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← Standing In The Gap

2025-09-30-accounts

STANDING ' FKGAP the Svpportin9 ckiiaren to manage tkeir emotionf 2024-25 Annual Report (Year 8) Managing jfAnxiety Managing nger in 4-11 year olds in 4-11 year olds Starting ipprimary School Preparing for Secondary School Managing in TLC Q Grief The Lifeboat Centre STANDING Frameworks Flourish, Charity no: 11174627 www.standinginthegap.uk

Introduction

Welcome to our 2024-2025 annual report. This year is our eighth as a charity and we have continued to develop and support children and families. In November 2024 we reached a milestone with over 1000 parents and children having attended our Managing Anxiety workshop. We have now directly supported 3972 parents and children since we started as a charity.

We have expanded our amazing team of trustees, advisors and volunteers who support us and without who we couldn’t provide the support that we do. Thank you to all those who have supported us in whatever way this year. We do appreciate you.

Objectives and Activities

Standing in the Gap is an early intervention mental health charity who help preschool and primary aged children manage BIG emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger and grief.

Our mission is to support children and families by providing tools to build emotional wellbeing and good child mental health

Our vision is for all children to be emotionally healthy and flourish.

Our values are integral to how we work: We support and promote emotional wellbeing and good child mental health in a safe and professional environment through empowering partnerships and by acting with kindness and understanding.

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The objects of Standing in the Gap are to assist in the identification, early intervention, treatment and support of children experiencing mental health difficulties:

To promote and protect the mental health of children up to the age of 11 through the provision of psychotherapeutic counselling services.

To advance the education of parents, teachers, school governors and school support staff in all areas relating to mental health issues experienced by children up to the age of 11, by the provision of professional training, support services and information.

Achievements and Performance

As a charity:

Our team:

Our trustees are drawn from a wide range of professional backgrounds and are all passionate to see children’s emotional wellbeing and mental health improve. We did see some change during the year as Jonathan Game, Marelize Bott and Dean Hughes joined the trustee board and Micheal Rafferty stepped down as a trustee at the end of September 2025 .

Jonathan Game brings 20+ years of working with charities and designing and managing ever increasingly sized projects. With an MBA and a passion for growing charities through strategy, frameworks and clear processes, Jonathan is also passionate about supporting and enabling families to raise emotionally healthy children.

Marelize Bott is an experienced accountant, business woman and entrepreneur. Marelize has provided invaluable assistance to hundreds of business owners handling their

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bookkeeping, accounting and taxation requirements. Marelize is keen to use her expertise to help Standing in the Gap grow and meet its full potential support families.

Dean Hughes brings his professional skills of risk management, project management, fundraising and innovation frameworks. He can code and has worked in Sales and Consultancy. Dean describes himself as an ‘out of the box’ thinker with lots of ideas and a passion to help others. Dean has a wide network of contacts and has worked with companies growing them from the small to much larger organisations and is keen to help Standing in the Gap grow.

This year Rebekah Arnaboldi has joined us as our Animation Co-ordinator and Katie DelbrookeJones as our Recycling Co-ordinator.

Our Prayer Partners:

As a charity built on a Christian ethos we know the power of prayer. Our prayer partners receive quarterly updates and purposely pray for our work. Each year we have an annual prayer and praise celebration as we launch the Children’s mental health week. We work with children and families of all faiths and none.

In 2024-25 we partnered with the following churches, along with many other Christians who pray for our work.

Our Community Partners:

We continue to have great ties with schools and children’s centres and worked in partnership with the following:

We have given talks about what we offer and built good partnerships with:

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The impact of our Programmes:

By the end of September 2025, we have directly supported 3972 parents and children through a range of different projects since we started as a charity in 2017.

Managing Anxiety Workshops

This year we hit a milestone with over 1000 parents and children attending this workshop:

When asked how they rated the workshop: 74% of parents rated it as excellent, 26% of parents rated it as good.

When we asked parents about the Managing Anxiety workshop they told us:

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should or shouldn’t do.
----- End of picture text -----

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The online Managing Anxiety workshop is advertised via flyers, newsletters, information to local schools, on social media and through Eventbrite. We have a lot of local families attend who hear about us through schools, GPs and School health advisors. We also had families attend from Yorkshire, Kent, Belfast, Wales and the USA.

