CACHSF Annual Report 2022-2023
CACHSF Health and Well-Being Drop In
Attendees listening to a Health talk by a Guest Speaker
Celebrating the work to improve the health and wellbeing of the local community.
Chairman’s Report
Clem Turner
One behalf the Caribbean and African Community Health Support Forum (CACHSF), I would like to thank the Board members: Verley Roberts, Jennie James, Veronica Akrofi, Leroy Edwards, Delrita Williams Ethlyn Beaton, Courtney Akrofi and Diamond James for their contributions in steering the team’s strategic and operational targets this year.
We would like to also thank the volunteers, without whom we could not have survived, as the needs of the community since the Pandemic were still very much a priority due to the decline in health. Volunteers within the Befriending project, the Drop-in and the Unity football club, all played a key role in supporting the interface with those most vulnerable in the community.
We are very grateful to have received funding from Suffolk Community Foundation (Suffolk Cancer Screening Fund) for a 1- year project to raise awareness of cancer within the community. We appointed Imani Sorhaindo as Project coordinator to engage groups and communities through cancer awareness and prevention talks, signposting to mainstream
providers for early testing, as well as being a bridge between Black and Minority Ethnic communities and service providers.
We also received funding to commence a 2-year Men’s mental health and well-being project with the Equity in Mind fund, through Suffolk Community Foundation, to ensure that we got the right person to lead on this project we spent time advertising, interviewing and recruiting ready for a May 2023 start. We would like to thank Beverly Uter (new member to the group) and Omar Bolori for being part of the recruitment and selection panel.
One of our completed pieces of work in the last year was the ‘Our Voice our Song’ Project, which was working in collaboration with the Suffolk Windrush Committee to capture the life experiences of our Windrush generation, children on that generation and their children, as an intergeneration project, via video, film and books. We would like to thank those who contributed to this valuable and much-needed piece of work. As a result of this work, the dedication, hard work, trials and tribulations that our communities faced, and still face today, will never go unsung.
Below is an overview of the incredible work, and outcomes this year.
Thank you for your continued support!
Clem Turner
Signature:
Pictures above: Windrush event at Cornhill June 2022 Our Voice Our Song Project
Pictures above: Our Voice Our Song Project Lottery Fund Evaluation with the Community at Tower Street
The ‘Our Voice Our Song’ project is an intergenerational reminiscence initiative that explored, documented, and disseminated the narratives from a cohort of first, second and third generations of African and Caribbean descent based in Suffolk. The aim of project was to educate the wider community around the experiences of the third, second and third generation, and foster cross-cultural awareness within the Suffolk community.
As a health and wellbeing support organisation, we also anticipated that a unique contribution to heritage will be made by focusing on three distinct groups as a cultural model of the traditional extended family. The aim was to film 25, recorded the life experiences of the Caribbean community and produce a book, DVD and film from those narratives.
The ‘Our Voice our Song Project was a valuable, educational resource. The film is now available on You Tube titled ‘Our Voice Our Song’. We would like to thank all the contributors of this Windrush project, who were part of the research, interviews, and celebrations. This lottery-funded project brought together the stories of many of our Caribbean elders who came to Suffolk since the late 1940s, many of whom are unsung heroes and sheroes, and their children and grandchildren (termed the barrel children), who all played a key role in educating the wider communities and the next generations of young people about Caribbean life. We also want to remember those contributors who are no longer with us; Mrs Eudine McConney and Mr Cecil Davis, both who made a great contribution to the community in Suffolk over many years. We would like to thank the Akrofi family for editing the film, producing the book and DVD. Thanks to Clem and Sharlene Turner for the interviews conducted.
The Unity Football Club
The Unity football Club had a very challenging year as we were faced with an incident involving a young man who was part of our football club, but also involved in a gang. This led to us having to step back, review the situation, taking responsibility for young peoples’ lives was something we had to progress with local partners.
County Lines and Gang issues has been on the rise locally and affects many young people who come from marginalised backgrounds. Isse us such as poverty, unemployment, low education are some of the additional barriers many young people face. We have a mission of diverting young people away from crime, and this was a major setback for our team, our football programme for the year, and CACHSF as a whole.
The football club survived this setback because of the multiagency work with Chairman of the local FA, Police Commissioner, Local MPs, and supporters, we decided to do whatever was necessary to keep this Football programme alive. This brought its own challenges as we had to recruit new players due to losing some because of the incident. It has been a slow recovery and difficult season, but plans are in place for 23/24.
