2020-12-31-accounts

job search Annual report 2020 volunteering skills Ffoncis ffflployobiliw support

Who we are

• We are a Project, registered as a charity, based within an Anglican Parish Church in Coventry, working across an area which has pockets of deprivation ranked in the top 10% and 20% in the country.

• We work with people from all over Coventry, a city with higher than average unemployment and deprivation and a city that takes more Syrian (and other) refugees than any other local authority outside of London. Based in the church building in the heart of Radford, our primary aim is to transform our community and transform the lives of local people by helping people to move forward to social and financial inclusion and employment/education. The church itself was registered as a charity in 2017, however the church had been operating as a charity with exempted status since 1951. Our Employability Project (called St Francis Employability) delivers support services for unemployed people living in Coventry and was registered as a separate charity in 2019.

• 2020 was our first full year of operating as an independent charity – and of course it turned out to be a particularly challenging year!

• Pre pandemic our projects attracted people from across the city and through creative new ways of engaging and the new projects we established during the year, we have continued to do so. We work in close partnership with a number of other local organisations, including Coventry City Council, West Midlands police, CRMC, Positive Youth, CCA and others to achieve targets of social inclusion, integration and promote understanding within communities, as well as supporting people to better able to live independently and be meaningful employed and economically active.

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Our aims and activities

• Our Aims and activities are listed on the Charity Commission site as ‘to provide employability support through job search, CV writing, skills training and accredited qualifications and integration support and community cohesion’. We are listed as delivering education and training, preventing and relieving poverty and supporting economic and community development and employment. We provide services and advocacy, support and information.

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Our major project development in 2020 was a response to the pandemic and the new need within our local community. We established a project called 5Doors Down which centered around a foodbank, delivering emergency food to those affected by the pandemic. This has developed considerably since those first days.

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Partnerships

• We work in partnership with

many local organisations – statutory and 3[rd] sector.

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In 2020 we entered a new partnership with Coventry Foodbank and have developing relationships with others: Coventry Diocese, the Job Centre, FareShare, Coventry Building Society and Tesco.

We hope that these partnerships will develop in 2021

• Partnerships

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Governance

• In 2020, following our launch as a CIO, we worked hard to develop a good governance structure

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Our Projects

Reaching Communities

• Our Reaching Communities Project entered it 5 year – funded by the National Lottery. We run a volunteering program and a work club and engage with people from all over Coventry. We offer volunteering placements to some of the hardest to place people in Coventry and are happy to work with people with no English, people who are differently abled and people who have particular barriers that prevent them from volunteering elsewhere.

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• Reaching Communities

COVID-19 has meant that most of our provisions are now delivered online, and we have developed methods and resources which means we can still support those in need, despite the restrictions we face.

Over the past 16 months we have continued to be available for appointments either by phone, zoom and when possible limited face to face appointments have been carried out. We have engaged with 233 individuals over this period who had on average 3 appointments with us. We supported 87 with employment support, 104 with housing issues, 30 with Debt issues, 139 with benefit related support and 161 in other areas of support.

Of those that we supported 89 identified as male and 144 as female. 37% were white British/white other, 42% identified as black Caribbean/African/other, 11% identified as Asian Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi/other and 10% identified as other/Arab/Roma.

87% of clients we supported were between 35 and 65.

In addition to this we have continued to engage with our volunteers and clients through weekly virtual coffee mornings maintaining our presence in the community, tackling the loneliness and isolation of the pandemic. We also provided volunteering workshops teaching people what volunteering is and the benefits of taking part to prepare people for volunteering post pandemic.

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Reaching Communities

Moving forward with our reaching communities project we are working to rebuild our face to face provisions following the covid 19 pandemic and we want to continue to enable more people to fulfil their potential by working to address issues at the earliest possible stage by:

• Offering local people, the opportunity to engage with the services we offer.

• Providing full and part time work experience (volunteer) placements.

• Personalised one-to-one support for the service user so that an individual pathway can be developed to address any barriers that may hindering them from fulfilling their full potential.

• Providing, through the volunteering, accessible community services that add value to the local community and benefit the wider community (peer support in looking for work, ESOL classes, play opportunities for local children, breakfast and lunch club, open gardens, and more). To ensure the local community spaces are looked after (gardening volunteers) and local business have volunteers to support them (some of our volunteers work in local charity shops and museums). To bring people together and build strong relationships in and across communities.

• Working with the different communities coming into Coventry to provide a platform where different people can meet one another and discover common understanding and common ground. Provide opportunities for people from different backgrounds to work together as part of a volunteering team and to offer one another support, as well as the creation of themed friendship groups to further enable this to happen.

