## Battle Scars
Charity number 1177020
## Annual Report and Financial Statements
for the year ended 31 March 2021
## Battle Scars
## Annual Report and Financial Statements
## for the year ended 31 March 2021
|**Contents**|**Page**|
|---|---|
|Trustees' report|2 to 7|
|Receipts and payments account|8|
|Statement of assets and liabilities|9|
|Notes to the accounts|10 to 12|
## **Prepared by West Yorkshire Community Accounting Service**
1
## Battle Scars
## Trustees' report for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **Reference and administrative details of the charity, its trustees and advisors**
The trustees during the financial year and up to and including the date the report was approved were: **Name Position Dates** Jean Birch Chair Debbie Riley Vice-Chair Glenn Groves Treasurer Karen Sternbach Secretary Sarah Batten Laura Cox Co-opted July 2020
## **Charity number**
The charity was registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales, number 1177020, on 6 February 2018.
**Principal address Bankers** 18 Alder Hill Avenue NatWest Bank plc Leeds 8 Park Row LS6 4JQ Leeds LS1 5HD
## **Accountants**
## **West Yorkshire Community Accounting Service**
Stringer House 34 Lupton Street Leeds LS10 2QW
## **Structure, governance and management**
The charity is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) formed on 6 February 2018 and governed by a constitution as amended on 27 October 2020.
## **Method of recruitment and appointment of trustees**
The trustees of the charity are appointed by the members at the AGM.
## **Objectives and activities**
## **The charity's objects**
To relieve the needs of persons affected by self-harm in particular but not exclusively by: Holding survivor led support groups for persons affected by self-harm and anybody interested in understanding self-harm;
Advance the education of the general public in all areas relating to self-harm; Provide training and practical advice to:
Professionals, staff and volunteers of other organisations (public, voluntary and private sector) who deal with persons who self-harm;
Parents of school age children, young people and adults who self-harm; Anyone wishing to attend the training or trying to understand self-harm; and
In any such ways as the trustees see fit in furtherance of said objects.
2
## Battle Scars
## Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **Objectives and activities continued**
## **The charity's main activities**
Adult peer support groups at various locations and times to increase self-awareness and a sense of belonging and decrease isolation. A system of no referral or booking is in operation so that anybody over 18 can attend whenever they’re able to. We do not have gender-specific services, they are all inclusive. We provide a safe environment to allow everybody present to be themselves, to work towards understanding and managing their behaviour and to help them re-adjust to living in a mixed society. In this way we also make our services available to those not fitting in gender stereotypes.
On-line peer support for people 13 or over for quick access to support encouraging people to develop strategies and learn to manage their self-harming behaviour.
Training for professionals from a survivor’s perspective providing them with hard to get insights so they can support others more effectively.
Workshops for under 18’s to educate, provide them with better self-awareness and providing them with options to better manage life.
Discussion groups for carers/ friends to increase understanding and acceptance and decrease guilt.
On-line resources and printed materials to make disclosing self-harm easier, tools to understand the behaviour and information to break down the stigma.
Volunteer development programme to increase the volunteers’ self-worth and confidence, to teach them skills and provide them with different experiences.
Running stalls/information sessions to increase awareness about self-harm and our services.
We encourage our volunteers and service users to actively take part in steering the direction the organisation is taking by expressing their ideas and needs, by suggesting improvements, designing printed material and requesting the sort of resources and information they’d like to see available to them, to their families/friends and to professionals. Feeling involved and listened to makes a big difference to them. We value their input and take all their suggestions into consideration. Some we reject if they are either incompatible with our objectives or unattainable (due to funding or structure) and provide explanations for this, some are acted upon quickly while others are included in future plans. The volunteers are making running our services possible and receive compulsory as well as additional optional training, regular supervision and expenses.
## **Public benefit statement**
In setting our objectives and planning our activities our trustees have given serious consideration to the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit and in particular the relief of those in need, by reason of youth, age, ill-health, disability, financial hardship or other disadvantage, the advancement of education and the advancement of citizenship or community development.
3
## Battle Scars
## Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **Achievements and performance**
## **Adult services**
From running 6 drop-in, no-booking-required, face-to-face peer support groups every 4 weeks in the Leeds and Wakefield areas we closed this financial year with 6 fortnightly UK virtual groups which are shorter in length to avoid Zoom-fatigue but offer more choice to our service users.
We gingerly started in May by offering a virtual group to existing service users, then opened them up to anybody based in Leeds and Wakefield. One “standard” group soon became 3: one on Tuesday morning, one on Friday afternoon and one on Monday evening.
In order to control attendance and manage the different challenges virtual groups offered, a new online booking system was set up. Volunteers on hold willing to give virtual groups a go were trained and existing face-to-face facilitators were re-trained, to create more virtual group facilitator teams of two. All virtual group facilitators attended the virtual version of our safeguarding awareness workshop specifically designed to address safeguarding in a virtual environment.
