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2022-12-31-accounts

The Mountain Way

(A Charitable Incorporated Organisation)

Report and Financial Statements

For the period Jan 1[st] 2022 – Dec 31[st] 2022

Charity Number 1171751

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Contents Page
Legal and Administrative Information 3
Report from the Trustees 4
Statement of Financial Activities 7
Accounts 9

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Oct 2023

Legal and Administrative Information

The Trustees of The Mountain Way presents its director’s report and financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2022. This report covers the Charity’s financial reporting and details activity from 1[st] January – 31[st] December 2022

Reference and Administrative Information

Charity Name: The Mountain Way Charity Registration Number: 1171751 Registered Address: The Mountain Way (1171751) 1 Lime View Victoria Park Newbury RG14 1EL

Board of Trustees

Mr Jonathan Bailey Chair Mr Simon Miller Treasurer Dr Pat Gwyer Head of Clinical Governance

Executive Team

Mr Andrew Shaw Chief Mentor Mr Dominic Moorhouse Fund Raising Director Mr John Lloyd Accountant

Bankers

The Royal Bank of Scotland Drummond House No 1 Redheughs Edinburgh EH12 9JN

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Oct 2023

Trustees’ Report

Our Aims and Objectives.

The Mountain Way’s aim is to assist UK military veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The UK’s ex-military community suffers from a significant proportion of its members enduring PTSD primarily as a result of participation in the military campaigns of the last 17 years but also exhibiting causes extending back to the Falklands Conflict in 1982.

The effects of this widespread mental health issue are many but include personal isolation, loss of self-esteem, destruction of relationships, inability to find and keep work and in general terms, an inability to conduct what the majority would see as a ‘normal’ life and enjoy sustained relationships. In many cases suicidal contemplations are realised and there is a growing quantity of evidence to suggest that the choice of suicide among military veterans is increasing.

How our Activities deliver Public Benefit

We assist former military PTSD sufferers directly via the efforts of the charity’s founder, Andy Shaw, and our psychologist, Dr Pat Gwyer. The charity can be introduced to sufferers through a variety of channels and after confirmation that they have had a formal PTSD diagnosis, our programme commences with Andy Shaw as mentor.

A preparatory phase, designed to gather information and assess suitability for one of our programmes, ensures that the individual is ready to confront their problems in surroundings that enable progress and development. A two-week programme conducted outside of the UK is designed on a one-to-one basis so that the concept of veteran peer-to-peer support can begin. Throughout this programme, techniques including mindfulness, guided reflection, meditative techniques and lay-counselling are used to enable the sufferer to begin identifying changes required in his or her life. On completion of this programme, a life-plan is designed, and a further period of six months of mentoring is characterised by frequent communication and routine evaluation and monitoring.

The programme offers the opportunity for sufferers to come to terms with what caused their condition, relegate PTSD to merely a component of their lives (rather than it being the sole driver) and enable them to begin re-establishing a more normal, balanced and positive place in society.

Responsibilities of the Trustees

The key responsibilities of the Board are governance and decision-making. Collectively, the role of governance spans the following areas:

Decision making is conducted routinely via quarterly board meetings in addition to extraordinary meetings as required. Decisions required of the Board include:

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Responsibilities of the Executive Team

The small Executive Team often works with other volunteers on a project-based approach to:

Key Activities in this Reporting Period

Key activity during the period January 2022 – December 2022 includes:

Assistance to PTSD sufferers

2022 was a very productive, busy year, in comparison to the previous Covid-hampered period. Two of our conventional guest programmes were completed with UK veterans in addition to the three of our new UK-based programmes. These UK-based programmes were made possible due to the arrangements made in 2021 in response to the generous offer of use of a UK veteran’s residential property in Scotland. The first pilot programme proved extremely effective and tailor-made programmes were designed for the next veterans without the need to fly them out to France or Spain for one of our ‘traditional’ programmes. We envisage great use of this facility in future years since we can achieve certain financial economies in addition to scheduling these programmes amongst our UK-based ‘Open Door’ preliminary activities.