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Community Cafe

• Our Community Café serves breakfast and lunch 5 days a week to people who visit our premises. We often offer meals to those in ur community who have been rough sleeping, are seeking asylum or who are generally struggling. The meals offer a vehicle to engagement and most of those who we encounter over a meal begin to work with us to address some of the issues they face.

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Community Cafe

• Our community café has undergone some significant

• changes in the past 16 months. We have no longer been able to have community meals and instead have been offering takeaway breakfasts and lunches for those most in need.

• We have provided approximately 1500

• breakfasts/lunches since March 2020.

• Staff and some volunteers have worked hard to make

• a variety of lunches which are served as a takeaway.

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Community Cafe

• Moving forward we hope to reopen our community café. As our other projects move back to face to face delivery we will begin to provide drinks, breakfasts and lunches once again. We will encourage new and old volunteers to get involved to support us in this and we will once again be able to have lunch as a community.

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Building Bridges

• Building Bridges is a project that we were commissioned by the local council to deliver. We were asked to work with recently arrived migrants to help them gain the skills and confidence they needed to move into employment. We source volunteering placements to help with work skills and English practice.

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Building Bridges

• The building bridges project was very successfully moved online at the beginning of the pandemic. Staff worked hard over a period of 2 weeks to adapt all resources of the ESOL Employability course to online delivery, replacing the volunteering element with another module to support them in improving their employability.

• Resource packs were created and delivered to

• students and 2 successful cohorts were carried out within the year 2020.

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Building Bridges

• The building bridges project ended in December 2020 and it is clear the project had a huge impact in Coventry, and made a big difference to many. St Francis saw an over-achievement in all of the outputs which it delivered. 12,145 hours of volunteering were recorded against a target of 10,000 and this over-attainment would likely have been significantly greater had several months not been lost to COVID-19 pandemic.

• Against the target of 480 hours of teaching being delivered, St Francis Employability delivered 540 hours of teaching. In terms of total hours of learning, this adds up to 7,680 hours of learner contact across all participants. Additionally, to these figures St Francis Employability got 26 people into paid employment.

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STEP

• STEP is a project that we were commissioned by the local council to deliver, through AMIF funding received by World Jewish Relief. We were asked to work with newly arrived refugees from Syria to help them gain the skills and confidence they needed to move into employment. We source volunteering placements to help with work skills and English practice. We offer support as they settle into their new local communities and help them gain confidence.

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STEP

• As with the building bridges project our staff worked very hard

• to move the STEP delivery (ESOL employability) online and successfully completed 2 cohorts of the course.

• STEP was dependent on new arrivals coming into the city and

• when covid 19 hit no new arrivals were coming into the country leaving us with no clients to move into a 3[rd] Employability cohort.

• Instead of pausing the project we worked to develop different

• work-based skills courses (accredited and non-accredited) such as food hygiene, health and safety, CSCS prep, customer service and ESOL for childcare to delivery to existing clients on the STEP program, helping to develop their employability skills further and in an area of interest to them.

• Under the STEP program, from August 2020 we carried out 2

• H&S courses, 1 food hygiene course, 1 customer service, 1 IT course, 1 CSCS prep course and we are currently teaching an ESOL for childcare course.

• These courses have engaged approximately 75 clients in work

• based skills helping them improve their employability as well as their English.

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STEP

• We are currently working with a group of refugee women on the STEP program who have expressed an interest in childcare but lack the English to gain employment in this area currently.

• We have therefore developed an ESOL for childcare course which will teach these ladies English tailored towards working with children while also supporting them in gaining more knowledge and skills surrounding the topic.

• In May 2021 Coventry received a group of new refugee arrivals from Syria and we are currently preparing to deliver an ESOL employability course in September 2021.

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Refugee Integration

• Since 2016 we have worked in a local partnership, led by Coventry City Council to support newly arrived refugees. We have worked with people from Syria, Iraq, Sudan and Yemen to help them settle into the city, to begin to learn English, to gain confidence and look for work. This project has become part of our core delivery and we employ 7 staff to engage with these clients.

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Refugee Integration

• For the past 16months our refugee integration lessons have continued online. Our tutors worked incredibly hard to ensure the students understood zoom and whatsapp as these are the platforms we use and the lessons carried on as usual online.

• We also created some childrens packs and a childrens whatsapp group run by our playworkers to provide resourses to the children of the families on the integration programs. Each week the playworkers would share tasks with the children and the children would share pictures of their work. We had engagement from approximately 30 children.

