Trustees Annual Report
Sarah D'Arcy Cwtch Together
As the Covid-19 restrictions began, it gave us time to prepare to get our new venue and storage ready for our re-opening when the pandemic eased, and we adapted to helping our families and keeping in touch online, and providing play packs and easter bunny visits directly to their homes.
We received a grant from the Moondance charity and used it to keep contact with our service users and get more work in place over the lockdown period. We purchased a laptop and printer. We wrote and filed all the necessary policies and procedures, created our own daily sheets, did all risk assessments, and worked on our membership package which we now have available…
We got our membership books printed professionally, ordered pens, made lockdown certificates, sent art sets, post and little gifts to our service users so they had some contact from us whilst they were stuck at home. We also got our website up and running with lots of downloadable content for our service users.
We collected our £1,000 cheque from Asda, (as we had won the green token scheme over Christmas) and used this to arrange our insurance ready for the new venue.
We have completed various training certificates recently to ensure we have the necessary requirements.We all completed our Food Hygiene training. Charlotte and myself completed the Designated Safeguarding Officer training. I completed the Level 2 in Play Work and completed the following Council online courses: Cyber Security, Violence Against Women, Sexual Violence and Domestic Assault, Security Awareness and Welsh.
At the end of August the Scouts kindly gave us the keys to the hall early so we could complete some work that needed to be done before we reopen. The outside area where we were hoping to put our storage was extremely overgrown, we were quoted approximately £3,000 for the groundwork to be done, this seemed very overpriced, especially for a charity My wonderful family, (along with some incredible volunteers!) have worked tirelessly, cutting down all the weeds and dead trees, digging out 5 inches of soil along the 47 foot piece of land, discarding rubble, rubbish, overgrown grass, and everything else that was in our way! We borrowed a wheelbarrow from Growing Street Talk, and Asda donated cleaning supplies and treats for our volunteers. For all this we’d like to thank The Good Gym, a charity who keep fit by helping the community, Growing Street Talk, Shaz Woods, Kathryn Davies, Julia Francis and anyone else who gave up their time or equipment to help this mammoth task, and save Cwtch Together a lot of much needed money! We’d like to give a huge specific thank you to my brother, Michael Sweeney of Bluebird Carpentry, who has been at the hall most evenings!
We were recently given until mid October to empty our storage unit, which we have managed to finally complete today with the help of Walton Coaches! We have received a £1,500 grant from our wonderful colleagues at Cardiff Council towards the permanent storage we have at the Scout hall.
We now have our insurance in place, and have our storage units built and filled with all of our wonderful specialist equipment.
Our membership package costs £10 per year and contains our
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A Membership book
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A Cwtch Together pen
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Access to Children in Wales training
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Discount to Parc Play membership cards
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An exclusive Clickety Claire Photography package
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Exclusive competitions
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An opportunity to hold your child’s birthday party at Cwtch for a small donation
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A 50p discount for each child to our weekly sessions
Our social media has grown in the past year, we now have 540 followers on Facebook, and our interaction has continued over lockdown, we have helped our families during this trying time, and offered support to those who needed it through zoom chats, phone calls or via Facebook messenger, we also set up a support group so parents could chat with each other.
We have worked with some great companies over the past year including Wild Thing, Friends of Pentre Gardens, Parc Play, etc. and are thankful for all the professional relationships we have formed in our local community.
We currently remain closed as the restrictions suggest, as most of our service users are classed as vulnerable and at risk. We are hoping to open as soon as it is feasible and safe to do so.
Sarah Darcy, Chair Chelsea Harrington, Secretary
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Opening Balance £5851.51
Month Income Expenditure +/- Balance
April 2020 £0.00 £313.93 - £313.93 £5537.58
May 2020 £1000 £133.96 £866.04 £6403.62
June 2020 £0.00 £69.00 -£69.00 £6334.62
July 2020 £1000 £54.49 £944.51 £7280.13
August 2020 £0.00 £0.00 £0.00 £7280.13
September 2020 £89.85 £2674.90 -£2585.05 £4695.08
October 2020 £59.34 £1424.16 -£1364.82 £3330.26
November 2020 £1760 £6.99 £1753.01 £5083.27
December 2020 £51.91 £279.19 -£227.28 £4855.99
January 2021 £60.00 £3.49 £56.51 £4912.50
February 2021 £0.00 £32.49 -£32.49 £4880.01
March 2021 £350.00 £24.49 £325.51 £5205.52
End of Year 2020 £4371.10 £5017.09 -£645.99 £5205.52
Closing Balance £5205.52
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