2021-12-31-accounts

job search Annual report 2021 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.

• 2021 has been a successful year but not without challenge as we recovered many of our services from the effect so the pandemic. 2021 was a year of recovery

• and growth for us.

• Pre pandemic our projects attracted people from across the city and through creative new ways of engaging with our community and with new projects we established during the year 2020, we continued to do so. 2021 was a year where we brought our community back to face-to-face delivery for most of it. We worked to recover existing service while also growing on newly discovered needs of the community following a difficult year.

• We continue to work in close partnership with a number of other local organisations, including Coventry City Council, West Midlands police, CRMC, Positive Youth, CCA, Coventry Building Society, local schools 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.

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.

Our major project development in 2021 was to regrow and rebuild our active and present community in our building. Adapting and changing services from online to face to face and also introducing new aspects of support following the challenges that have grown from the pandemic. Specifically, we have seen a growing need for food, employment, financial and fuel/energy support and this has informed much of our 2021 activities.

Partnerships

• We work in partnership with many local organisations – statutory and 3[rd] sector.

• Our partnerships have grown over the past year with new opportunities for projects to begin have allowed us to connect further.

• We have continued to grow relationships with local organisations in Coventry partnering with organisations such as PYF, ACH, Coventry University and Spring housing in new projects started in 2021.

Governance

• We have continued to maintain a strong governance structure throughout 2021.

• We have welcomed in a new chair of trustees and also 2 new community representatives as trustees who have supported us in flourishing throughout the year.

Our Projects

Reaching Communities

• Reaching communities has been our longest standing project within St Francis Employability and is our core activity within our building.

What is reaching communities?

Reaching communities is our core service for engaging with the community through employment and community support and consists of; a volunteering programme where individuals can engage in practical work experience in an area of interest to them, learn new skills and gain confidence in a work environment alongside one to one support from our volunteer coordinator; our community café which provides breakfast and lunch to all, Monday to Friday free of charge; employment support provided by our employment officer which includes CV writing, job search support, interview skills and support with other work related needs; community support from our community support officer who can provide personalised support surrounding issues such as benefits, debt, housing, bills, and more; and as a more recent addition we have our social supermarket which offers a life line to those who are struggling significantly with debt, housing, benefits and employment. All of our support is also made accessible to all by being free and because we have a creche facility available those who have children can come and be confident their children will be safe and looked after while they engage in our support. It is vital for us that we are able to offer this support to anybody that needs it. We are all to aware of the restrictions that some funding programmes put in place and we want our support to be inclusive. We do not want to turn people away because they do not fit a certain “category”.

These activities as a whole allow us to provide holistic support to our community, tailoring specific help to their needs and helping them to make meaningful change towards independence and stability.

Reaching Communities

• At the beginning of 2021 we were still working around restrictions from the pandemic and many of our appointments and support was taking place online and only when necessary

• face-to-face. Moving into spring/summer and with restrictions lifting rapidly we took the opportunity to start to recover our pre-pandemic activities and invited clients and volunteers to come to the building once again. We were still cautious providing staff and visitors with masks and ensuring sanitiser and screen dividers were used when necessary.

• Our workclub, appointments and volunteering all began again. Slowly building up and recovering from the challenges of the pandemic.

• Appointments for employment and community support filled up rapidly due to an increased need for support following the challenges people faced as a result of the pandemic.

• Across 2021 we held over 1500 support appointments, primarily around debts and financial support due to increasing prices and loss of jobs, resulting from the pandemic. Many appointments we also around lack of ability to support themselves and their families and there were a lot of referrals to our 5doors down project for food support as a result. Over 50% of those engaging in our support services are from BAME backgrounds and many are refugees/asylum seekers.

• In 2021 we supported 33 people into paid employment and many of those engaging in the work club have engaged in volunteering and also ESOL and skills training activities that have

• supported them in improving their work specific skills.

