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2021-03-31-accounts

We Are Family Annual Repor t and Accounts 2020 - 2021

Contents

Chair’s Introduction Reference and Administrative Details Governance and Management Objectives and Activities Achievements and Performance Public Benefit Statement Financial Review Independent examiner's report on the accounts Receipts and Payments Accounts

Charity Number: 1163318

We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Chair’s Introduction

A year of service change and development due to COVID-19

We Are Family is a young charity which works hard to develop and grow its much-needed support offer to its expanding community of members. The year 2020/21, however, will go down as a year of particularly significant challenge, change and success.

Our model of providing connection and relationship through face-to-face events across London was severely affected by the Covid-19 lockdown which began in March 2020 and with the subsequent restrictions, all such events were cancelled for the foreseeable future. We conducted a survey of members in early April 2020, asking them about the impact of lockdown on their lives and what they needed by way of support at this time.

We found the challenges faced by members, due to the lockdown measures, were varied and in most cases significant. The main themes that emerged in the qualitative feedback from our survey were increased anxiety and depression for parents, dealing with trauma resurfacing and behaviour regression in adopted children, parents being exhausted, changes to routines and uncertainty about the adoption process for prospective adopters and parents who were pre-adoption order.

In response to the pandemic and our members’ needs, we quickly adjusted the way our support was delivered. This was possible through the flexibility of We Are Family’s volunteers to adjust the way we as an organisation offer support and three successful emergency funding applications to Adopt London, the Adoption Support Fund (made in partnership with Adopt London) and The City Bridge Trust.

We developed a new programme of webinars and workshops, called WAF Talks, which invites speakers from various disciplines to tackle topics of relevance to members and these have been run on at least a fortnightly basis. We also developed a new online platform, called the ‘Member Hub’ to share more member resource recommendations and the WAF Talks webinar recordings.

We have been in many ways surprised by some of the positive effects of the pandemic on our services and reach, as members have reported feeling more connected than before and having better access to our support now it is also online, as opposed to a primarily face-to-face offer.

Looking forward, we are acutely aware of the need to review the balance between face-to-face and online programmes, and activities developed locally and centrally, to meet the needs of as many adopters and prospective adopters as possible. The need for local networks and community has not disappeared, and our local groups are integral to delivering this service but we also need to provide more online support and information from the centre, which all members can engage with irrespective of geography and specific time constraints. We must, of course, ensure that we stay relevant to the needs of adopters and that we can grow and change to reflect the needs of a growing membership.

Over forty volunteers continued to run our local groups, albeit online throughout the year, and provide support across London to our hundreds of adoptive and would-be adoptive member families. Our annual member survey (see below for details) again demonstrated just how valuable We Are Family is to its members.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Credit must, of course, go to We Are Family’s dedicated volunteers, trustees and staff for maintaining support to our members across the year and we would like to thank them for their continued support.

You can read more details about many of these points in the following formal trustees’ report.

Mark Hoult-Allen Chair

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

The trustees of We Are Family CIO present their sixth annual report, covering the twelve months ended 31 March 2021 (‘the year’).

Ref erence and Administrative Details

The charity, We Are Family, is a charitable incorporated organisation which was registered with the Charity Commission of England and Wales on 26[th] August 2015. The charity’s registration number is 1163318. The charity does not have any offices or other premises; its registered address is 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.

The names of all those who served as the charity’s trustees during the year, and subsequently, are given below (in alphabetical order by surname), with the start and end dates of the term of office of each given, where relevant:

Name Start End
StruanCampbell 18.11.19
Andrew Taylor-Dawson 08.06.20

Samantha Fletcher		 20.03.18
Todd Foy 20.03.18 02.12.20
Rami Hassouna 08.02.21
Liz Hocter 08.02.21
Mark Hoult-Allen 18.11.19
Ian Jacobs-Dean 20.03.18 31.07.20
NatalieKavanagh-Clarke 18.11.19 28.08.20
Diane McGrath 14.09.20
LibbyMcVeigh 17.03.20
Stuart Meek 08.02.21
MirandaMercado Gregory 26.08.15
Jay Nicol 21.09.15 19.03.21

Klayre Rogers		 20.03.19
John Rolls 20.03.18 19.03.21
Sobia Shamim 08.02.21
Andrew Taylor-Dawson 08.06.20

JodyTranter		 20.03.18
Stephanie Wong 08.02.21

The Board was supported by its secretary, Charlotte Bois-Pursey. We would like to thank her for her support throughout the year.