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Pictures above: Beverly Uter,
Clem Turner and Mark
Goldsmith – Volunteers at the
Unity Football Grounds
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Pictures above: Unity Football
Club Half-Time Team Talk at
Inspire Suffolk grounds.
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Unity Well-Being Drop In
In 2022/2023 our Unity Health and Well-being Drop In project which was based at Tower Street came to an end. We were unable to sustain this valuable work due to a lack of funding and have made time to apply for funding to ensure this work can resume in 2024.
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Pictures above: Pictures above: Pictures above: Pictures above:
Jennie James Imani Sorhaindo Noel Thompson Emma Chakanetsa
delivering a offering and Shirley from Julian
Boosting your Acupressure to a Gooding, service Healthcare
Immunity Talk at client at the users listening to delivering a talk
the Health Drop- Health Drop-In a Health talk. on Holistic health
In. Centre. strategies
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Weekly Exercise Classes
In 2022/2023 we continued with the weekly exercise classes for people aged 50+ in the community. The classes were delivered with Holistic Health Practitioner, Imani Sorhaindo, and ran every Monday morning 10.45am-12.15pm.
Over 20 members of the community engaged in exercises. The attendees came from very diverse backgrounds, with a mix of ages between 54 to 88 years old. Members were able to review their improvements in their health, fitness, and general wellbeing. Many reported that they felt more resilient, flexible, and adaptable as a result, of the classes, their falls had significantly reduced as their core strength and balance had improved. Some attendees found that the weekly sessions were invaluable for their mental, emotional, and social well-being.
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Unity Befriending Project
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During COVID, we were funded to support isolated community members who were unable to go out due to mobility issues, illness or isolated. The needs of those in the community who were most frail and vulnerable still had to be met, and so the volunteers agreed to continue supporting over 15 members in the community through a Befriending service. The team of volunteers expanded to meet the needs of new Befriendees. Issues such as hardship, poor diet and nutrition, long-COVID, adult safeguarding, mobility, mental health, grief etc., were raised by Befriendees, and the team were there to offer active listening, support and guidance.
Volunteers and the Board have applied for further funding to resume this valuable work, as we need to expand these services, recruit a coordinator work and train new volunteers.
Dice and Spice Hot, Healthy Meals
CACHSH Hot meal food services still ran throughout this year as it did through COVID. We ran the service for over 46 weeks of
the year with very few volunteers. The support from 3 volunteers and 2 cooks was invaluable to keep this project running. We have identified the need to train up more volunteers for this project which is so necessary.
Head out of the Sand Cancer Awareness and Prevention Project (HOOTSCAP)
In March 2023 Imani Sorhaindo was appointed by the Board to deliver on a 1-year project around Cancer Awareness and Prevention in the Black community. We called the project ‘Head out of the Sand’ (HOOTS-CAP) to show the lack of awareness and taboo nature of Cancer prevention and early testing in the community. The project aims to reach over 180 people within the Black and minority ethnic community, to raise awareness about cancer, and to narrow the gap in terms of accessing tests. The first community talk was delivered to Black and minority ethnic women at PHOEBE, in Ipswich, where over 40 women attended to learn about early signs and symptoms of breast cancer. Guest speaker Karen Hare, CEO of the Cancer Campaign in Suffolk worked with Imani to deliver a talk and practical breast-check session, which was very well received.
Karen Hare CEO of Cancer Campaign in Suffolk talks at Phoebe Domestic Violence Support group about Breast cancer Prevention.
Pictures above: Community Groups at Phoebe, accessing the talks on Cervical and Breast Cancer Prevention delivered by Karen Hare and
Treasurer’s Report overleaf:
During the first half of the year (April 2002-September 2022) CACHSF didn’t have much funding, (Under £5,000) and we were challenged to maintaining many of our projects. This was due to the COVID challenges as many were still not coming out, and we were not having much face-to-face activities. This impacted on our ability to gain funds. The idea of face-to-face planning continued, and there was more scope for us to develop online activities and so we were able to apply for funding during this time. Many then started to venture out and access our services, and so funding tripled from October 2022 – March 2023 as our community become more confident and reintegrate back into the community to resume services and activities.