• 2021 also brought back our volunteering programme. We did support some volunteers throughout the pandemic through volunteering workshops online and coffee mornings and we

• had some supporting with packing and delivering of food throughout the pandemic lockdown. However, our volunteering number dropped significantly. In 2021 we saw the return of 228 volunteers into our building in a variety of different roles who supported with the recovery of our café, playworking, and other activities.

• Volunteer stats: 35% were male and 65% were female. 10% were white British and the rest were from other ethnicities. A high proportion were from Hong Kong, in the UK on a BNO

• visa. We have recently started to do a lot of work with this client group, and they have been very keen to volunteer. They made up 19% of our volunteers this year.

Reaching Communities

• Looking forward into 2022 we will continue to deliver

• the support activities we offer with employment, benefits, housing, debt and more. Our volunteering will also continue as will our workclub and opportunities to explore employment opportunities.

• 2022 will bring about the end of the National Lottery

• funding for this project and therefore we will be seeking replacement funding to continue being able to delivery these core, much needed activities.

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 our 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.

Community Cafe

• Our community café operated throughout the pandemic with us providing takeaway meals for those most in

• need.

• 2021 allowed us to bring back some normality to our café service as we were once again able to welcome

• people back into the building.

• We serve on average breakfast for 20 people and lunch for 30 – 40 on a daily basis Monday - Friday. Our café is

• primarily run by volunteers and supported by staff.

• Previously surplus food donations from Tesco have supported our community café and throughout 2021 we

• also made connections with Marks & Spencer and Greggs to provide surplus donations of food. This has allowed us to offer some really exciting and different meals to our clients, ensuring everyone gets a nutritious and filling meal every day.

Community Cafe

• Moving forward we hope to continue to provide our

• community café as it is a lifeline to many people.

• It is also an amazing opportunity for many of our

• volunteers to get involved in and we see so many people benefit and grow from being a part of it.

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.

STEP

• Following the pandemic, arrivals of new refugee families have been disrupted significantly however in Spring

• 2021 we saw this pick back up again with families arriving from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine and also Afghanistan through the resettlement programme with Coventry City council. These families would later join the STEP project in the summer of 2021.

• Initially this disruption in arrival of families looked to threatened the project however we adapted our services

• and delivered skills courses to families already in Coventry who needed some extra support with their English and Employment. We delivered a cohort of ESOL for childcare and also an ESOL for Employment course to provide this extra support to struggling individuals.

• We did manage to also deliver one cohort of accredited ESOL employability in 2021 with new families now

• arriving which successfully involved approximately 12 individuals who also engaged in wider services and volunteering with us.

STEP

• In mid 2021 we were successfully granted further

• funding to continue the STEP project to the end of 2022.

• We will continue to engage with newly

• arrived families through our courses and volunteering supporting them closer to employment opportunities and a fulfilling life in Coventry.

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.

Refugee Intergration

• We continued to delivery ESOL support to Refugees coming through the integration program throughout 2020 online.

• 2021 brought back face to face classes for this client group with 6 classes beginning in the libraries 2 evenings a week

• but also 2 classes remaining online for those nervous and struggling to leave their homes.

• The lessons are continuously adapting to the varying levels and numbers of students we engage with and will

• continue to do so.

• Now back face to face we also have playworkers who regularly attend the sessions to ensure the children are also

• learning and developing their English skills. Parents can also concentrate on their lessons, confidently knowing their children are cared for.

• We have also continued wider support for this client group with many engaging with our volunteering opportunities, workclub and community support and also food support.

Refugee Integration

• We plan to continue this support and continue

• adapting to the needs of the client group.

• More recently with the conflict in Ukraine we are

• starting to see Ukrainian refugees come into the city and in need of support. We are keen to explore their needs further and support them in the best way we can.

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!

English for All

• 2021 has allowed us to return face to face with all of our ESOL delivery.

• We have adapted our classes to allow us to reach a wider range of levels now delivering from Pre-entry to E3.

• We have seen the need for ESOL grow rapidly with us regularly receiving up to 8 referrals on a daily basis. This has led to us increasing the number of classes we offer in order to cater for this, and we expect to have to do this further moving forward as the referrals keep growing.

