2023-07-31-accounts - Child & Parenting Support Oxfordshire

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2022-23

Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

Report Contents

1. Reference and administrative information

2. Trustees’ Annual Report to The Charities Commission

3. Finance Report

4. 2022-23 Annual Report of Activities to the Trustees

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

1 Reference and Administrative

Information

Child & Parenting Support Oxfordshire (ChiPS) is a charity (Charitable Incorporated Organisation or CIO) registered in England Charity Number 1177247

Registered Office:

11 Oxford Road, Woodstock, OX20 1UN

The Board of Trustees:

Michael TEELING (Chair, from 2018 to present)

Caitlin MORRISON (from 2018 to present)

Kathy PETO (from 2018 to present)

Nicola SELWAY (from 2018 to present)

Finance Contact and Programme Liaison:

Cait Morrison, Trustee & Secretary

Charity Programme:

Paula Evans, Programme Co-ordinator

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

Bankers:

Arbuthnot Latham & Co Ltd +44 (0)20 7012 2500 Arbuthnot House, 7 Wilson Street, London EC2M 2SN

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

2 The Report of the Trustees

Overview

Child & Parenting Support Oxfordshire (ChiPS) was established to deliver a whole-family parenting programme for young school-aged or pre-school children and their parents/carers for the benefit of people in Oxfordshire. The issues faced by schools currently have made it increasingly difficult to deliver the programme as prescribed with a high adult-child ratio. In response, we have been developing delivery methods which will require far fewer teaching staff hours from the schools involved, and work is ongoing. Our small team spent the period covered by this report on devising an up-to-date whole-family programme to deliver our stated public benefit. Further to this, we are developing an online suite of teaching resources to be accessible to facilitators working in their own settings, which will be offered free for the public benefit.

The CIO’s Purposes for the Public Benefit

The CIO ChiPS was founded to deliver a whole-family therapeutic behavioural programme free to referred children and their parents/ carers. The Webster-Stratton Whole-Family Programme, along with other ‘gold-standard’ programmes, is proven to improve outcomes in vulnerable families and children, benefits which are lasting and long term when the programme is both delivered and attended with commitment. These programmes have also been shown to promote protective factors such as consistent and resilient parenting,

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

improved parent/child bond, and strengthened social and emotional competence and school readiness in children.

How the Activities of the Charity are Carried Out

The programme we currently deliver is the Webster-Stratton WholeFamily Programme, which is presented to children and their families as ‘Dinosaur School’. This programme comprises a set of evidencebased therapeutic learning courses, which have been developed to prevent and treat behaviour problems in young children. The programme is usually set in a local school, and coordinated and delivered by trained, experienced group work facilitators provided by us, alongside school teaching staff who work directly with the referred children.

However, during this reporting period, it has not been possible to deliver the programme as specified. The Charity was approached by schools and other services who wished to refer children and their families to us, but which could not provide resources that they could match with ours to deliver the programme. Without the school providing some teaching, TA or SEN staff who know the referred children and their behavioural, social or learning difficulties, it is not possible to deliver the programme safely or meaningfully ie. in such a way as to provide maximum child engagement and consequently provide the most effective therapeutic long term benefit. Without school staff involvement, therapeutic programme elements cannot be transferred from the programme sessions into the classroom with the child. We could not undertake to deliver a programme in these circumstances within school in compliance with our own safeworking policy, or within our appropriate adult-child ratio.

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

These intractable operational difficulties concentrated our activity on developing ways in which the expertise of the small team could be harnessed to deliver on the stated aims of the Charity by using alternative, safe and effective methods. We are considering options which include offering in-situ training to Sencos and teaching staff in schools, training that would enable delivery of the programme elements directly to the children during or alongside their usual lessons. If pandemic or other disruption returns to schools in future, the provision could continue uninterrupted as it would be delivered within the setting, and not depend on external provision and leadership from our team. In this method of delivery, we could potentially continue to lead the parent group as we do now, as we know it can benefit the parent group to have facilitators who are unbiased towards them, if there has been a breakdown in trust between home and school, which can sometimes be a challenging relationship and we will continue to develop and evaluate this alternative delivery of the programme.

We are also currently working on the in-house development of a whole-family programme that can be shared and disseminated online, free and on a charitable basis, to others working in the field in need of fully developed, high quality, teaching resources.

Monitoring Outcomes to Ensure Charitable Purposes and Benefits are Met

i) Oversight At least one trustee to maintain regular oversight meetings with the Programme Coordinator (in person, by phone or on video conference). Regular to mean at least monthly, and to mean at least weekly during the delivery of programmes or

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

during any period of provision to, or engagement with, the public or service users.

ii) Formalised Feedback During active Programme delivery, the Charity will use statistically validated self-assessment questionnaires from parents/carers before, during and after attendance on the programme. Reports on each child’s progress will be produced for the referrers. There will be regular feedback between the programme deliverers and the referrers during each programme, and the deliverer will report back to trustees at appropriate intervals. The trustees will use these inputs, as well as feedback from referrers on outcomes, to ensure the charity is meeting the needs of beneficiaries and meeting the charitable purposes as stated.

iii) Supervision of Facilitator This should take place at least twice during the year, to ensure best practice and to maintain the integrity of the evidence based programme.