Gover nance and Management

We Are Family existed as an unincorporated organisation before its registration as a charitable incorporated organisation in August 2015. It was originally founded in 2013 by a small group of adoptive parents to provide locally based peer-to-peer support for adoptive parents. From one group in Hackney and Islington, the organisation grew to seven groups in just over two years. Registration as an incorporated charity was sought and to support the organisation’s growth, facilitate future fundraising, and consolidate its existing reputation within the adoption field.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

The charity’s constitution provides for the appointment of trustees by the board of trustees, having regard to the skills, knowledge and experience needed for the effective administration of the charity. The charity’s trustees from time to time are its only legal members (to be distinguished from adopters and prospective adopters who have joined one of the charity’s groups and who are referred to elsewhere in this report as ‘members’).

During the year, the board maintained an ongoing trustee recruitment process with the appointment of six trustees during the year. The trustees wish to thank the trustees who left the board during the year: Todd Foy, Ian Jacobs-Dean, Natalie Kavanagh-Clarke, Jay Nicol and John Rolls.

The board have four regular board meetings a year whilst also constituting two awaydays each year as board meetings, which means the board meets formally at least six times a year. Meetings during the year continued to be focussed on overseeing the strategy and operations of the charity and the provision of services to members, setting up systems for running the charity; and securing funding to ensure the sustainability of the charity.

The work of the board is supported by two standing committees, the Finance, Fundraising and Resources Committee and the Programmes and Strategy Committee.

Objectives and Activities

We Are Family’s objects are to promote the health and wellbeing of prospective adopters and adopters. This covers the predictable stresses, strain and sense of isolation that comes with being an adoptive parent and in parenting traumatised children. There is a lack of targeted and tailored peer-to-peer support for adoptive parents during the adoption journey and so We Are Family’s key objective is the improved wellbeing of adopters through regular peer support opportunities both online and in person.

The charity’s vision, which was agreed by the board during the year, is: “We want to see a world in which adoptive parents and prospective adopters feel connected, benefit from peer support and are part of a community which enables them to thrive." Its mission is to work “to ensure that adoptive parents and prospective adopters are part of a community, offering each other support, from a place of lived experience, through the highs and lows of parenting”.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

The activities of We Are Family fall into the following areas:

Connection & Relationship Inf ormation & Inspiration Creating opportunities for connection An extension of direct peer support, between adopters. gathering member recommendations and • Local groups (face-to-face activities) experience.

Amplifying voices Structured support

Using the voice of the community to support calls for improved support for adoptive parents/families.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Achievements and Perf ormance

Gover nance and Strategy

During the year, the trustees continued to focus on building the sustainability of the organisation (SA1) as well as looking at developing new programmes (SA4) and programme accessibility (SA2) in the light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Key achievements this year include:

Membership

As at the end of March 2021, We Are Family had 781 fully validated members (542 fully validated members at end of March 2020), which is a growth of 44% year on year. A further 76 adoptive or prospective adopters were in the process of completing their member registration.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Referral pathways into We Are Family have improved hugely, as shown by the 44% growth in membership (YOY). The next steps for We Are Family are to look beyond the London RAA and work with other RAAs in the South East to start to extend our reach and consolidate our model.

We ran two surveys during the year. Our first, in April 2020 was in direct response to the national lockdown and asked parents what they needed from us in the coming months. This proved instrumental to our ability to design new services quickly and well, and also resulted in We Are Family providing evidence to both the Department for Education and the Parliamentary Petitions Committee on the impacts of the pandemic on Adoption and Maternity/Paternity leave.

The second survey in November 2020 gave us some valuable feedback on the impact of our services: The feedback demonstrates our intended project outcomes, delivered through our WAF Talks webinar programme, local groups and provision of psychotherapy support (via Adopt London).

We aimed for adoptive parents to connect with people in the same situation, share experiences and seek advice from peers:

"I am just so hugely grateful to not feel alone. Have been working remotely at home with 3 children under 5 and the webinars have been a godsend"

“As a single adopter I am so grateful to COVID-19, as I’ve never been able to attend a session like this before. Please don’t give up on webinars”

“I feel like everyone in our group understands when we have tricky times with our son. We all share stories and are non-judgemental. Everyone offers advice with behaviour and having access to webinars has been amazing. I don't think I could have coped without the organisation and scaffolding it gives to an adoptive parent”

“I've only just joined but it feels reassuring to speak to people in the same situation and I've gained new strategies from the webinars”

“Just knowing the group is there, feeling validated, feeling amongst like minds, feeling supported, knowing supportive people are there if we need it, a great source of ongoing training with peers!!”

