We have reached just under 1,400 likes on Facebook!

Holly Lynch – Our local MP, Holly Lynch, visited us in the summer of 2022. We spoke with her about our outreach work and the interventions we provide. Holly seemed to be very impressed and is going to make another visit to talk more about what we do.

COVID-19 Safety and Prevention

We take every precaution when it comes to protecting our guests from the threat of the COVID-19 virus. Although there are no recorded cases where our guests have contracted the virus from our premises, we take every step possible to ensure all of our guests, staff and volunteers are safe from harm. We have put in place measures to ensure all are protected such as air filtration units, hand sanitising stations, and carbon dioxide monitors that alert us if there are too many people in the same room at once. We also ensure that there is a constant air flow throughout the building in order to reduce the risk of spreading the virus.

Fundraising

Our staff have been busy trying to raise extra money for general running costs that help with our day-to-day activities. To do this, we have planned various fundraising events in-house as well as externally.

In July, three members of our staff team took part and two completed the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge, raising just over £1000. This was a great achievement for Arch-Way Project, and we hope to do more fundraising events like this in the future.

Arch-Fest PUNK!

We had our annual music festival Arch-Fest event in September 2022, which helped raise just under £500. This event is aimed at our attendees and the general public to help raise awareness around what we do at the Arch-Way Project. Our space is safe and familiar to our guests which makes them feel more confident to attend music hosted by us; often our guests feel isolated from what’s going on in the community, because they don’t feel comfortable enough to go to venues to watch and listen to life music and we combat that by transforming our HQ into a fully-functioning music venue so that our guests can enjoy live music in a safe and familiar setting.

This is our third Arch-Fest event, and it was enjoyed by all, especially our guests.

Crowdfunding

We have set up multiple crowdfunding pages throughout the year to help generate more funding to contribute towards day-today running costs which include tea, coffee, biscuits, and energy costs etc. Although we only received a small amount, every contribution helps. Not only is crowdfunding great for raising money but also to raise awareness; if one person can’t contribute, they can share the page with their family and friends via social media. Our social media presence has greatly improved in the past year!

The Kitchen

In May 2022, we received our first kitchen inspection and passed with flying colours! We provide hot and nutritious meals to our guests every day and we have also introduced a luncheon club to our Past Times project.

Often, people living with a mental health problem and who are isolated and/or lonely tend to skip meals due to the simple fact that they don’t enjoy eating alone. We combat this by providing a hot and nutritious home-cooked meal for a small fee and the meals are truly enjoyed by all. We cater to all tastes and rotate the meals we provide every month so that there is something to everyone’s taste.

We’re confident that we will continue providing safe and enjoyable meals for all to enjoy for the foreseeable future.

Hot meals are provided every day and are a part of our Back to Being Me project.

Environmental Impact

In September of 2022 we were awarded funding from the Screwfix foundation to repoint and install new windows in our building. The windows make our space much brighter and more welcoming as they’re nicer to look at, as well as better for the environment and help to reduce our energy bills because they’re double glazed and help retain heat so that we don’t have to leave our heating on throughout the day.

Building Improvements

Not only did we have new windows installed, but we also had new floors fitted in our bathrooms, kitchen, and hallway. This change transformed our bathrooms and kitchen and made for a more hygienic and aesthetically more pleasing space. We received funding from B&Q which allowed us to make these improvements.

Building Connections

We have been working with local businesses to boost our reach and raise awareness around what we do in our community. The support from local businesses is vital for us as a small organisation and we jump at the chance to take part in any fundraising events where we work together to promote bettering mental health and wellbeing.

We took part in fundraising and raising awareness with Shay Stadium and raised £120 for general running costs.

We have been in partnership with Lidl via the Neighbourly Scheme for almost 7 years and have received many donations from them throughout the years. This past year has not been

any different! In December 2022, Lidl donated to us three turkeys and all of the trimmings for our Past Times Christmas party. The event was attended by 110 people and all of those people ate and enjoyed lunch, generously donated by Lidl via the neighbourly scheme.

Guests enjoying the Past Times project (funded by the Big Lottery)

Open Minds Night

Our 6-8 weekly platform for our guests’ musical performances and creative writing/poetry.