Managing Anger workshop:

This is our newest workshop, which started in May 2023. It is rapidly becoming our most popular workshop. Flyers, information to local schools and GPs, on social media and via Eventbrite advertise this workshop to families.

When asked how they would rate the workshop: 57% of parents said Excellent, 39% said Good. No one felt it wasn’t helpful.

When asked why they would recommend it parents told us:

informative, with good resources - easy to follow and for the parent and child to engage with together - we Ranger@ Managing can continue build from this level at home in 4-11 year olds ~ Clear and easy to understand and feels doable. It makes you think more, and you're not the only one feeling like it. I liked that it talked to adults and children. A lot of reading / material is aimed at parents only

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Educational Transitions project

We know that children undertake key transitions as a rite of passage, but if these do not go well it can significantly impact their mental health and educational attainment. To help positive transitions we run a series of talks to support children and families. This year we had our biggest impact to date with an amazing total of

In our Starting Primary School talks:

This year we worked with Harriers Banbury Academy, Dashwood Banbury Academy, William Morris Primary School and The Sunshine Centre. Making this our most successful year to date.

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When asked why they would recommend parents told us:

Other feedback included:

I can’t believe that free NHS eye tests haven’t been mentioned It was useful to know the expected amount of sleep for this age group before- a really good point.

In our Preparing for Secondary School talks:

This was our biggest uptake on these talks to date. We expanded and worked with four secondary schools; The Warriner, North Oxfordshire Academy, Wykham Park and Future Academy and Chenderit school. We met with each of the transition leads and ensured that the two talks offered to each secondary school were bespoke to them. All families were invited to the talks before they had their transition days at the new secondary schools.

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When asked why they would recommend it, parents told us:

I learned a lot from it and it was helpful to reassure my anxious child

Good to know what will happen on the transition days and how to prepare my child

Very informative and excellently delivered. Made us chat through topics we’ve not yet thought about! Thanks so much!

It was very good at explaining some emotions surrounding the transition and how we can positively address them. It was reassuring and broke down the anxiety around this time

Year 6 Students after the talk, told us:

As one of our most established partners we worked with The Warriner school and Michael Rafferty, one of our trustees, delivered tutor group quizzes where parents and students could come together have fun at a quiz and also meet others who were joining The Warriner.

These raised £220 and connected a lot of families in this significant transition.

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The Lifeboat Centre, our TLC programme

The Lifeboat Centre (TLC) is our programme of additional support for children and families. TLC uses the same principle as a lifeboat. We come out and support you when you are struggling and there is a problem. We work with you to get back to firm ground by providing one-to-one bespoke support for children and parents. In the same way as a lifeboat comes out and changes the course of a situation, that’s what we want to do and show how early intervention is so effective in improving long-term outcomes for children.

Each child and parent work together to complete an Outcome Star called ‘My Star’ at the beginning and end of the TLC support programme. The star shows the strengths and also what areas need working on. The My Star is an impact measurement, and when it is repeated at the end of the support, it demonstrates the impact or improvement brought about by the TLC programme.

The outcomes, each point of the star, are measured on a 5 stage Journey of Change from 1, big concerns, through to 5, things are good. Ideally we would like all children to have a reading of 5 in all areas across the star. The points of the star are the eight areas of a child’s life, four of which focus on how well other people look after them: physical health, where you live, being safe and relationships. The remaining four look at how the child is managing: feelings & behaviour, friends, confidence & self esteem and education & learning.

Below are two My Stars from families we have completed work with this year. The stars are completed collaboratively with the children and parents and the children do enjoy seeing the progress they have made, having this as a picture helps reinforce the impact the work they have done.

As it can be seen each of the My Star readings are unique to the child, in the same way that each of the families we work with is unique. Comparing before and after shows that all the children have made progress and the TLC programme does have an impact on their emotional wellbeing and child mental health.

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At the end of TLC each child also receives a ‘well done’ certificate highlighting the work we have completed with them and the progress they have made.

Following our TLC programme, we ask parents to complete an evaluation, allowing us to continue to keep learning and adapting our programmes. All parents rated the support as 5/5 and told us:

The TLC support was invaluable and totally lifechanging! It makes you, as a parent, realise what little things you can do to help your child, which make such a big difference.