• We currently offer 8 different classes per week.

English for All

• We hope 2022 will bring about more opportunities

• to fund our ESOL classes. They are a core activity within our building and inform many of our other projects and sourcing some stability for them is a huge goal of ours moving forward.

• We also expect the number of classes to grow rapidly

• over the next year.

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.

Arabian Bites

• In early 2021 we put a lot of energy into the recovery of Arabian Bites. Pre-pandemic it was a very sucessful project

• and was flourishing.

• The recovery of this project has proved very difficult. The building we operated from was not ours and we had to adhere to their covid restrictions which prevented us from opening as a café. We did however pursue takeaway services and catering opportunities. Pre-pandemic catering opportunities were our most successful venture.

• With the country still recovering from the pandemic and group gatherings in small supply, catering opportunities were not very often and we therefore were not able to sustain our Arabian Bites project on the lack of income we were receiving.

• We also had a limited time in the kitchen we were using and in November when this came to an end, we were not

• able to source another building in which to operate. Funding was a big factor in this.

• We made the decision at the end of 2021 to stop the Arabian Bites project.

Arabian Bites

• We will continue to look for the right opportunities to bring the Arabian Bites project back if the right circumstances present themselves. It is not something we have ruled out.

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. In 2021 we were given the opportunity to run a second round of 2 quarters to deliver this project.

LEAP

• Leap initially ran from September 2020 to May 2021 and within this time we engaged with 99 learners. The majority of this time we were in periods of strict restrictions, limiting the extent to which we could engage with our students. We continued to deliver online.

• In September 2021 we were again given the opportunity to run another 2 quarters of the project taking us to April 2022.

• In this time, we were able to offer face to face delivery and we engaged more successfully with learners reaching out to 153 over the 8 months.

LEAP

• LEAP has now finished and we will hopefully be looking for some more long-term funding to continue to support the same client group.

My Coventry is an AMIF funded project and began January of 2021. It is funded for 2 years which will take us to the end of 2022.

The primary aim of the project is to support third country nationals with employment and integration needs. We are one of 6 partners working on the project.

My Coventry

• Initially My Coventry got off to a rocky start. As we began to delivery, we went into a lockdown which restricted the types of courses and activities we could offer. Under the project we offer accredited ESOL employability, accredited IT, Civic orienteering and accredited work-focused courses such as food hygiene and health and safety. Much of the first 2 quarters was online or working around strict restrictions and because of this our KPI's were not met. The tight eligibility criteria for the project also contributed significantly to this.

• Moving forward into the second half of 2021 we were able to delivery in the way we initially intended and did see our registrations and outcomes grow as a result of this but while still battling the eligibility for the project.

• During 2021 we engaged with 79 clients through the project and saw many successes with employment, education and training opportunities with these clients.

My Coventry

• Moving into 2022 we are feeling positive about the

• growth of this project and hope to make up lost targets from the beginning of 2021.

• We are engaging with new client groups such

• as people on BNO visas from Hong kong and also Ukrainian refugees who are keen to get involved in the projects activities.

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.

5 doors down

• 5 doors down has grown into a core activity of ours with it working closely alongside our reaching communities' activities to ensure we provide holistic and wrap around support for all our clients and volunteers.

• We continue to act as a foodbank and social supermarket recognising the need for more long-term support in many families, especially coming out of the pandemic.

• In 2021 we have seen our social supermarket numbers grow and fall as many families have joined us but also as many have made significant progress through working with our community support officer to secure employment and also financial stability.

• Over 2021 we have had 93 families sign up to the social supermarket, currently with 33 engaging with us at one time.

• The households engaging with us have varying needs from support with employment, debt, housing, English language, benefits and more.

• We like to provide a holistic service where we address their need for food support but also the underlying reasons they need to rely on the support.

• We regularly get deliveries from Fareshare to support with the food we need for our families and also receive surplus food donations from Marks and Spencer, Greggs and Tesco that add to the food we can offer.