The two programmes completed in France and Spain saw very positive results and initial monitoring of their post-traumatic growth processes shows promise. Core-34 scoring methodology continues to enable the Charity to monitor, review and improve our internal procedures and continually improve our offering.

Several visits to the UK by our Chief Mentor led to the identification of eight potential attendees who will undertake our ‘Open Door’ programme – the necessary precursor to being identified as suitable for attendance on one of our full programmes. The waiting list, or ‘pipeline’ is always long but significant skill is required to identify those ready to commit to the complete process and who are displaying the determination required to make change in their lives.

As the family of veterans we have assisted grows larger, so does the workload in the continual monitoring and support of their post-traumatic growth journey. We have a real need for additional mentors who, with the required personal characteristics and especially empathy, can take responsibility for their own groups of veterans throughout all stages in our process - a real commitment. It is clear to us that the preponderance of severe PTSD in the UK’s military veteran cohort continues – although often hidden from view – to destroy the lives of this community’s members and families.

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External Activity

Our Communications Manager departed this year to pursue other opportunities but not before putting in place significant changes to how we organise our social media and other publicity operations. The decision was taken not to replace her in 2022, since despite significant output, it was difficult to identify direct impact to our donor revenues. This is a position we hope to re-establish in the future.

Our social media / web communications strategy continued to improve with decent trends emerging in the statistics for new visitors to our website. We have seen a huge increase in the number of people wishing to sign up for our newsletter and other communiques and this segment of the public often turns into regular small-size donors. The website contact format that was designed for veteran sufferers to reach us also continues to prove effective. Whilst operating budgets for advertising and publicity remain small to non-existent, better utilisation of all channels must be achieved.

A key external event this year was one of the Falklands Campaign 40[th] Anniversary gatherings attended by our Chief Mentor – himself a veteran of this operation in 1982. Attended by not just military veterans but by a wide swathe of the local community, it provided an excellent opportunity to broadcast our message, raise interest from potential donors and it resulted in two significant financial donations arising from the event itself.

Internal Activity

The six-monthly and annual reviews of key policies and internal operating procedures were conducted as usual and amended where appropriate to reflect experience gained from the Charity’s operation over the previous year. With the benefit of completing five programmes this year, the Charity had significant additional data points with which to conduct reviews and improvement of our delivery. We believe that with every cycle of this process, we evolve to serve veterans better, achieve longer-lasting outcomes for them and produce time and financial efficiencies.

Although our fundraising for this period was significantly higher than the last, the bulk of our financial resources were directed at the crop of severely PTSD-injured veterans brought to our attention through the continued work in 2021. An additional factor contributing to the length of our veteran waiting list was not only the Covid backlog but also that Covid restrictions almost certainly exacerbated the severity of pre-existing PTSD conditions. The proportion of financial resources aimed directly at veterans is of course, an extremely positive outcome but one result was our inability to hire a part-time fundraiser this year. The need to fill this position is as great as ever but will now be a 2023 objective, funding permitted.

Our AGM this year was focused on longer-term strategy. Some of the key critical decisions and desired outcomes that were formalised as a five-year strategy plan are listed below:

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Statement of Financial Activities

Financial Review

This period saw total donations from all sources amounting to £39,032 and spending by the Charity totaling £34,765 with cash funds at the year-end for this period totaling £13,500.

Fund Raising Categories

Successful fund raising for this period fell into the following categories:

Principal Funding Sources

A dragon boating event and a half marathon provided income, although less than in previous years, whilst an extremely generous donation of £4,000 from the 45 Commando RM 1982 Falklands Reunion was very well received. GoFundMe and Just Giving donations persisted including recurring donations from some of our oldest supporters. The greatest proportion of this period’s income came from five individuals and companies who each donated between £3,500 and £5,000.

It should be noted that we continue to enjoy incredibly generous support from a UK veteran business owner who finds all our vehicle and fuel costs. This is an invaluable benefit to UK operations where our Chief Mentor travels huge distances to spend time with PTSD victims – both candidates for upcoming programmes and past participants who receive ongoing support.

