Registered Charity No. 1187985
Suicide & Co.
Charitable Incorporated Organisation
Annual Report and Financial Statements For the year ended December 2021
Legal and Administrative information
Trustees
Kevin Corrigan (Chair & Treasurer) (Appointed September 2021) Chenali Senanayake (Appointed February 2021) Amy Ropner (Appointed April 2021) Amelia Wrighton (Resigned September 2021) Adele Owen (Appointed September 2021) Phoebe Jervis Emma Morrisroe
Chief Executive
Amelia Wrighton (Appointed September 2021)
Registered Office
27 Great Smith Street London SW1P 3AZ
Bankers
Weatherbys Bank Ltd Sanders Road, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire NN8 4BX
Independent Examiner
Knill James LLP One Bell Lane Lewes East Sussex BN7 1JU
Contents
Trustee’s Annual Report
Independent Examiners Report
Financial Statements
Trustee’s Annual Report
Summary of the purposes of the charity as set out in its governing document
The advancement of health and the relief of those in need in the UK experiencing any form of bereavement in connection with suicide, by:
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enabling those who are bereaved from suicide to access information and support and making grants to those in need to enable access to appropriate counselling and self-coping techniques, in order to promote their wellbeing and minimise any related mental health issues in the future;
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raising public awareness to address the stigma associated with suicide;
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promoting research into the relationship and rights of individuals caring for those suffering from mental health issues and the public dissemination of the results of such research, for the public benefit; and
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such other means as the Trustees determine.
Statement confirming whether the trustees have had regard to the guidance issued by the Charity
Commission on public benefit
All trustees have had regard for the guidance provided by the Charity Commission, using the online resources on a number of occasions to aid the creation of processes and protocol.
Achievements and performance
Counselling Service Delivery
2021 was Suicide & Co.’s first full year of operation. With a great foundation of funds built in 2020 and a Counselling Advisory Group in place we were really proud to launch our Counselling Service in February 2021!
Working with our Counselling Advisory Group we finalised the service offering. The service offers 12 free to access sessions (with Level 4 trained bereavement counsellors). We operate the service via online video call or telephone. Each beneficiary has an assessment ahead of their sessions and we then operate in a person-centred approach, meaning they can choose the frequency of their sessions. The service is available to anyone in England and Wales over 18 who is bereaved by suicide. They also need to have been bereaved for 6 months due to the efficacy of counselling at this point and the sector dynamics (government funded referral pathways for the first 6 months).
We originally started providing our counselling through partnerships with two brilliant charities WFCS and NBP. We learnt a lot through the process but after a few months these partnerships were challenging to manage due to the scale of applicants we were seeing and the integration of processes and systems between our two organisations. So in June 2021 we found Professional Help and went through a tendering process with them to transfer the service over to their organisation. This new relationship allowed us to
build a bespoke, white labled service to fit our exact needs. It also allowed us to have consistency of service provision across the whole of England and Wales.
From our service launched our number of applicants built month by month. In the 11 months we were live we received 338 applications, of which we put 200 into counselling! We also managed to never have a waitlist! The surplus of applications that we received were either ineligible; (not bereaved for 6 months so we put them on our waitlist (67), in other counselling (5), outside England and Wales (16), or under 18 (2). If they were ineligible then after their application they did not respond or didn’t show up to counselling.
We capture all demographic information at the point of application to inform our outreach program. Currently as our data stands we have a good regional split with our highest regions being South West and North West. Our applicants are majoritively female with only 45 male applicants. We’ve had 35 applicants from the LGBTQ+ community and the majority of our applicants are white. Most common age bracket is 25-34 with 86 applicants. Our youngest applicant was 16 and our oldest was 80.
We also capture bereavement information. The shortest length of time we have had was 1 week bereaved and the longest was 49 years. The most common has been between 1.1 years – 5 years. 91% of applicants applied in first 5 years of their bereavement.
Throughout 2021 we conducted a lot of outreach calls with the sector speaking to over 65 organisations to raise awareness of our services and ensure that we were supporting the sector that was seeing significant demand. We then track where people say they heard about us and 42% of applicants were from another charity (65 from Cruse, 24 from Amparro, 8 from SOBS and 4 from Mind). We’re really proud that we’re working with the sector so collaboratively and it also proves that these well established organisations have trust in our service.
In September 2021 we introduced low cost counselling, allowing our applicants to make a contribution towards their sessions between £0-£36! This has been very successful to date for our sustainability with 72% of applicants contributing something. We will learn a lot more from this in 2022 as the data is not robust yet.