We aimed to support adoptive families to develop practical strategies to support children’s health and well-being during the pandemic and associated restrictions and changes to children’s lives. As part of this, we provided a range of content supporting the return to school and managing anxieties.

"I have heard Stuart Guest before, but he never fails to be inspiring and incredibly helpful. So pleased I signed up for this. I feel much better prepared for September now"

We aimed to support adoptive parents to feel more able to cope with their caring role and build resilience so they can manage the challenges of coronavirus in order to reduce the risk of placement breakdown and longer-term difficulties.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

“All I can say is Thank you. This has been hugely helpful. I have only recently heard of NVR and will now ask our Post Adoption Support to organise a course through ASF ASAP”

“I can’t begin to tell you how much the webinars have helped me to get through this difficult year. My daughter has an incredibly complex background and it’s been so helpful to have access to these amazing speakers from the comfort of my home. My daughter was delighted to see her (former) therapist leading one of the talks and it helped open a discussion about therapy, her life story and other children and parents being in the same situation as us. It also really helped her to see me spending time thinking about her needs. This is just one example of how these talks have helped. I have learned something valuable from every single session and I’m so, so grateful to have this fantastic resource so easily available and accessible. Thank you so much”

Services

We are proud that we have managed to grow our volunteer base during the last year, despite the challenges of the pandemic for our volunteers and their families. We are aware that volunteer engagement will continue to be a key issue for We Are Family as we must be user-led in terms of service delivery. Our training and support to volunteers over the next year and beyond are critical to sustaining our model.

Local Support

Information and Resources

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Fundraising Success

We Are Family is very grateful to various trusts and foundations, organisations and individuals who provided funds to support the continued development of the charity.

We also secured emergency funding from three organisations to allow us to deliver programmes and activities differently in response to the COVID-19 pandemic:

We have started to think about diversification of our funding streams and in April 2021 we began a soft launch of our new individual giving campaign on our new website.

Partnerships

The charity also further developed partnerships with external organisations to the benefit of the membership. This included:

Plans f or 2021/22: Impact of Covid-19 and emerging from restr ictions

Some practical things we are doing to achieve our objectives in 21/22 are:

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Public Benefit Statement

The Trustees confirm that they have complied with their duty to have due regard to the guidance on public benefit published by the Charity Commission in exercising their powers or duties and in offering peer-to-peer adopter-led support, through its local and cross-London groups and online service provision.

We Are Family supports the well-being of both adoptive parents and prospective adopters. This is of benefit to both individual adopters, in reducing the stresses and strains of adopting, and their families. Membership of We Are Family, and access to its support network and other services, is offered on an open basis, the only requirement being verification of adopter status by a social worker (at Stage 2 of the adoption process or further).

The charity offers its services free and arranges activities so that they can be accessible to as many parents as possible, and to those with children of a variety of ages. We Are Family strives to be open to all sections of the community and sees developing this as a key aspect of its work. We Are Family continued to reimburse parents attending the single parent support groups for childcare costs, so that those members could more easily attend. The charity also continues to explore how to meet the needs of specific communities, such as BAME and trans-racial adopters.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Financial Review

Summary

During the year ended 31 March 2021 We Are Family raised £88,555 (prior year: £45,363) and spent £62,762 (prior year: £45,282).

Substantial grants from the Tudor Trust, The Fore, Adopt London and City Bridge Trust have enabled WAF to expand the support we offer to adopters, offer more online services to help adopters manage the impact of the pandemic and perhaps most significantly, grow our membership throughout the year despite the impact of the pandemic on the operation of face-to-face support groups.

Sources of income

£29,813 of restricted funding was received from the Adopt London consortium of regional adoption agencies along with £7,960 of Gifts in Kind.

£13,220 or restricted funding was also received from the City Bridge Trust which was specific to the provision of online services as a result of the pandemic.

£20,000 of unrestricted income was received from the Tudor Trust along with a further £2,000 of restricted income and £15,000 of unrestricted income was received from The Fore.

The remaining funding was from cash donations.

