2021-04-01-accounts

Annual Report ONE NEWHAM

2020-2021

Charity Commission Number

1181534

Year ended 31 March 2021

One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

The trustees of One Newham are pleased to present their second annual report and financial statements for the year to 31 March 2021. One Newham was formally registered as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) with the Charity Commission on 11 January 2019.

About One Newham

One Newham is a network of voluntary and community organisations that are rooted in local communities and work to improve the lives of people in Newham. One Newham was created so that members learn from each other, benefit from each other’s strengths and expertise and through collaboration, innovate to find the best solutions to the issues that concern local people and communities, and the funds to support these.

There are currently 125 organisations in membership of One Newham, offering a range of services and opportunities for Newham residents. One Newham members create significant impact, not only for the people who participate in the activities that our members provide, but also for our local communities.

One Newham’s Objects

One Newham’s Constitutuion sets out our Objects, which are to promote the voluntary sector and to promote the efficiency and effectiveness of other charitable organisations for the benefit of the public in London borough of Newham by: -

• Liaising between charities, voluntary organisations, government agencies and other groups on relevant issues

• Assisting in the administration of funding programmes to charities and the voluntary organisations

• Providing training, conferences and seminars on subjects relevant to the efficiency of the voluntary sector

• Providing advice and information on fund-raising techniques appropriate for voluntary organisations and charities

Statement from the Chair

2020/21 was a significant year for One Newham. The Covid-19 pandemic hit Newham hard, with thousands of people affected by ill-health and bereavement, but also poverty and hunger. The voluntary, community and faith sector in Newham delivered an incredible response in the face of a humanitarian crisis, whist at the same time many organisations in the sector were themselves struggling with illness and the immense practical challenges of delivering in a lockdown environment.

The pandemic prompted Newham Council to take a step change in its approach to engagement with the sector. For the first time in many years, small grants were made available for Newham voluntary, community and faith groups to apply for financial support in the work they were doing to support Newham residents. One Newham benefited from a grant for 3 months, which was handled on our behalf by Community Links, and enabled One Newham for the first time to appoint some paid resource, to improve coordination of the sector.

One Newham, working through West Ham United Foundation, was able to secure a grant for 6 months from the London Response Fund which enabled One Newham to continue with paid resources and implement a step change in our activities. There is more about the impact we achieved through the opportunities this grant provided in the Impact section of this report. One of the benefits of having additional resource was that over the year we grew our membership from 60

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One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

to 108, expanding our reach and platform across the borough. The growth has continued and we have since doubled our membership above the number at 31 March 2020.

We invested considerable effort in the year in applying for a tender for a new infrastructure service for the sector, commissioned by Newham Council. Sadly, we were not successful in the tender. However, the work in collaborating together to deliver services in the pandemic and also to develop the proposals for the tender helped achieve lasting change in relationships between organsiations in the sector. Members have commented how the creation of One Newham has allowed them to form collaborations to bid for funding which would not have been possible previously, and how there is now a much greater sense of trust between organisations.

Given that we were not successful in the tender, One Newham will be considering its future role and purpose at our AGM in 2021. Whatever role One Newham decides to play in the future, the need for investment, support and recognition of the sector remains, and there is still some considerable way to go before the sector is seen as an equal partner by the borough.

The sector also continues to face very significant challenges, with ever increasing and complex demands from service users completely outstripping available resources. The coming year the sector badly needs support with:

• Sustainable sources of funding, with so much funding focused on short term Covid response rather than long term delivery

• Burn out of staff and volunteers after months of hard work and many people experiencing being ill with Covid

• Mental health and morale challenges for staff and volunteers who are still concerned about the future of their jobs, despite giving their all for many months

• Lack of suitable and affordable accommodation in Newham for groups to run services from, where the Council could focus more attention and make a real difference to the sustainability of the sector.

• Greater acknowledgement and recognition of time spent on supporting the Council with delivery of services.

I would like to thank everyone who has given support this year to the overall efforts of One Newham, and to Community Links for providing the secretariat – our thanks to Fahad Baig. Specially, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of a number of people who have provided significant coordination and project support at various times during the year – my thanks to Radhika Bynon, Venu Dhupa and Ruth Bravery for your commitment and passion for the sector in Newham and your support to me personally as Chair.

Chair 12[th] October 2021

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One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

Principal Activities and our Impact

In the year to 31 March 2021, One Newham delivered and achieved impact on three main areas, utlising the grants from London Response Fund and London Borough of Newham and the invaluable volunteer effort of our members:

1. Practical facilitation of collaboration and coordination, and relationship building in the sector and with partners

One Newham “hosted” a number of Networks that enabled voluntary, community and faith sector groups to meet regularly on specific topics and collaborate on responses to the council and to joint bidding for grants and tenders. Networks focused on homelessness, advice and advocacy, arts and young people flourished during the period, a new network focused on social isolation was created, and we were able to support the creation of a fledgling network focused on and lead by disabled people and carers. We also mapped the various meetings hosted by the Council, such as the Forum of Faiths, and developed a page on our website that shows the mapping of the various networks meaning this entire picture is visible to community groups for the first time. The Networks act as hosts for speakers from the Council and other statutory bodies, providing a single route through to influencing and collaborating which has never existed before.