Plans for Future Periods

The key activities that emerged from the AGM strategy review centred around the necessity of greatly increased fund raising. It was agreed that over the next five-year period, we wished to grow the number of mentors, increasing our delivery to a point where we felt our unique model, under which we deliver assistance, could be claimed to have been proven and ratified as far as reasonably possible.

Our sole mentor, by this point, would have responsibility for recruiting and training new mentors, design and supervision of veteran programmes and overall responsibility for quality control and continued development of our programmes in conjunction with our Head of Clinical Governance.

To answer the question of ‘How do we assist as many PTSD sufferers as possible?’, we imagine at the five-year point, a delivery model that is ready to be offered to other groups. We envisage the portability and transferability of our approach and techniques and want to offer the models to other uniformed services, emergency and blue-light organisations. We would utilise personnel exchanges in both directions so that these organisations could view first-hand what we do, but also so that we can assist these groups to design and implement our models, tailoring them for the unique challenges of their environments.

Much of the focus for 2023 must be on fundraising and starting to build our own team of in-house fundraisers. We hope that this can be done in tandem with the search for additional mentors. This latter activity is significantly challenging: we do not underestimate the hurdles in finding people of the desired seniority, experience and personal qualities.

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Key to these aims is to successfully break into longer term corporate sponsorship opportunities and pursue the acquisition of grant-based funding. We must continue to highlight the scale of the veteran PTSD problem in the UK, garnering support from all over the country in order to take the first steps in achieving our ambitious new strategy. We continue with our Chief Mentor being the only full-time member of the team – all others are unpaid volunteers, further adding to the challenge.

In summary, 2022 was a highly rewarding year: running five veteran programmes and increasing our income by over 100% from the previous period are encouraging metrics. We know that public support for our cause is strong, provided that the terrible story of its origins and outcomes is adequately told.

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Oct 2023

Accounts

Section A Receipts and payments Section A Receipts and payments Section A Receipts and payments Section A Receipts and payments Section A Receipts and payments
Unrestricted
funds		 Restricted
funds		 Endowment
funds		 Total funds Last year
to the nearest
£		 to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £ to the nearest £
A1 Receipts
39,032 - - 39,032 16,030
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
Sub total(Gross income for
AR)		 39,032 - - 39,032 16,030
A2 Asset and investment
sales, (see table).
- - - -
- - - - -
Sub total - - - - -
Total receipts 39,032 - - 39,032 16,030
A3 Payments
34,765 - - 34,765 15,988
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
**Sub total ** 34,765 - - 34,765 15,988
A4 Asset and investment
purchases, (see table)
- - - -
- - - -
**Sub total ** - - - - -
Totalpayments 34,765 - - 34,765 15,988
Net of receipts/(payments) 4,267 - - 4,267 42
A5 Transfers between funds - - - - -
A6 Cash funds lastyear end 9,233 - - 9,233 9,191
Cash funds thisyear end 13,500 - - 13,500 9,233

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Oct 2023

Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period

Categories Details Details Details Unrestricted
funds		 Restricted
funds		 Endowment
funds
to nearest £ to nearest £ to nearest £
B1 Cash funds RBS 13,500 - -
- - -
- - -
Total cash funds 13,500 - -
(agree balances w ith receipts and payments
account(s))		 OK OK
Unrestricted
funds		 Restricted
funds		 Endowment
funds
Details to nearest £ to nearest £ to nearest £
B2 Other monetary assets - - -
- - -
- - -
- - -
- - -
- - -
Details Fund to which
asset belongs		 Cost (optional) Current value
(optional)
B3 Investment assets - -
- -
- -
- -
- -
Details Fund to which
asset belongs		 Cost (optional) Current value
(optional)
B4 Assets retained for the
charity’s own use		 - -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
- -
Fund to which
liability relates
Details Amount due
(optional)		 When due
(optional)
B5 Liabilities -
-
-
-
-
Signed by one or two trustees on
behalf of all the trustees		 Signature Print Name Date of
approval
JONATHANJBAILEY 18thOct2023