Unrestr icted funds

£35,562 (£40,863) of unrestricted funding was raised during the year. Expenditure of £32,136 (£32,858) was offset against this leaving a surplus of £3,426 which was allocated to unrestricted reserves. Total unrestricted reserves at the year-end were £19,598 (£16,171) of which approx. £9,000 was earmarked to cover salaries until the next set of unrestricted funding was due to be received with the remainder covering our reserves requirement (see further details below).

The bulk of unrestricted funding came from the Tudor Trust (£20,000) and The Fore (£15,000) and was used to fund both our Operations Manager role and a new Community Development manager position.

Restr icted funds

£52,993 (£4,500) of restricted funding was raised during the year. Expenditure of £30,626 (£12,424) was offset against this leaving a surplus of £22,367. Total restricted reserves at the year-end were £27,635 (£5,268).

Expenditure against restricted funds predominantly related to IT consultancy and project management costs related to continuing work on our member platform, new We Are Family branding, Zoom licenses for taking the provision of We Are Family services online and ‘WAF Talks’ guest speaker fees.

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

The surplus at the end of the year was due to the timing of spend within the financial year. Of the £27,635 left in restricted reserves at the end of the year, just under £18,000 was spent in the first 3 months of the new financial year and related to website and platform development and fundraising costs.

Basis of Preparation

The accounts for the year are drawn up on a cash (ie receipts and payments) basis. The charity had no amounts due to it or owed by it at the year end.

Since the year end, in addition to the post year end restricted reserves related expenditure noted above, expenses relating to the year have been paid to staff totalling £116. These relate to reimbursement of homeworking expenses.

No funds were or are held as a custodian on behalf of others.

Independent Review

The accounts for the year ended 31 March 2021 have been independently reviewed with the independent examiner confirming that accounting records have been adequately kept, the submitted accounts correspond with those accounting records and that there are no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in . order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts

Reserves Policy

The Board of Trustees has agreed a reserves policy whereby the unrestricted funds not committed should provide sufficient funding for an orderly wind down of the charity if necessary at some future date. The policy aims to keep reserves equivalent to three months of general operating expenses plus one to two months’ worth of staff costs, currently calculated in total at £9,300.

Total unrestricted reserves at the end of the year were £19,598 of which £9,000 was earmarked to cover salaries until the next set of unrestricted funding is received, leaving £10,598 in general unrestricted reserves.

Funding received since the year end

Since the year end the following significant funding has been gratefully received by We Are Family:

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We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

This report was approved by the Trustees of We Are Family CIO on 6th December 2021

Mark Hoult-Allen, Chair

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WÈ Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021 IHARITY COMMISSIO FOR E14GLANO ANO WALE Vle Ale F4mity 118331• Receipts and payments accounts CC16a Forthe pefKxl Aryl 1 2020 To March 31 2021 Section A Receipts and payments Unresincied funds Restncied lunds Endownieni lunds ToWluDds L&stye&r lo nearest A1 Rèce T￿￿15&Found￿lIOn5 35.0 50.220 37.7TJ 35.51x1 7.134 2.729 37.773 IndI￿d￿lIGi￿ft Sub totsl(Gross income for ARI 35.562 88.$5S 45.363 A2 Asset and investmeni Sub total Total rncéipts 35 52,993 88.555 45,J63 A3Pa ACcountar￿Y lees ChldttaieCosts-ParèThl ChldGaieExpen5e5- Co￿1￿nce￿nd L@gdExpon5QS 3id consL4ws FuDdia>D9c￿ts 4KI 192 176 188 343 T12 rr 5oltwai@andConsumab AdveitigY¥J&M¥kol" PiinhDg& 5iètionery 6H 55 ss RepaYs& grrn4lGiltstovolunteers 31 Venu@Fhr websitec￿lS WAFGtOypEveDIS MpmbiTe50UIC5 payidlco5tsinclpen￿On Ti￿e1 Sub5ciipIv 925 403 737 316 60 41 Sub total M Assetand investment rchase$ see iable Sub total 32.136 30.626 45282 Net of reCeipt￿payments) A5 Transfers bet*en lunds A6 Cash funds ksi year end Cash funds this year end 3rt26 22J67 25, 16,171 19￿96 21.439 21,35B 21,439 27. 47.233 17

We Are Family Annual Report and Accounts 2020-2021

Verified by pdfFiller
Mark Hoult-Allen 6th December 2021
01/05/2022

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