• We have provided ongoing support to integration clients with

• many seeking support with housing, benefits, employment, debt and food over the pandemic.

• We set up a covid support line for our integration clients

• which was operated by 2 Arabic speaking tutors in order to provide advice and support, particularly surrounding booking and taking covid tests.

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Refugee Integration

• We are currently continuing our ESOL lessons online and continue to provide support for our integration clients as it is needed.

• We hope to move back to face to face

• delivery in the next month or so.

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English for All

• English for All is one of our foundation projects. As Reaching Communities developed, we found more and more of the people we were trying to help into employment needed support with English language.

• We began by teaching English using volunteers but have now employed a tutor to support the daily classes we hold in the building. We have built great links with local schools to offer lessons to the parents of their children, too. We have also committed to working with people seeking asylum in the city, who can’t always access other lessons. We have always struggled to find funding for this project but manage to juggle our finances to provide teaching hours!

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English for All

• Our English for All lessons have been delivered

• online for the duration of the pandemic. Tutors continued to assess new students and place them in the class most suitable for them.

• Our tutors have also worked to create videos and

• resources that have been placed on our very own ESOL website where students who struggled to attend the set lessons could still access English support.

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English for All

• Right now our English for All classes are more popular than ever with new referrals coming in everyday. Our tutors are working hard to get through assessments and the hope is to move the classes to face to face delivery within the next few weeks.

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Arabian Bites

• Arabian Bites was born out of the work we undertake with Syrian refugees. In order to allow them to demonstrate their skills in the kitchen, to showcase their culture through food and to develop English through volunteering we set up a restaurant – it became hugely popular, very quickly.

• We have catered for large and

• small events and made great links across the city. Lots of refugees (and others) volunteered at the project and built relationships.

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Arabian Bites

• Unfortunately due to the nature of the Arabian Bites

• project we had to temporarily pause this project for the duration of the pandemic.

• Our trade was mainly through external catering and

• our sit in buffet and takeaways were minimal. Also due to the space we had, we could not change to being a takeaway based kitchen and we decided it would be for the best to stop delivery until we were able to serve food in the way we did best.

• As we closed we had to pause all volunteering

• associated with Arabian bites and staff were furloughed.

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Arabian Bites

• Arabian Bites has now recently opened again. It is on a

• much smaller scale than it was previously and due to changes in the space we had originally, we are no longer able to open as a restaurant. We are currently trialing takeaways and external catering with the aim to open more as trade grows again.

• We are also searching for different kitchen spaces within

• the city with the aim of expanding our business as more restrictions are lifted.

• Our aim for the future is to get the kitchen back up and

• running to its full potential and get volunteers back and learning employability skills, food hygiene and English with us once again while also continuing to promote community cohesion and integration.

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LEAP

• LEAP is a commissioned project that began in June 2020. The aim of the funder (Home Office) was to provide pre-entry English support for those who struggled to learn English. We took the very lowest level learners and worked intensively with them for 12 weeks to help them move into mainstream English classes.

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LEAP

• The LEAP project was a short one and started and ended within the covid 19 pandemic. It started in September 2020 when some restrictions had been lifted and we started to initially deliver face to face. Unfortunately a few weeks in case numbers sored and we had to move to online delivery.

• This came with its challenges, we were working with extremely pre-entry learners who also had poor IT skills and also little access to technology and it was a struggle to keep them engaged.

• We also could not carry out the volunteer element of the project.

• Throughout the length of the project however we did engage with 99 learners who showed significant improvement in their English abilities and many moved on into other provisions such as further English support, skills courses and employment support.

• We also engaged all students in Advice and Guidance support providing they were equipped with the knowledge to engage in wider community activities and support where needed.

• Students also had the opportunity to engage in

• additional literacy and IT support.

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LEAP

• Leap finished in May 2021 and we

• successfully engaged with 99 learners.

• We have also successfully bid for another

• 9months of delivery which will begin in September 2021.

• It is hoped that as this will be face to face we

• will be able to engage with more students and also get them engaging in our other support and provisions more successfully, including volunteering.

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• Another project that began during thepandemic, MyCoventry. This is a multi partner project, delivering English language and Employability skills to newly arrived people. The project funding started in January 2021 and will run for two years. This is Home Office funded.

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• The My Coventry project started at the beginning of the year when we went into another national lockdown. Because of this COVID 19 has had a significant impact on all our delivery. Despite restrictions, we have managed to deliver all the courses we needed to online. Accredited courses meant that paperwork and learning sheets were sent in the post to participants, and lessons were delivered through zoom. We have however struggled to meet our targets for each quarter.