It has made a 90% shift to our family life: from very difficult to enjoyable. We want our son’s emotional and mental health to be good, but we absolutely needed to change his behaviour too. Standing in the Gap has enabled us to do both those things. He is so much happier going to school now and his behaviour at home has improved. massively as a result.

It's almost impossible to sum up how incredibly important Standing in the Gap has been for our family, with all other doors being closed to us because of my daughter's young age. The support has been invaluable and has helped our family immensely. It is heartbreaking how little support there is for young children who experience mental health difficulties and without the service Standing in the Gap offers my daughter would have fallen through all of the gaps and been left to suffer unaided. The TLC programme taught us incredible skills and has really kick started my daughter's chances at recovering from the traumatic events she has experienced. I will never have the words to describe how truly invaluable the support of Standing in the Gap has been for our family!

TLC was a supportive and safe place where we, both parents and children, were able to learn to understand and manage our emotions. It gave us practical strategies to handle difficult feelings and helped me support my child in a positive way. TLC gave us the same language to discuss our issues and have someone who could listen.

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Frameworks 2 Flourish

Having developed our TLC programme to support families and delivered this with families for the past 2 years, we have been able to review what is working and what areas need further development.

The TLC program has a fantastic impact on families who are ready for the intervention and helps to develop lifelong skills within both parents and children. Our My Star has been able to show both impact and change with the families we have supported. TLC also aids communication and boundaries. However, it requires a ‘buy-in’ from families. They need to attend the sessions, complete the homework, and then email over the information before the next session. It also needs to be at the right time for families.

What our data is showing us is that some of our more complex families aren’t potentially ready yet for that level of support, and the other complexities in life are taking up their time and energy. To help families become ready or move further along the road to benefit from support such as TLC, we have developed our Frameworks 2 Flourish programme.

Frameworks 2 Flourish is a parent self-completed online assessment, followed by a consultation and advice as to which area to focus on first. Through discussion, we highlight what areas need adjustments and how to bring in adequate frameworks to allow the parent to flourish. We know that how parents cope has a significant impact on their ability to parent and promote their children's mental health.

Following each Frameworks 2 Flourish consultation, advice and a bespoke plan is given including homework for the parents. A review is planned in for 2 weeks. This enables a whole household approach to be taken to supporting children’s mental health. (report: https://www.local.gov.uk/publications/whole-household-approach-young-peoplesmental-health-must-know-guide-local-councillors )

This gives us multiple bespoke pathways to support families. To determine which pathway is best, any family requiring assistance will be sent and asked to complete the Initial Information Form. Following completion, this is screened by a competent practitioner who allocates the family to the relevant pathway for support.

Prayer & Praise Celebration

Each year we kick off Children’s Mental Health week with our Prayer and Praise Celebration. This year it was at on Sunday 2[nd] Feb at The Chapel in Bloxham and we showed our latest impact film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ2T7UFmc9g&t=1s ~~a~~

Sam shared at Banbury Community Church that morning and 12 people (including children) who had no previously attended our Prayer and Praise celebration came along to support.

We are working on our church partnership proposals and aim to increase the number of churches we partner with in future years.

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Children’s Mental Health Week: (3[rd] -9[th] Feb 2025)

Each year, we prepare material to share with families during Children’s Mental Health Week. This year, we created exciting content to help children build their self esteem. We know that low self esteem is linked with children’s mental health problems so we wanted to give parents and carers tools to raise their children's mental health.

This material aimed to encourage children that they are each unique. precious and special. That each of us has three different aspects that when combined make us unique. These are: Physical traits, our likes and dislikes and our personal qualities or characteristics.

For children in preschool and key stage one they watched the ‘There's only one ME’ film and focused their discussion on completing a worksheet.

For children in key stage two they watched the ‘I am Unique’ film, which builds on the same principles as the other film, but just in more depth.

All the material was readily accessible via our website: mental-health-week-2025

Sam created the films this year and went for a more interactive option and invited 7 of the children we have worked with to send us voice notes and share their personal characteristics. Only two responded, but it's been great to have their help. One of the girls ‘B’ was very nervous when we started working with her, since engaging with TLC she's now the school's mental health ambassador and doing great. We also had several other children who agreed to provided us with voice overs. All children who have participated will be sent a Thank you/ Well done certificate thanking them for their help which they can have on their wall.