One Newham was also able to coordinate representation at Council, NHS and other statutory partner meetings by developing an Ambassador role. Representatives from any community group could volunteer to step up as an Ambassador and One Newham matched people to requests from the Council for sector representatives to sit on various committees and meetings. This kind of sector representation had never happened before in Newham, and the Ambassador approach gave the structure and visibility to sector representation at statutory-led meetings. This approached enabled sector workers who had deep and relevant experience to be aware of opportunities to directly shape and influence the development of the council’s response to Covid. Through this distributive approach, One Newham was able to secure sector representation at dozens of meetings every month including Covid Leaders, Mental Health and Wellbeing Partnership, Shielding Working Group, Covid Community Impact Working Group, NHS 5 year strategy development, Covid/vaccines/testing communications group, Isolation working group. This approach also enabled One Newham to facilitate a number of council staff to present directly to community groups on topics such as vaccines, testing and isolation, and hear about the barriers and address their concerns.

One Newham created a set of resources to provide regular updated information to the sector, covering everything from opportunities to bid for funding to updated Covid guidance and adverts for community delivered services. We issued 26 Essential Updates by email during the period to over 250 community groups, and posted over 170 items on the news page of our website linked to our Twitter feed.

We developed and launched website pages aimed at supporting Newham voluntary, community and faith sector groups with information about how to recruit and manage volunteers, as well as an online Members Directory and maps showing where residents could access services relating to Covid and support for young people.

One example of the feedback we received which shows the impact of the information we have been providing, comes from the youth network, “thanks so much for sharing the info on the [Government’s] Transitions to Adulthood Hub - we wouldn't have known about it otherwise. We might [now] be looking at a partnership bid for this.”

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One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

2. Capacity building in the sector

To support the resilience of the sector, One Newham held “Newham Together” and “Listen and Support” workshops in conjunction with Newham Council and Compost London, to hear about the challenges the sector was facing and understand what additional support would be valuable. This directly led to One Newham developing a programme of free training to address the training gaps the sector identified, covering topics such as online meetings; digital infrastructure including google, email accounts and free website development support; budgeting and marketing; how to apply for grants; safeguarding; volunteer management; the role of trustees and business continuity. These programmes attracted over 100 sign ups. Typical responses to the training included, “Thank you so much for organising this, it was a massive insight and help.”

In addition to the general communications and engagement, One Newham Coordinators were available to provide bespoke support to individual community groups who were struggling with challenges – this ranged from a number of organisations needing help to access support for particularly vulnerable or complex service users, advice on hiring premises, access to transport and help with grant applications. One Newham supported the emerging disability network to secure £5000 from the GLA’s Roots Incubator Fund. In some cases we facilitated groups to unlock issues with the council, such as grant payments that had not been processed, accessing PPE, or help with accessing council services such as vaccinations for front line key worker staff and volunteers.

3. Supporting new ways of delivering services to Newham residents

One Newham frequently played a brokerage role, enabling relationships to be created between organisations in the voluntary and statutory sectors. Examples included brokering a Community Connector scheme to be delivered by the voluntary sector working with East London Foundation Trust (ELFT) and scaling this up due to the impact of Covid and brokering with Newham Council for the Covid-19 Telephone help line to be set up and delivered by the voluntary sector.

The first phases of the Community Connector programme saw six people from Community Links and Aston Mansfield seconded to work within ELFT as Community Connectors. Their role involves providing holistic, voluntary sector informed and led support to patients suffering from a serious mental illness or SMI. Patients referred to the service have a single or range of diagnosed conditions, are known to ELFT and have a range of needs, including symptoms of anxiety or depression. The Community Connectors work with multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs) who sit within primary care networks or PCNs (clusters of GP practices) across Newham, and provide patients with access to the services they need in order to move forward. Initially designed as a 1 year pilot to April 2021, the programme has been successfully extended to March 2022. The programme adapted to deliver interventions entirely remotely during lockdowns so delivery was not impacted at any point. Over the last 12 months the team have supported over 400 patients, with numbers expected to grow significantly as the impact of the pandemic/lockdowns are only starting to filter through with regards to mental health. The project is currently recruiting five additional Connectors from across the voluntary, community and faith sector in Newham, to grow capacity to meet operational caseloads. This is an innovative example of how the voluntary and statutory sectors can collaborate to bring real benefits to vulnerable people in our community, and ensure services in both sectors are best joined up to meet their specific needs.