We started advertising the groups through our usual social media channels, our website and in our Facebook peer support group and started getting a lot of enquiries whether the groups were open to people outside Leeds and Wakefield. It soon became evident that there was a lot of demand so we made the groups available to any adult in the UK.
Thanks to input from our Facebook group members, it became apparent that a lot of people need support even when they manage their urges quite successfully and often wish to have that support already in place in case it’s required. In order to support those whose urges are more under control or are too worried the standard groups might be triggering, in October we set up the Inbetweeners group offering support with a lighter touch. The option to join both the standard and the Inbetweeners group is available to all and it’s up to them to gauge which group would suit them most at that specific time. We also wanted to ensure that there was always a smooth and easy transition between the standard and Inbetweeners group so needs could always be met without embarrassment.
By December the standard groups were filling up within an hour of opening bookings. One group was fully booked within 21 minutes. The decision to increase the number of groups was taken a few minutes later! 2 existing and 4 new volunteers came forward to help out, went through the revised and expanded group facilitator training as well as the new virtual safeguarding workshop especially designed to address safeguarding in a virtual environment.
Two more daytime groups were launched in February with firm plans to add an extra evening group. More groups will be set up depending on volunteer availability and demand with the aim of having groups running on even more days (including weekends) and at a variety of times. Also our facilitators decided to run the groups even if they drop on holidays to avoid gaps in support.
## **Young people and families**
Unfortunately we had to suspend all services working directly with young people in schools and colleges. Even though some school staff attended our virtual training for professionals all other contact with schools ceased but we have maintained contact with other organisations supporting young people both in Leeds and nationally with the help of the Young Lives Leeds project amongst other networking initiatives.
Once again, the virtual world allowed us to create a service we had been wanting to set up for quite some time: a regular parents/family support group, a group that is open to any adult family members of someone who selfharms. The person who self-harms can be under or over 18. This is the most demanding of all our groups as we’re dealing with family members who are desperate for peer support, guidance, advice and understanding, who are feeling extremely isolated and unable to broach this subject with their friends and families due to the stigma surrounding self-harm. Numbers for this group are usually low which works quite well as it allows us to give each member the time and support they need. We have a growing number of regulars who are now able to extend their support to newer members.
4
## Battle Scars
## Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **Achievements and performance continued**
Some numbers about our virtual groups:
During the period 12/05/20-31/03/21 (launch of virtual groups until end of financial year, approximately 10.5 months) we ran a total of 103 virtual groups which were attended 985 times by 121 individuals.
Approximately 47% of attendees were from Leeds postcodes with an overall 61% of attendance from Yorkshire. The Do Something Different group (see Work With Partners) was only available to Leeds residents.
## **Private Facebook group**
This group is a vital service providing around the clock support to 3,102 members which represents a nearly 40% increase from last year. The best thing about the group is the ethos of acceptance and compassion along with the obvious desire by members to offer help.
The admin/moderator team are always vigilant but also always compassionate and try to deal with any rule breaking with the upmost sensitivity.
## **Training for professionals**
Like most organisations we decided to turn our training virtual. We tested the Q&A sessions on self-harm and eating disorders first and then, due to demand, we turned our full 1-day workshop on self-harm into a virtual session too.
There were a multitude of tech issues we all had to deal with but with some flexibility and ingenuity, the sessions were delivered successfully.
Over the past year we trained 180 professionals, about half the number we normally train in a year, but as our reputation grows and information about us is reaching organisations out of the Yorkshire area, we are getting more interest from much further afield. This year we had the pleasure of training a number of staff and volunteers for Forward Leeds, Leeds Children’s Services (residential care), Leeds Recovery College and DPJ Foundation (Wales).
## **Website and social media**
As always, we keep our website updated and relevant. It is our “one-stop-shop” when it comes to information about Battle Scars and our services. Last year we had over 10,000 unique visitors.
An amazing team of volunteers is managing our social media on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn spreading the word.
## **Other projects/activities**
After longer than a year in the making and the involvement of over 50 Battle Scars service users and volunteers, the 12-step Self-harm Addiction Programme workbook became available in December. Thanks to the Tudor Trust, the workbook is free to order but there is a small admin charge of £1 as well as postage when requesting the hard copy.
Many of our service users’ families do not know that they self-harm, something we take into consideration when posting the workbook making sure there is no indication it’s coming from a self-harm support organisation.
84 copies have so far been ordered by people as far as the USA, Canada and Australia.
Before long it became apparent that professionals wanted to check this workbook out or needed a copy themselves in order to work with the people they were supporting. By January we had made a special PDF version available to them and 10 copies have been ordered by various mental health professionals, professionals working in charities as well as primary care.