Vikki Evans, our media advisor, wrote us a press release and circulated it to local media. Sam was contacted by the BBC who sent a reporter to watch the Dashwood Academy assembly and interviewed their mental health champions. Sam appeared live on the BBC Oxford breakfast radio show during the week, telling everyone what support we offer. Sam was also interviewed and appeared on Heart radio.

This year we worked with:

In Summary it was an excellent week, and we raised a lot of interest, a lot of children watched the films, and we raised a total of £504.96

We released the two children’s films: ‘I am Unique’ and ‘There's Only One ME’, along with the parent film on raising Children’s self esteem, to our YouTube channel and had over 50,000 views on YouTube, which was exciting. We increased our YouTube subscribers to 255 on our channel.

Standing in the Gap 2024-25 Annual Report www.standinginthegap.uk

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Events

This year we were involved in two Christmas tree festivals: Bloxham Christmas Tree festival and The Hill. Debra Elwyn, trustee, did a fabulous job with the Boys Brigade and together they made elf baubles, which were lovely and used to decorate our trees.

The Bloxham Christmas tree festival ran from 6-8[th] Dec 2025:

The Hill Christmas Tree Festival ran across the end of December, and our tree was part of their enchanted forest, advertising to the local community the support we offer.

Our elves adorned the tree and we were able to leave our banner up for the whole event.

Reggies Run:

One of our families, Reggie and his mum Niki, who went through our TLC programme decided to do a fundraising event to show their appreciation. Reggie did a sponsored run for us on Sunday 6[th] July, in really terrible rain and raised £390, which was amazing. We made him a certificate to say thank you which he could take to school and show everyone

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New initiatives

Over the years our ‘cuddle stones’ have been very popular as a transitional objects to help support children with Anxiety. These use the psychological concept called ‘Holding in Mind’ where the big person puts lots of love and hugs into the heart and then gives it to the little person when they are not together. That way if the little person gets worried and concerned they can take out and hold the heart and know that they are loved and thought about. Initially we got these from Kenya but over the year this logistically got too complicated. After much research we replaced them with our new ‘Love in the Gap hearts’ which can be used whenever we are away from a loved one and are now available from our online shop https://www.standinginthegap.uk/shop

We adjusted the name to ‘Love in the Gap hearts’ so they can be used for anyone with whom you can't be present. One family contacted us to tell us they had used them with an elderly relative who had been struggling in the hospital and had received much comfort through the heart, knowing it had been given with lots of love.

Finance and Grants

We have diversified our income streams to help us remain stable and grow: We received grants from the following organisations to support our work.

We also received a big grant from Well Together which was used to support TLC, and the online workshops.

We received financial support from St Francis church as their community partner and we received a contribution from schools towards the Managing Educational transitions programme. Standing in the Gap 2024-25 Annual Report www.standinginthegap.uk 15

While our support from grants was down this year on previous years, due to increasing number of charities applying for funding. Our regular donors was up to an all time high of £5190.

We saw our sales from online shop drop to £727 potentially in response to the economic uncertainty as our workshop ticket sales and attendance were higher than previous years at £398.

Our total income this year was £22,630, this is a drop from the previous year, as the economic climate has made it harder to obtain grant funding, with more charities battling for the same amounts. We made the decision to use a freelance bid writer to assist us in the process and several of the trustees went on fundraising training and created our case for support to assist with the applications. We are waiting to hear how these progressed. The accounts are available for review through the Charities Commission.

We continue to employ our Clinical Director, Sam Game, 2 days a week and have set up the appropriate mechanisms and policies to support this.

Governance and Management Structure,

Standing in the Gap is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation

Trustees are selected in accordance with the trustee policy and procedure-

Trustee Name
Office
Dates acted if not for full year		 Trustee Name
Office
Dates acted if not for full year		 Trustee Name
Office
Dates acted if not for full year
Michael Rafferty
Finance trustee
Full year stepped down Sept 2025
Georgie Knight
Trustee
Full year
Melanie Rogers
Safeguarding
trustee
Full Year
Debra Elwyn
Trustee
Full year
Michelle Jemade
Trustee
Full Year
Jonathan Game
Trustee
Joined in Nov 2024
Marelize Bott
Trustee
Joined in April 2025
Dean Hughes
Trustee
Joined in June 2025
Corporate trustee
N/A
Sam Game Clinical Director Full year

No funds are held by custodian trustees for Standing in the Gap.