Another example of a service brokered by One Newham was the Enhanced Patient Experience Survey, which entered its second year of delivery working with Newham Health Collaborative. This involved focused work with Newham communities and groups that were under-represented in the work last year to find out how the GPs in Newham might deliver a more accessible service. Three focus groups were completed along side desk research.

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One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

There have been a number of other instances where community groups have collaborated together for joint bidding for tenders or grants. This would have been difficult for groups to coordinate prior to the support from One Newham. One organisation who led a successful collaborative bid told us they would never have met the other Newham organisations if it were not for being introduced through One Newham, and another relied on One Newham to identify suitable partners.

Successful collaborations with multiple Newham partners included:

• Chat Newham befriending and an associated Social Isolation Network

• EU Settlement Scheme advice and advocacy project

• No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) collaboration which ultimately led to a partnership between Newham Schools and community groups

• Vaccine champion programme to address vaccine hesitancy (the Council were impressed with the quality of applications from small community groups they were previously unaware of)

• Identifying community group sites for vaccination and testing centres

• A joint bid for GLA advice service funding between several organisations who had not previously worked together before.

Overall, we believe that our work in this year has created lasting legacies

• There is now greater awareness of the value of the ecology of working together and that learning from others has meant the NHS and Local Authority have learned the value of the voluntary, community and faith sector.

• The development of a wider range of leaders in the sector through our Networks and Ambassador programme. This has particularly enabled members of small groups to have a seat at influential tables and directly contribute their knowledge and expertise. The council has been impressed with the quality and breadth of sector leadership, many of whom were previously invisible to the council.

• We have all learned to appreciate organisations of all sizes and type of structure, because each brings a unique and valuable part to a collaboration and helps ensure that the voice of all Newham residents is heard and responded to.

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One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

Finance

Income

Overhead from the London Community Response Fund £2500.00 Catch 22 Community Links Overheads from

Mental Health Connectors/Newham Health Collaborative £7,320.24

Total £9820.24

Expenditure

Spent via Aston-Mansfield - website and consultation event £231.32

Total £231.32 Result for the year: £9588.92 Balance brought forward as of 31 March 2020: £1,163.56 Balance carried forward 31 March 2021: £10,752.48

Financial Report

This year One Newham opened its own bank account, which due to Covid-related delays, only became operational towards the end of the year.

Shortly after the end of the financial year One Newham received £10,752.48 into the bank account. This is made up of the result for the year end 2021 (£9588.92) and the reserve funds (£1163.56) which were being held by partners (Communtity Links, Aston-Mansfield and West Ham United Foundation) last year and were passed to the new bank account just after the end of the year.

We thank the West Ham United Foundation for working with our Co-ordinators on the London Community Response Fund, and Community Links who facilitated the management of our small grant from London Borough of Newham as part of the response to the pandemic.

Last year the Trustees undertook to put in place a reserves policy, however given the small amount of funds obtained during the course of the financial year it was decided to hold all funds as unrestricted reserves.

One Newham has no employees and does not have any premises. Grants received have been used to pay for project work completed by self-employed consultants or third party contractors.

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One Newham – Annual Report 2020 / 21

Policies

During the year we developed policies on staff recruitment, financial control, equal opportunities. As part of our tender process we also developed policies on anti-bribery and fraud, business continuity, compliants, data protection, health and safety and safeguarding.

The Secretariat

During the year the Secretariat was provided by Community Links. There is a planned review of the Secretariat to take place early in next financial year.

The registered address of One Newam is:

One Newham c/o Community Links 105 Barking Road, Canning Town, London, E16 4HQ

Names of the Trustees who managed One Newham:

	Trustee name	Office (if any)	Date appointed/resigned
	Susanne Rauprich	Chair	21.02.2019	Independent Newham resident
	Claire Helman	Trustee	09.03.2018	Aston-Mansfield
	Faith Johnson	Trustee	21.02.2019	Caramel Rock
	Joseph Lyons	Trustee	21.02.2019	West Ham United Foundation
	Amanda Dubarry	Trustee	21.02.2019	Caritas Anchor House
	Peter Laign	Trustee	09.09.2020	The Renewal Programme
	Fiona Baird	Trustee	24.02.2021	Newham New Deal Partnership
	Hannah Tulloch	Trustee	24.02.2021	Ascension CommunityTrust
	JonnyBoux	Trustee	To August 2020	Ambition Aspire Achieve
	Venu Dhupa	Trustee	To August 2020	CommunityLinks

Hanah Tulloch and Fiona Baird were appointed during the year to increase member representation on the Trustee Board. In accordance with our Constitution they will retire and stand for re-election at the 2021 AGM.

Membership:

A full list of members and associate members as at the end of March 2021 is available by emailing [e-mail]

A full list of our membership is also available on the membership page of our website

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