• Despite this, our learners have all engaged well and we have successfully completed 2 cohorts of ESOL Employability, 1 of food hygiene, 1 health and safety, 2 civic orienteering and 2 IT. We have also had 11 clients gain job interviews with 10 successfully gaining employment. Many of our clients engage in volunteering and on a weekly basis they engage with our learning mentor who supports them on their journey with us.

• We have worked to make the course more appealing to clients with walking tours being added to compliment our civic orienteering courses, face to face IT and mentoring sessions and we soon plan to do a presentation of certificates to say well done to all who have completed their accredited courses.

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• We are now entering into Quarter 3 of our delivery and we have moved everything back to face to face. So far delivery is going well and clients are engaging, we have already secured jobs for 2 clients and others are making good progress in the course.

• We hope by Quarter 4 we will have settled back into some normality and will be able to make more progress with clients and expand the opportunities we can provide them.

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5 Doors Down

• Our immediate response to the pandemic was to open as an emergency foodbank, working with newly recruited volunteers to deliver food to people who were vulnerable and shielding. We quickly built up a list of clients through referrals from schools and social workers and Coventry Food bank. During the first few months of the pandemic many thousands of meals and food parcels were delivered, and we were helped massively with funding through local charities.

• We developed the provision through the

• setting up of a Social Supermarket, to help people move away from dependency on emergency food supplies and the Coronavirus Resilience Fund helped us with this.

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5 Doors Down

• Moving forward, 5 doors down will continue to provide

• food support to people across the city.

• We continue to be part of feed the hungry which helps

• local individuals and families know we are present in the community.

• Our social supermarket is growing and we hope soon to

• create a more efficient set up with clients being able to come in and have more choice over the items they receive.

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Staffing

• 2020 has been a challenging year for our staff. The immediate impact of the first lockdown was that we needed to put some people on furlough. We rapidly developed a recovery plan and diversified, developing an emergency food response team and moving a lot of our provision online. We have been able to keep most of our staff on, but there have been challenges. A couple of staff have remained on furlough, and we have had to make two people redundant.

24 Staff still on payroll

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Looking forward

• Priorities for 2021:

• Recovery – get back to face to face delivery and clients in the building

• Re-build volunteering program

• Source replacement funding for Reaching Communities

• Source replacement funding for LEAP ESOL

• Identify recover options for Arabian Bites

• Relocate project staff and Foodbank into church hall

• Develop foodbank as a social supermarket and source on gong funding

• Maintain 6 months reserves

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Annual accounts 2020 39

AnMal accourts forthÈ CC17a 011011￿) To 3111212020 Section A statefflent of financial activities ResIr￿ted UnreslrKd fvrth furth rrtfurth YE• knc0TrMngfesf￿rCes Irkntr31 F01 F02 F03 F04 9.7 9.795 9.795 11555 41.559 41.559 41.559 58 901 404.832 73.24Q 331.592 347.802 114799 341.387 456 186 415258 37223 53294 5.595 56.166 299.429 355.5 253.189 93 389 299 429 392.818 306483 21 410 41.958 63.368 108 775 41.958 63.368 108 775 (MwiÈcoonisÈd gainih)ssesi GJn¥ Jnd OTh revDbJotw of fwedas¥d¥fDt the thartyg owll use 21.410 20 895 41.958 87 880 63.36B 108 715 108.775 TotluTrds btwghlfotwatd 42306 129.838 17 143 108.775 40

Section B Balance sheet Restncied Unrestricle income Enknrrbent Tolal this d lunds lund5 lunds Tolal last Fixed assets Tangible assets F01 F02 F03 F04 F05 1.129 1110ts 9) Inveslmer INote 101 Tolal fiyed assets EQI 1 129 Current assets Stock and wofk in progress Debtora INote 111 Ishort terml inveslments Cash at bank and in hand Toial cuffW￿ assets 95 317 95 317 80 496 80 496 175.813 175.813 108 126 115997 Crèditors: amounts falling due wilhin one yeai INote 121 3.670 3.670 480 Net GUnBrt￿Serf1•abI1its￿j 91 647 80 496 172.143 115991 Totsl assets less cuffert liabilliies Br2 91.f47 80.496 172,143 117.126 Creditors- amounts falling due after one year INote 1 ProvlsSons for Ilablllkn and chawges BM 91.647 80.496 172.143 117.126 Funds of the Charity Unrexricted tunds 91641 91.647 67 927 Re￿Icted inrnme fvnd$lF*rte 131 Endowmeni lunds Imote 131 80,496 80.496 48.070 Totsl funds B20 172.143 172.143 115.997 41