There are no exemptions for disclosure .

Declarations

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The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above Signed on behalf of the charity trustees:

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Financial Activities

Standing in the Gap

For the year ended 30 September 2025 (Year 8)

*Account* 2025 2024
Income
Donations and Legacies
Donations through Justgiving 268 97 822 11
Easyfundraising 17 59 44 89
One off donors-not known to us 0 00 104 05
One off donors-Known to us 2 086 00 925 51
One of donation Pay it forward 0 00 13 55
Recycle4charity 166 05 136 10
Regular donor NO gift aid 90 00 1 110 00
Regular donors 5 099 64 3 975 28
Workshop ticket donations 0 00 27 00
Total Donations and Legacies 7 728 25 7 158 49
Charitable Activities
Fundraising event-organised by us 401 81 534 81
Fundraising event organised by others 104 90 0 00
Gift Aid Claim 1 705 44 1 324 62
Grants-restricted 4 450 00 12 282 89
Grants-unrestricted 5 000 00 3 000 00
Managing Educational Transitions school contributions 950 00 1 595 00
Mental Health week school activity donations 487 15 128 00
Total Charitable Activities 13 099 30 18 865 32
Other Trading
Sales in person-events 285 91 208 73
Sales in person-known to us 28 50 5 90
Sales paid online Tshirt/ hoodies 10 00 50 00
Sales via online shop 727 12 1 379 53
Serices to other organisations-private workshops 200 00 600 00
Services to other organisations-schools workshops 120 00 0 00
Services to other organisations-TLC paid package 0 00 750 00
Workshop tickets-Anger 205 00 93 87
Workshop tickets-Anxiety 122 44 122 23
Workshop tickets-Preparing for Secondary School 46 00 30 00
Workshop tickets-Starting Primary School 25 00 75 00
Total Other Trading 1 769 97 3 315 26
Investments
Interest Income 32 71 28 16
Total Investments 32 71 28 16
Total Income 22 630 23 29 367 23
Expenditure
Employee Cost
Anger Project Staff payment 0 00 1 365 00
Anxiety project staff payment 0 00 1 960 00
Contractor payment 0 00 5 430 00
Managing Educational transitions project staff cost 0 00 490 00
Pensions Costs 667 92 500 96
Restricted grant staff payment TLC Pilot 0 00 1 852 80
Salaries 22 939 56 5 618 24
Total Employee Cost 23 607 48 17 217 00
Sales Costs
Direct materials for packs 322 45 570 61
Direct materials T shirts/ hoodies 9 50 133 97
direct materials-ink to print packs 54 30 270 03
Direct materials- love in the Gap hearts 0 00 7 99
Postage of sales 140 20 158 64
Total Cost of Sales 526 45 1 141 24
Administrative Costs
Admin-insurances 475 48 473 76
Admin-Eventbrite subscription 66 00 18 00
Admin-fees and subscriptions ICO 40 00 40 00
Admin-Fliers, posters and bookmarks 77 76 156 54
Admin-general postage 31 20 2 74
Admin-Star online registration 125 00 125 00
Admin-Stationary 10 87 32 48
Advertising & Marketing 78 00 0 00
Bank Charges CAF Bank 40 00 60 00
Fundraising events costs 49 75 459 74
Fundraising-Regulator fee 60 00 50 00
Governance 68 26 12 95
Governance Room rent 50 00 10 00
Governance-leaving gift for trustees 0 00 40 00
HMRC payments 0 00 1 313 85
IT Subscription 103 70 321 11
IT-hardward costs inc mobile 24 48 824 13
IT-web hosting and domain names 283 20 283 20
Leaflet production (cost) 119 00 0 00
Liberty Account charges 0 00 186 48
Mobile-sim cost 60 00 93 16
Royalty Payments 136 20 49 90
Safeguarding DBS Fee 37 50 50 04
Safeguarding registration fee 159 00 150 00
Training-Staff 55 47 0 00
Travel expenses 3 00 0 00
Xero accounting charges 119 04 1 92
Total Administrative Costs 2 272 91 4 755 00
Total Expenditure 26 406 84 23 113 24
Surplus on Financial Activities (3 776 61) 6 253 99

Accounts reviewed and verified by trustees at AGM on 22nd November 2025

Marelize Bott 22/11/2025

Signed by _____on ________

Signature: _____

Finance Trustee