Early feedback has been very positive with people recognising but overcoming the challenges and making good, steady progress. A system is being set up to obtain feedback from everybody who has got a copy at the 6 and 12-month points to see how they are progressing and what improvements will need to be made when we carry out a full review of the workbook at the end of 2022.
5
## Battle Scars
## Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **Achievements and performance continued**
We also turned our 2-hour self-harm workshop virtual for delivery via the Leeds and Wakefield Recover Colleges. We managed to keep it fully interactive and engaging.
## **Work with partners**
Following the Crisis Summit in January 2020, the Mental Health Collaborative project ground to a halt. Towards spring this year, it started picking up momentum again. We have been working closely with Leeds Involving People to present case studies which will become the basis for the work the Collaborative will focus on during the next few months as we’re trying to develop robust, compassionate support throughout someone’s crisis journey (not just focusing on the crisis point).
The researchers for the project FReSHSTART run by the University of Leeds set up a more regular Covid-19 support group for the organisations involved in the project. It has been an incredibly useful initiative that has helped us forge links with other self-harm organisations in the country such as Self Injury Support UK and Harmless as well as other mental health organisations supporting adults, young people or people from ethnic minority communities.
We linked up with Mentally Healthy Leeds, a Touchstone project, to run the Do Something Different virtual group every 4 weeks. This is an activity and discussion mix group where we’ve done craft, magic tricks, music that has significant meaning for us, massage and even a “don’t-show-and-tell” session linking up to what we find grounding, using “masking” to avoid showing how we’re feeling, items that give us comfort etc. Considering this group was meant for face-to-face delivery, we’ve had to be very imaginative but it has been quite successful.
As always, we work closely with our service users and volunteers to develop and improve services and we are now more confident to partner with other organisations with funding bids.
## **Plans for the future 2021-22**
Funding has already been secured to employ a virtual groups coordinator as well as an administrator, to look more closely into developing services for young people, to set up a face-to-face group for 16-25 year-olds and to set up a phone follow up service (Leeds only) for people who required emergency treatment for self-harm injuries at A&E.
Face-to-face services, such as adult groups, services in schools and training for professionals, in Leeds and Wakefield will re-start when it’s safe and practical to do so (i.e. when we have access to the venues we were using and following thorough risk assessments) while all virtual services will remain operational. We’re hoping to expand on both face-to-face and virtual services over the next year both locally and nationally.
6
## Battle Scars
## Trustees' report (continued) for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **Financial review**
The net payments for the year were £13,797, including net receipts of £2,582 on unrestricted funds and net payments of £16,379 on restricted funds.
## **Reserves policy**
Charity reserves are maintained for the following purposes:
For an unforeseen emergency or other unexpected events or opportunities. This will involve thinking of events that may occur and how likely they will happen.
To cover unforeseen operational or core costs.
To cover gaps in income if a grant is not renewed or is unexpectedly taken away.
To cover short-term deficits in our cash flow before a grant is received.
The trustees have determined that reserves of approximately £10,000 should be maintained for the purposes set out above.
The charity's free reserves, excluding fixed assets, at the year end were £10,260.
## **Covid-19 and going concern**
Whilst the activities of the charity have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic, the trustees have considered the forecast income and expenditure and are satisfied that there are no material uncertainties so significant as to cast doubt of the ability to continue as a going concern.
Signed on behalf of the board of trustees on 15/8/2021
Sarah Batten (Trustee)
7
## Battle Scars
## Receipts and payments account for the year ended 31 March 2021
|Notes
2021
Unrestricted
funds
£
**Receipts**
Grants and donations
(2)
1,442
Fees and charges
2,593
Memberships
170
Other income
325
**Total receipts**
4,530
**Payments**
Salaries NICs and pensions
(3)
-
Payroll charges
6
Travel and subsistence
35
Food and refreshments
-
Training and Information
263
Membership costs
-
Crisis cards
-
Leaflets
-
Website and email
206
Consumables
490
Equipment
103
Insurance
14
Advertising
106
Phone
-
Printing and postage
234
Venue hire
-
Other payments
40
Consultancy
-
Accountancy and Independent examination
260
Addiction Programme
191
**Total payments**
1,948
2,582
**Fund balances brought forward**
7,678
**Fund balances carried forward**
(4)
10,260
**Net receipts / (payments)**|2021
Restricted
funds
£
19,250
-
-
-
19,250
29,839
162
-
-
108
-
420
-
536
-
2,527
309
146
63
1,519
-
-
-
-
-
35,629
(16,379)
35,599
19,220|2021
Total
funds
£
20,692
2,593
170
325
23,780
29,839
168
35
-
371
-
420
-
742
490
2,630
323
252
63
1,753
-
40
-
260
191
37,577
(13,797)
43,277
29,480|2020
Total
funds
£
69,363
6,307
58
-
75,728
28,853
168
2,611
404
1,295
20
171
368
283
153
965
309
205
62
153
445
83
3,500
240
-
40,288
35,440
7,837
43,277|
|---|---|---|---|
8
## Battle Scars
## Statement of assets and liabilities
|as at 31 March 2021
2021
Unrestricted
£
**Cash funds**
Cash at bank
10,201
Cash in hand
59
**Total cash funds**
10,260
**Other monetary assets**
Debtors
Prepaid insurance
**Assets retained for the charity's own use**
Laptop computer
**Liabilities**
Accountancy|2021
Restricted
£
19,220
-
19,220|2021
Total
£
29,421
59
29,480
£
174
51
225
£
650
650
£
240
240|2020
Total
£
43,218
59
43,277|
|---|---|---|---|
## **Approval of the accounts**
The financial statements were approved by the board of trustees on 15/8/2021
Sarah Batten (Trustee)
9
## Battle Scars
## Notes to the accounts
## for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **1 Accounting policies**
## **Basis of accounting**
The trustees have taken advantage of section 133 of the Charities Act 2011 and have prepared the accounts on a receipts and payments basis.