As a Treasurer we had communications from the bank as they were increasing scrutiny for all their customers, and this meant I had to spend more time completing additional forms to meet their compliance. This was due to increased fraudulent activity with banks generally. This impacted on us greatly as the Chair and I were not able to do as much paper-based deposits.
We moved premises, which meant that we had double rent expenditure to find, and we were fortunate to receive funding towards the rent. Cathy Wright’s organisation was extremely helpful to help us to meet this increase in rent as we had to vacate old premises in Tower Street and move to more suitable premises.
For the first part of the year, we had £5,600.00 compared to the second quarter where we had an increase to £24,123.00, so as you can see there were many challenges for CACHSF at this time.
Please see the accounts in a separate document.
| Income and Expenditure 02/04/2022 to 0 2022 Total £1,500.00 £29,800.00 £3,272.00 £660.00 £1,000.00 £36,232.00 Total 783.64 Unity befriending project incr £624.20 Unity befriending project incr £692.55 Unity befriending project incr £652.00 Unity befriending project incr £260.00 Unity befriending project incr £1,800.00 £1,457.50 Drop-in coordination £637.50 Drop- in Health talks £1,140.00 £1,200.00 £75.00 £600.00 £3,222.00 £1,273.72 £248.00 £1,302.40 £288.00 £0.00 £946.03 covid 19 sanitising / cleaning £630.43 £727.32 18,560.29 17,671.71 |
Income and Expenditure 02/04/2022 to 0 2022 Total £1,500.00 £29,800.00 £3,272.00 £660.00 £1,000.00 £36,232.00 Total 783.64 Unity befriending project incr £624.20 Unity befriending project incr £692.55 Unity befriending project incr £652.00 Unity befriending project incr £260.00 Unity befriending project incr £1,800.00 £1,457.50 Drop-in coordination £637.50 Drop- in Health talks £1,140.00 £1,200.00 £75.00 £600.00 £3,222.00 £1,273.72 £248.00 £1,302.40 £288.00 £0.00 £946.03 covid 19 sanitising / cleaning £630.43 £727.32 18,560.29 17,671.71 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Income and Expenditure |
||
| Income | 2022 | Total |
| B/FWD | ||
| Funding | ||
| Donation | £1,500.00 | |
| Suf Comm Foundation | £29,800.00 | |
| Dice and Spice | £3,272.00 | |
| Exercise class | £660.00 | |
| Donation(Trustee) | £1,000.00 | |
| Total Income | £36,232.00 | |
| Expenditure | Total | |
| General Running Costs | ||
| Telephone | 783.64 | |
| IT/internet | £624.20 | |
| Postage/Stationery | £692.55 | |
| Publicity/Promotion | £652.00 | |
| Training:- | £260.00 | |
| Footballproject | £1,800.00 | |
| Professional fees:- | £1,457.50 | |
| Health Talks fees | £637.50 | |
| Exercise class hall hire | £1,140.00 | |
| Exercise class Inst fee | £1,200.00 | |
| Trainingequipment | £75.00 | |
| auditor's Fee | £600.00 | |
| Dice and Spice | £3,222.00 | |
| Volunteer expenses | £1,273.72 | |
| Ofce carpark fees. | £248.00 | |
| Centre Costs | ||
| Hire/Rent | £1,302.40 | |
| Insurance | £288.00 | |
| Council Tax | £0.00 | |
| Maintenance/cleaning | £946.03 | |
| Equipment | £630.43 | |
| Miscaellaneous Total Expenditure Total Surplus / Defcit. |
£727.32 18,560.29 |
|
| 17,671.71 | ||
Jennie James
Jennie James
Treasurer Caribbean and African Community Health Support Forum.
01/04/2023
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Independent Reviewer Report
My name is Paul Akanbi. I write to confirm that I have examined the accounts of the Caribbean and African Community Health Support Forum as an independent reviewer for the purpose of submitting to the Charity Commission as required. I have found that the account submitted reflects a true and accurate record of the organisation financial income, expenditure, and transactions.
I have looked at the bank records for the period indicated (2nd April 2022 to 1st April 2023) and confirmed income stated throughout the period. I have also looked at the expenditure, verifying this with bank records and receipts / invoices regarding expenses and payments where necessary.
After having reviewed their financial records and accounts, I can verify that this is an accurate account of the information presented in the annual report sent.
Paul Akanbi
Date: 29th February 2024
Independent Reviewer.