This event is designed to help increase the confidence of our beneficiaries and to give them a platform to showcase their creativeness. We see around 15-30 attendees at every Open Minds Night, not only our guests but members of the public; to enjoy the music and the writing of those who access our interventions.

Each event is enjoyed by all, and building up to the next is always exhilarating.

A picture taken at our Open Minds Night.

Financials: Arch-wa Pro Income and Ex nditure Account 31st March 2023 JlÈt PA¥eh 2023 SlItMaTeh1022 ¥l%tlAareh 2th25 J4Ètkl¥¢h2022 5￿k FlK￿cl 1.526 .37g 20.509 81.991 1(kn23 ca5￿1w39￿s Staff FEnS￿￿￿>s1 2SA9g InGwts h RBtsIl rGe0￿e I￿L77 1812 459 11.75D ht& 3.790 SW Yo￿ssh1p 3325 89 Qean Tra Te￿ptr￿ aI￿nar￿￿￿￿[￿irS IAS5 475 4950 Gruund￿￿ BCStAFounOzllon P￿[?55￿¥Fte5 U￿( IW5 674 1.190 8271 Athrnisl ZA62 SutKby 448 2.940 .21SD 21 I91.￿8 114.142 B￿￿￿efor￿rd 1I4rJ)22 109.4 51.946 311O%2023ICLY￿ttI 31.Tfj4 IIU.4S) 11YJ, 31.7e4 I￿.480 .77,6 31,7&1 1￿.4e0 31.7e4 1￿.4e0 Th)MatterhasrJJn￿tOry￿￿l Ill￿￿1￿￿ ￿ re&%orkatrc￿et0be1￿￿that iThaWmateT￿Teswth￿TtqWe1rnts.. kttparXy￿1lry￿ctytsI￿ ￿e¢l￿￿ l￿of￿￿OI1 ￿t,￿d￿0￿eplreacL￿nts￿+Uth￿￿￿hV￿￿ntir0rtC(￿d5 2011 A(t￿￿ET￿l￿ ￿et 29hAwtJ>23 87 k￿ls[￿dRO ffiekl WestYLYkthte F14￿T

Restricted and Unrestricted grants:

08/04/2022 Calderdale MBC 1561.75 - Restricted 03/05/2022 Calderdale MBC 2000.00 - Restricted 06/07/2022 Calderdale MBC 1561.75 - Restricted 26/09/2022 Calderdale MBC 1561.75 - Restricted 11/01/2023 Calderdale MBC 1561.75 - Restricted

21/12/2022 Community Foundation 2376.00 - Restricted 24/03/2023 Groundwork 4820.00 - Restricted

10/05/2022 HSBC Sfx Foundation 5000.00 - Restricted

28/10/2022 Main Grants 15456.00 - Restricted

28/10/2022 Main Grants 16883.50 - Restricted

28/10/2022 Main Grants 16883.50 - Restricted

18/11/2022 Main Grants 9782.00 - Restricted

02/12/2022 Main Grants 9782.00 - Restricted

13/01/2023 Main Grants 7794.00 - Restricted

23/01/2023 The Neighbourly Foundation 4700.00 - Restricted 14/02/2023 The Neighbourly Foundation 250.00 – Restricted

TOTAL

101974.00

Declaration from Driton Hoti (Treasurer);

I declare that the monies designated for specified purposes were used for what they were intended for, and I am happy with the financial decisions of the Arch-Way Project.

Signed:

Our Trustees:

Andrew Mullin – Chair

Nazam Hussain – Secretary Driton Hoti – Treasurer Naila Kauser - Trustee

Since the last report (21-22), Nazam Hussain took over as Secretary from Ben Marshall in February 2023.

Organisation Structure:

CEO

Operations Manager/General Manager

Project Manager Project Worker Volunteer

Declaration:

I am satisfied with how the Arch-Way Project and its staff and volunteers are operating the interventions and projects that are available to those in the community who need them the most. The projects are beneficial, and I have even taken part in some of the physical activities myself, much to my enjoyment and bettering of my general wellbeing. I am happy with the outcomes generated through the projects and interventions and I am excited for what the future has to offer at the Arch-Way Project.

Signed:

Andrew Mullin, Chair

Thank you to our supporters!

End of Report.