OpenCharities

This text was generated using OCR and may contain errors. Check the original PDF to see the document submitted to the regulator.

2024-03-31-accounts

Reading Families’ Forum CIO

Annual Report and Accounts 2023/2024

Reading Families’ Forum Charitable Incorporated Organisation

Trustees’ Annual Report for the financial year 1 April 2023 – 31 March 2024

Full name of the charity:

Reading Families’ Forum Charitable Incorporated Organisation

Other names charity is known by: RFF, Reading Families’ Forum

Registered charity number: 1166585

Charity commission contact: Ramona Bridgman 5 Carisbrooke Close Caversham Reading RG4 6SB

Charity’s governing document:

The constitution of Reading Families’ Forum CIO, dated 4 March 2016.

How the charity is constituted:

Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO).

How trustees are appointed:

Elected at the AGM by members but may be co-opted by the other Trustees in between AGMs.

Trustees of the charity:

For the year 2023 / 2024 the following were trustees:

Ramona Bridgman Chair Lynsey McDonald Secretary Alice Carter Treasurer Pauline Hamilton Fozia Kayani (from September 2023) Kira Lloyd (from November 2023 Sergio de Gregorio (from January 2024)

Bank:

The Co-operative Bank, 1 Balloon Street, Manchester M4 4BE.

Objects of the charity:

To relieve the needs of young people aged 0-25 years with disabilities and / or special educational needs and to assist in advancing them in life so that they may grow to full maturity

2

as individuals and members of society for the public benefit in the Reading Borough Council area by:

Main activities undertaken:

Trustees have had regard to the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit. RFF holds regular Forum meetings where members and service providers meet to discuss issues of concern. RFF holds regular public events, including coffee evenings with a speaker, an annual Information Day, an annual Preparing for Adulthood Day, and a public conference. RFF members represent parents on a variety of committees and working groups within the local authority, and work regularly with key service providers in the Local Authority, NHS and voluntary sector.

INTRODUCTION

The Reading Families’ Forum has been a charity since 2016, building on our work to promote co-production between families of children with Special Educational Needs and/or Disability (SEND) and service providers for the last 16 years. (Co-production means developing services together.) We have a membership of 402 parent carers and 815 - 908 people follow us on Facebook.

MANAGEMENT

At the last AGM in October 2023 the following trustees were voted in:

Two additional trustees were co-opted since the AGM, Kira Lloyd and Sergio de Gregorio. Fozia Kayani, who was co-opted in September 2023, resigned as a trustee in May 2024 due to work and caring commitments.

We have a number of parent carers who have provided invaluable support over the past year, including Beryl Thompson, Claire Harrison and Liang Yang.

We had 2 employees and 1 paid contractor:

Our Parent Participation Co-ordinator, Fran Morgan, has continued to organise our events brilliantly, minutes our meetings and is a point of contact for families and service providers alike. She also arranges speakers for groups of parent carers at schools.

Lisa Harry was our Youth Forum administrator and did a great job of organising events for our SEND Youth Forum, Special United. On 1[st] September 2024, Me2 Club redeployed Lisa when they took over the contract to run Special United but has since been made redundant as Brighter Futures for Children’s contract was insufficient to cover Lisa’s salary.

3

Tara Robb is an excellent self-employed administrator and does all our bookkeeping.

REVIEW OF OUR WORK April 2023 – March 2024

RFF exists to coproduce local services for children and young people with SEND and their families. To do this, we work hard to reach as many parents as possible and to represent their views in local services for children with SEND and their families.

Our membership has grown by 15% and our number of followers on Facebook has increased by 11% since the last AGM.

We had 3 face to face coffee sessions and one online session between April 23 and March 24 so that parent carers can talk to local service managers and are now giving families the option to join online. We have had the new Keyworking Team, the new Health Visitor for children with additional needs, learning disability CAMHS, ReMap charity, and Reading’s Inclusion Support in Education Team (RISE).

We held our Transition Information Day on 18 November 2023 and our Information and Fun Day on 16 September 2023.

We held a conference for parent carers and professionals with Brighter Futures for Children in March 2024 focussing on children’s social care.

Representing Families’ Views

RFF held 5 Forum meetings with local services. We continued to sit on the monthly SEND strategy group meetings and the 5 work strands that are part of the board’s work.

We meet regularly with the Local Offer team to review the information and how it is presented and have met with the SEND team manager to look at improving their communication with parent carers.