Deciding who benefits

The programme and related support given by the Charity continues to be offered free to programme attendees, who are currently referred by the state school providing the resources and the venue for the delivery of the programme.

When not engaged in delivering a programme, the Charity will continue to consider and develop other means of delivering the benefit of its activities to the public. This is an area of focus, as our ability to provide for the public benefit through direct programme delivery being so impacted by the present situation in schools, where there is no longer sufficient teacher-hours to make staff available to attend and support the children during sessions. This

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

was an essential aspect of our mode of delivery, and an alternative format for delivery is under discussion.

Managing risk of harm

Child Safety and Vulnerable Service User Safety There has been no direct contact or interaction with children or families during this reporting period. The Charity’s trustee team have the appropriate DBS certification required. The children’s programme delivery team all have the appropriate Enhanced DBS certification for working with children.

Safe Working Although there was no Programme delivery in schools during this reporting period, our policy is that schools are required to provide their working risk assessment document to the ChiPS team, to enable them to adapt it to the programme and the delivery location in the school. Any safety concerns identified by the delivery team leader are reported to the head of school, or the designated primary contact person (usually the SENCO), and suitable adjustments to programme arrangements agreed with them.

Mental Health and Well-being . There has been no working directly with families or in schools in this reporting period. The Programme coordinator has been writing a new revised parenting programme, and has been doing this from her home. The trustee with direct responsibility for communication with the Programme Coordinator has regular face-to-face, online and telephone contact with her, to support and provide resources as required. Independent professional supervision is also provided as required.

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

3 Finance and Annual Accounts

The Charity’s income is small, and in this reporting period was negligible. The accounts are not therefore required to be independently examined or audited.

The trustees have reviewed the accounts of the Charity for this reporting period, and present them with this report to the Charities Commission.

Cash Accounts ChiPS 2022-2023

Note: the bank charges were incorrect and refunded in the next accounting period.

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

Expenditure ChiPS 2022-23

Income ChiPS 2022-23

Note: There were no invoices issued, zero income in this period

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

4 2022-23 Report of Programme

Activities

We have found ourselves at a time where our usual service users are not able to afford to fund their side of the programme due to lack of finances and/or resources. We approached three local schools in this reporting period, who, while they were very keen and definitely able to identify the need within their student body, were unable to provide staff to participate in delivering the programme.

Activities

The programme coordinator is working from home to write new improved sessions for the programme, in preparation for delivering in the future in a different format that schools can engage with. This may well include training their teaching and TA staff to deliver the programme with Paula overseeing it. This is still in the development phase.

Feedback from client probation sector organisation

We wrote a programme for a regional probation organisation to use with their service users and their families. Here is part of the feedback we received from the organisation after six months of using the programme that we created:

The programme you wrote is one of several programmes the Hub has as an intervention but as yet to be used by any social service department or other purchaser (social services was envisaged as the agency that would primarily ask us to engage). It remains part of the menu of services provided by the Hub.

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

However, it has been used with families we have engaged with and as a ‘stand-alone’ parenting programme it was very easy to use and service user-friendly. More importantly, over the past 2 years we have been developing a Family Programme (based upon the principles of systemic family therapy) and the work you provided for us in your programme has been really helpful and we have incorporated much of your work into that programme. This family programme is used as a tool for assessment in relation to Parole decisions and is both a lengthy and detailed programme of many differing components (the logistics of which can be difficult and complex i.e. working with a family, while the father is still in prison. Hence the ability to assess future contact / issues related to parole.

Your programme remains on the menu should and when anyone wishes to commission its use.

Improvements made to our professional practice

Paula now has regular supervision with an external professional Parenting Practitioner. In addition, Paula is sending her newly written session plans to be reviewed and critiqued by the external Parenting Practitioner.

Future projects

We are rethinking how we deliver the programme to better fit the current financial situation, where schools state a lack of financial support as well as a lack of staff who can be deployed to participate in the sessions during programme delivery.

Reported to the trustees by Paula Evans, Programme Coordinator Cait Morrison, Trustee and Programme Liaison

2022-23 Annual Report of Child & Parenting Support Oxon (ChiPS)

Report by the Trustees: Michael Teeling, Trustee, Chair Cait Morrison, Trustee, Secretary Kathy Peto, Trustee Nicola Selway, Trustee

Signed on behalf of the trustees by

…………………………………………………………………………..

CAITLIN MORRISON, TRUSTEE

20 Dec 2024