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Oct 2023

Jon Bailey Chairman On behalf of the Trustees of The Mountain Way

October 2023

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Charity Name No (if any) The Mountain Way 1171751 Receipts and payments accounts

Period start date 1-Jan-22

Period end date 31-Dec-22

For the period from

To

CC16a

Section A Receipts and payments

Unrestricted Restricted Endowment funds funds funds

to the nearest £

to the nearest £ to the nearest £

Total funds Last year

to the nearest £ to the nearest £

A1 Receipts

A1 Receipts
39,032 - - 39,032 16,030
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
Sub total(Gross income for AR) 39,032
 - - 39,032 16,030
A2 Asset and investment sales,
(see table).
- - - -
- - - - -
Sub total - - - - -
**Total receipts ** 39,032 - - 39,032 16,030
A3 Payments
34,765 - - 34,765 15,988
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
- - - - -
**Sub total ** 34,765 - - 34,765 15,988
A4 Asset and investment
purchases, (see table)
- - - -
- - - -
**Sub total ** - - - - -
**Total payments ** 34,765 - - 34,765 15,988
**Net of receipts/(payments) ** 4,267 - - 4,267 42
A5 Transfers between funds - - - - -
A6 Cash funds last year end 9,233 - - 9,233 9,191
**Cash funds this year end ** 13,500 - - 13,500 9,233

Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period

Categories
B1 Cash funds
B2 Other monetary assets
B3 Investment assets
B5 Liabilities
B4 Assets retained for the
charity’s own use		 Details
RBS
Details
Details
Details
Details
Total cash funds
(agree balances with receipts and payments
account(s))		 to nearest £
13,500
-
-
13,500
OK
to nearest £
-
-
-
-
-
-
Unrestricted
funds
Unrestricted
funds
Fund to which
asset belongs
Fund to which
asset belongs
Fund to which
liability relates		 to nearest £
-
-
-
-
OK
to nearest £
-
-
-
-
-
-
Cost (optional)
-
-
-
-
-
Cost (optional)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Restricted
funds
Restricted
funds
Amount due
(optional)		 to nearest £
Endowment
funds
-
-
-
-
OK
to nearest £
Endowment
funds
-
-
-
-
-
-
Current value
(optional)
-
-
-
-
-
Current value
(optional)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
When due
(optional)
-
-
-
-
-

Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees Signature

Date of Print Name approval

CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examinerfs report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trustsa81 members of Charity Name The Mountain Way On accounts for the yoar ended 318t December 2022 Charity no Ilf any> 1171751 Set out on pages Irorrffjmberto include the page nunb8rs of athJit￿nal sfwtsl I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above charity (Ihe Trust.) for the year ended ". Responsibilities and basls of report As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the reqU1￿MentS of the Charitiès Act 2011 (Yhe Act"). I report in respec* of my examinatlon of the Trust's accounts carried out under s8Ction 145 of lh8 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 14515)(b) of the Act. Independent I have completed my examination. I confim that no material matters have examinerfs statement come to my attention in connection with the exarnination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material resFert: the accounting records were not kept in accordance with sedion 130 of the Charities Act,. or the accounts did not accord with the accounting records; or the ac￿Unts did not comply with the applicable ￿qUirements concerning th8 form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a Irue and fair, view which is not a matter considered as part of an inde￿ndent examination. I have no concems and have come across no other matters in conneclion with th8 examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Slgn•d: Dato: 24 October 2022 Name: Samuel Spurway Relevant profes$lonal quallfl¢ation(s) or body Ilf any): ACCA-2142095 Address: 15 New Road Ilminster Somerset TA19 9AF IER Oct 2022

Section B Disclosure Only complete ifthe examiner needs to highlight material matters of con￿rn (see CC32, Irbdependent examination of dmrity accounts.. directions and guidance for examiners). Give here brief detslls of any ftems that the examiner wishes to disclose. IER Oct 2022