RFF attend the SEND Joint Implementation Group with Health, Social Care and Education across the 3 local authority areas: Wokingham, Reading and West Berkshire and taken part in two audits of Education, Health and Care Plans across the 3 local authorities.

RFF has been part of the steering group for the new Learning Disability CAMHS.

RFF has been part of the Autism Strategy Board and have fed back parent carer and young people’s views.

Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS)

Reading has been selected to be part of the PINS programme in all of Reading’s mainstream primary schools. RFF have been attending steering group meetings since January 2024 and put together a project plan.

We have since recruited 2 school group coordinators to set up parent carer groups in the 4 clusters of primary schools. They will then help parent carers coproduce work to make schools more inclusive.

4

Getting our young people’s views heard

The Special United Youth Forum met face to face 6 times between April 2023 and March 2024.

Young people helped with the research towards the new Reading Inclusion Support in Education (RISE), learning disability CAMHS and the Keyworking teams. They have given their views on what would make schools more inclusive, supported internships, therapies (physio, occupational therapy and speech and language therapy) and the Local Offer.

Top 3 successes in the last year

We have increased our membership and coopted two new Trustees, Sergio de Gregorio and Kira Lloyd. Kira completed a successful placement with us as part of her degree.

We became involved in the PINS project and regularly worked with the RISE team to improve inclusion in schools.

We have been part of the setting up of the learning disability CAMHS service.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Become a member if you are not already, the more members we have the more influence we have with local services. You can also vote for who you want to be a Trustee and Chair.

Become part of the steering group. We will support you to become involved in the meetings above. Service managers like to hear from different parent carers rather than just the same old faces!

Become a Trustee and be part of planning our work. We are a friendly, supportive team and make sure we all only do what we are able to do at the time. As our children get older, we are looking for parent carers of younger children as well as more experienced parents.

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Reading Families Forum receives an annual government grant administered by the charity Contact to facilitate parent carer participation in the Reading Borough Council area, and more recently has a contract from Brighter Futures for Children to run Special United, the SEND youth forum. This contract was due to end on 31st March 2024, but was extended for a further 3 months to 30th June 2024. We returned to a full year of in-person events this year, including an Information and Fun Day and Transition Day, a conference on children’s social care, and a number of coffee evenings although issues with staffing mean we are unable to provide childcare and this makes it harder to reach as many families. At the end of the year we held just over £4000 in unrestricted funds, which is essential to be able to keep the forum running while awaiting the results of grant applications and to cover general overheads arising from employing staff.

5

----- Start of picture text -----
Restricted fund
Receipts and Payments Unrestricted (BFfC Youth Restricted fund Total Total
Accounts 2023-24 funds Forum (Contact Grant) 2023-24 2022-23
Contract)
Receipts £ £ £ £ £
Contact grant 0 0 17,394 17,394 15,409
Brighter Futures contract 0 6,430 0 6,430 0
Other 344 0 0 344 226
Total receipts 344 6,430 17,394 24,168 15,635
Payments
Public Events 0 0 6,628 6,628 6,484
Steering group / parent carer costs 0 0 1,064 1,064 342
Staffing and administration costs 0 0 8,530 8,530 9,037
Resources (including website) 0 0 615 615 1,472
School Groups Project 0 0 0 0 0
Youth Forum 0 6,593 0 6,593 5,228
Total payments 0 6,593 16,837 23,430 22,563
Surplus (Deficit) 344 (163) 557 738 (6,928)
Net movement in funds 344 (163) 557 738 (6,928)
Brought forward at 1/4/2023 3,670 814 165 4,649 11,577
Transfer between funds 0 0 0 0 0
Carried forward at 31/3/2024 4,014 651 722 5,387 4,649
Statement of Assets and Unrestricted Restricted fund Restricted fund Total Total
Liabilities funds (BFfC Contract) (Contact) 2023-24 2022-23
----- End of picture text -----

Statement of Assets and
Liabilities
Cash at bank and in hand
Assets retained for charity's use
Liabilities
Total assets less liabilities		 Unrestricted
funds
4,014
0
0
4,014		 Restricted fund
(BFfC Contract)
651
0
0
651		 Restricted fund
(Contact)
722
0
0
722		 Total
2023-24
5,387
0
0
5,387		 Total
2022-23
4,649
0
404
4,244

Signed on behalf of the Trustees:

Ramona Bridgman, Chair 12/10/2024

Alice Carter, Treasurer 19/10/2024

6