Seetion C Notes to Ihe accounts e 1 8aSIS Of pr•parat￿n Thls sertlon shotsld ￿ C¢wleted by allchaits. 1.1 Basls ot accountlng These accounts hwe wepwed the b3Si5 of h"Sto￿ C05t lexceo that whpstrnerrt5 are shoM￿ at maTket duel In accordance . A¢¢wrfiry and Rep)rtit¥ ty Ch8ri8- Stmort otR¢onMn•rthd Pwtta ISORP 20051. . and ith' AccLwntiry st￿da￿s.. FinaKial Repxbng StandardsfDr Smaller Etrtetwses (FRSSEI". and the Chatrties Act. exce furthe tDllown Give dails in this rfa differentS￿danI￿asbeefi followed. or -rick as appropnate. rfall relevarrtdisclosures showninlhe patth&E been gr￿￿the￿ pleasebtt'A(xuunbng kndatts"" rfdisdosures completpd in these accounts have been resknLtedtolhose rewired bylhe FRSSE.then y4ease rx-FlnanU￿ Reporbng stsndards lor SmaiierEMerpnses IFRSSE}'. . deparfuie5fromlhe£hosen S￿￿a[dS been madelhpn dwetethè8oworOS, Olhtri8tr4Thdètais anychanges inthe boxes. 1.2 Change in bas￿ of a¢counting Thèrè has bèèn no changè to IhÈ aCCQuniiw wièB (b￿u3t10n rnlèB and n￿$ d8¢wnt￿} sm¢e bst year11 exceF forthe followngl $rfno thanges h￿￿ been madeto accounbng poluesknen deletetheseworts. 1.J Chftngtt Accounts chaiges been to acc￿ntS knr [￿￿Ou& yeats (S& exce0 the ￿lO￿ng} 42

Section C Notes to the accounts Iconti Note 7 Paid employees Please ¢omphte this nots rfthe ¢haiTty has any employees. 7.1 Staff Costs This y•ar Last y•ar Gross wages. salaries and beneffts in kind Employerfs National Insurance costs P•nsion costs 271331.68 398,480 16,403 3.304 418.187 27225.5 3.304 307,861 Totsl slaff costs 7.2 Average number of fu114ime equivalent employees in the y•ar The parts of the charity in Ththich the employèes work This year Numb•r Last year Numb•r 14 16 JTner Total 14 16 7.3 Defined Contribulion pension scheme Please complete if a defined Mntn"bution Brief details of the scheme sion scheme is This year Last year The costs of the scheme to the charity foi the yeai The amouni of any contribuiion$ outstariding ai ihe year end The amouni of any Contrib￿10￿$ prepaid ai the year end 43

Seciion C Noies to the accounts Note 9 Tangible fixed a55ets Frnehoid Olher nd4 ng• equipment dirffjs nder Balan￿ brw fotward Addthons 1.129 1.129 1.120 1.120 Re￿luabL Disposals Ti8n$fets' alancfr red forwarfj 2.249 2.249 SLorRB SLorRB orRB SLorRB SLorRB Balan￿ brw fotward Depreuab( chaigeforye Imp8iimeM pivlsions RovaluMs 2.249 2.249 Disposals Transfers" Balan￿ camed fotward 2.249 1249 9.3 flet b￿¥4 Broughlforward CameofOt¥v*d 1.129 1.129 9A 44

Section C Notes to the accounts Icontl Note11 Debtors and prepayments Pl•as• ¢omplety this nots rfth• ¢h?tyhas any d•btOrn 4Y ments. Anatysls of d•biors Amounts tsllino du• ithin on• y•ar This year La5tyear ounts lalllno du• aft•r mor• than on• y•ar This year Last year Trade debtor5 Amounts due fmrn subsidiary and associ undertakings Other detors 7,870 4 Pr•paym•nts and a¢¢ru•d In¢om• Totsl 7,870 4 Note 12 Creditor5 and accrual$ Please compkte thi5 note rfthe charlty lJa5 any ¢reditor5 oraxruats. 12.1 Analysis of creditors th￿nts falling due Tthin one year This year Last year knounts falling due after more than one year This year Last year Loans and ov•rdrafts Trad• ¢r•ditors Amounts due to 5ub5idiary and associ undertakings Accruals and deferred income Total 12.2 Security ov•r as$•ts Many loan. overtlraft orother¢rndlwhokls a ¢hary• orotherse¢urtty ov•ranyassets ofthe ¢ha pleaseprnvide details. 45