There has been no change to the accounting policies since last year.
No changes have been made to the accounts for previous years.
## **Taxation**
As a charity the organisation benefits from rates relief and is generally exempt from income tax and capital gains tax but not from VAT. Irrecoverable VAT is included in the cost of those items to which it relates.
## **Fund accounting**
Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the trustees in furtherance of the general objectives of the charity.
Restricted funds are subjected to restrictions on their expenditure imposed by the donor or through the terms of an appeal.
Further explanation of the nature and purpose of each fund is included in the notes to the accounts.
10
## Battle Scars
## Notes to the accounts continued
## for the year ended 31 March 2021
|**2 Grants and donations**
Awards For All
The Brelms Trust
The Charles & Elsie Sykes Trust
The Tudor Trust
Trelix Charitable Trust
The Wharfedale Foundation
General donations
**3 Staff costs and numbers**
Gross salaries
Pensions|2021
Unrestricted
funds
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
1,442
1,442|2021
Restricted
funds
£
10,000
3,250
2,500
3,500
-
-
-
19,250|2021
Total
funds
£
10,000
3,250
2,500
3,500
-
-
1,442
20,692
2021
£
28,970
869
29,839|2020
Total
funds
£
-
2,940
-
63,500
1,000
500
1,423
69,363
2020
£
28,013
840
28,853|
|---|---|---|---|---|
The average number employees during the year was 1, being an average of 1 full time equivalent (2020: 1, 1 FTE).
|**Defined contribution pension scheme**
Costs of the scheme to the charity for the year
**4 Restricted funds**
Balance b/f
£
National Lottery
108
Tudor Trust Salaries
32,499
Brelms Trust
2,492
Wharfedale Foundation
500
Tudor Trust Covid
-
Tudor Wellbeing
-
Awards For All
-
Sykes Trust
-
35,599|Incoming
£
-
-
3,250
-
1,500
2,000
10,000
2,500
19,250|Outgoing
£
108
30,001
3,170
500
1,500
-
350
-
35,629|2021
£
869
Transfers
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-|2020
£
840
Balance c/f
£
-
2,498
2,572
-
-
2,000
9,650
2,500
19,220|
|---|---|---|---|---|
## **Fund name**
## **Purpose of restriction**
National Lottery Tudor Trust Salaries Brelms Trust Wharfedale Foundation Tudor Trust Covid Tudor Wellbeing Awards For All Sykes Trust
Towards the volunteer development programme. Towards the CEO's salary cost. Towards the charity's core costs. Towards the crisis cards project costs. Towards the cost of salaries. Towards the cost of wellbeing.
Towards the cost of Virtual Groups Coordinator & Administrator salary. Towards the cost of the Young People's Services Developer salary.
11
## Battle Scars
## Notes to the accounts continued
## for the year ended 31 March 2021
## **5 Related party transactions**
## **Trustee expenses**
No trustee received any expenses during this year or the previous year.
## **Trustee remuneration and benefits**
|**Name of trustee**
**Legal authority**
Debbie Riley
Governing document
Provision of training
**Description of transaction**|2021
£
40
40|2020
£
455
455|
|---|---|---|
No trustee received any other remuneration or benefit during this or the previous year.
## **Other related party transactions**
|**Other transactions with trustees or related parties**
Jenny Groves
Wife of Trustee
Salary as CEO of the charity
**Name of trustee**
**or related party**
**Relationship to**
**charity**
**Description of transaction**|2021
£
29,839
29,839|2020
£
28,853
28,853|
|---|---|---|
12