5 doors down

• We expect to see the need for food support grow

• over the next year. In particular with rising food prices and energy and fuel costs we are already seeing number rise rapidly.

• With this rise we are also seeing a need to

• source more food for our members, and this is something we will need to explore and address in 2022.

RTOF – Coventry connects

• Coventry connects is a new project that

• began in November of 2021. Its primary aim is to support newly awarded refugees with housing and employment.

• The end of 2021 marked the beginning of

• this project, and we are excited to see how it grows and the opportunities that arise from it

• We are a partner on this project managed

• by Coventry City Council and alongside ACH and Spring Housing.

• Our aim on the project is to support with

• volunteering meeting outcomes on intermediated employment.

• This fund is different from other projects

• we have been part of before and is outcome based.

• Through this project we were able to

• employ a volunteer coordinator whose role is to source external placements for volunteers on the project.

BNO support

• In 2021 we learned of a new group of

• migrants coming to the UK from Hong Kong on British National's Overseas visas.

• We were very keen to work with this client

• group and explore their support needs.

• Initially it was a challenge to make contact

• with this group of clients. Many are very wealthy and move to more affluent areas of Coventry and surrounding areas, they are also dispersed throughout the city making it harder to connect with them.

• We eventually made contact with a small group of clients, introducing ourselves and having conversations about the support we could offer them and how we could work with them moving forward.

• The need of this client group is very different to client groups we have

• worked with before.

• They are a very wealthy and highly educated group and although needed

• some support with employment and English we found their biggest barriers are with housing, mortgages and integration.

• We have since put on integration classes to support them with

• understanding life in the UK, accessing services and navigating our systems.

• These have been very well attended and very well received by the clients

• with lots of positive feedback.

• To the end of 2021 we had started engaging with approximately 30 BNO

• clients.

• Many have also engaged with the My Coventry Provisions we offer.

BNO support

• Moving forward we hope to increase our support for

• this client group and explore their needs further.

Staffing

• Following the challenges of 2020, 2021 has

• actually led to an increase in our members of staff with new projects and opportunities allowing us to expand our team.

• As of December 2021, we had 31 members

• of staff on payroll.

31 Staff still on payroll

Looking forward

Priorities for 2022:

• Continue to expand our services and adapt to the needs of those we are working with

• Continue to recover services and projects following the pandemic looking at what we can

• do to improve the services we offer moving forward

• Source funding for projects for which funding streams are ending

Annual Accounts 2021

CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examinetrs report on the accounts Section A IndependEnt Exatnit*r 5 Report 31112r2021 IrFanyl 118230C S•1 on p•4 X111 145 ofth¢ XJ11 Aa in ¢xrt my I Jw3eclw 1495llbl Att I￿Act l>•t•.' 01KJ7fJ)22 rrf •nyl-

e¢tiOn B O¢tdw X118

CC17a Jii12fA2t Section A Statement of financial activities Foi 875 520721. 14%>J.(VJ 377570 74 521207 446.391 5249)5 4&1.1115 85758.73 4.3 J52.405 353,621 439, 38B.4V 01, zj. 67.607 61.5 85.516 67.807 $17 61.) JM.516 67.817 61.WJ •S.$16 67.517 cr17•ltx•Tr

Section B Balance sheet St Francis Em ployability ai 3111212021 Flxed asMt• 175,813 5.81 175.913 IN¢* la TJT •Fi 18I591

St Fr•Mls Employ•bMIty 2021 All Incon￿ and expendlture bf 2020 £175,813.29 £524.905.08 Income £700,718.37 Expenditu Adminlstration phone banking premises Cleanin£ publicity Support Costs £2.237.75 £3.195.82 £770.30 £13,427.89 £617.85 £634.17 £19,710.85 £777.44 £11,802.35 £3,759. 19 £359.851.75 £758.12 £3.UXJ.49 Delivery costs Equiprnent room hirn Accreditation staff trninln8 travel £14.390.54 £4.455.46 pastornl other costs £439.389.97 £439,389.97 £261,328.40