The impact of Our Counselling Service
We ask beneficiaries to rate their confidence score across our 3 aims, before they begin their counselling, and after they are finished their sessions, in order to understand how their confidence scores have changed and improved (from 0-5). For the first aim, to help people bereaved by suicide to understand and navigate their grief, the average score on the first survey before counselling is 2.3, and after counselling this score on average increases to 4.1. For the second aim, help people bereaved by suicide develop coping strategies, the average score on the first survey before counselling is 2.5, and after counselling this score on average increases to 4.4. For the third aim, help people bereaved by suicide to feel safe to explore their thoughts and feelings, the average score on the first survey before counselling is 2.7, and after counselling this score on average increases to 4.2.
We also capture qualitative data in the post-counselling survey. Here are some examples of the feedback we have received from our beneficiaries which simply proves the need and impact of our service, which is life changing to so many.
“It has given me space to accept the bereavement process and I feel as if I've found myself, even though I had not realised I'd been lost”
“Having found it very difficult to access support following the suicide of my son, I was signposted in a support group to your service. I was connected to a therapist really quickly and have just finished my counselling sessions. I found my therapist to be absolutely amazing and talking through how I was feeling and trying to make sense of things has been invaluable to me in such a dark time. Thank you so much for doing such a great job in providing support after suicide, when you face such an horrific journey. Thank you for your patience, support and kindness.”
Our helpline
During the tender process with Professional Help we were able to also put a helpline in place giving those bereaved by suicide access to talk to a bereavement counsellor Monday - Friday 9am - 9pm! We originally wanted this in place for people who were not yet 6 months bereaved so that we could signpost to the helpline after their application whilst they’re waiting for counselling. We soft launched in August and stabilised the offering until December. We received 63 calls from 46 unique callers. We also use the helpline within the Counselling Service to arrange sessions and deal with admin when needed.
Our plan is to scale awareness for this new service in 2022.
Our website and digital services
Help hub
Our Help Hub is a resource on our website which is designed to help support those bereaved by suicide from day one. Here we signpost to other useful services, and recommend softer resources such as books, podcasts and apps, and share lived experience stories. We added 60 different articles to the Help Hub in 2021 alone; the most popular articles being one on the Choppers Politics Podcast with 631 views and another on David Kessler and Brene Brown’s podcast on grief and finding meaning with 450 views. We shared 15 lived experience articles in 2021; something that our audience finds especially useful is reading the stories of others. We are proud to be able to give people a platform to share their stories, as reading about the lived experience of others can help those bereaved to feel less alone.
Conversation guide
Our Conversation Guide is an initiative that we launched in June 2021 to provide those bereaved and those supporting the bereaved with advice and guidance on how to have conversations about suiciderelated grief. We’ve created the guide from lived experience and consulting the literature out there but this is the first guide that is just about having conversations. We developed surveys that we sent out to our lived experience community to help inform the guide, and to live on the website for others to read. The
guide is split into two different navigation pathways; one for those bereaved by suicide, and one for those looking to support someone bereaved, with specific tips for both.
The guide lives on our website, but we also created a version that we deliver through a presentation to organisations, giving people tangible learnings they can take away with them, and most importantly inspiring and encouraging people to have the conversations! In 2021 our CEO delivered 7 of these presentations to different organisations across different sectors.
We also carried out a research project with an independent researcher called Jenny Winfield with 5 different participants who all had lived experience of suicide loss in order to evaluate our Conversation Guide and gain feedback to ensure the guide is as helpful as it can be.
Website
In 2021 we had 21,736 unique visitors to our website, which was a 295% increase in comparison to 2020. We had 84,530 page views overall. Our core services such as our Counselling Service page, Help Hub and Conversation Guide were all in the top 10 most viewed pages.
Fundraising performance
We raised £50,405 from Community Giving and Individuals. In 2021 we had £3,800 donated from Major Donors, and had 26 individuals complete different community events to raise money for Suicide & Co. We had 7 people take on the Royal Parks Run, 2 Ultra Challenges, and some other individual challenges. We also ran our own fundraising challenges in March with 10 before10, and in September with our 34k Challenge. Our 10 before10 fundraiser challenged our community to walk 10,000 steps before 10am for 10 days in March, and to donate £10. This was our first ever challenge that we created, and we raised £2,187.45! This created an amazing sense of community and engagement and encouraged us to create a new challenge for September, around World Suicide Prevention Day. We recruited 5 people to take on our 34k Challenge which challenged people to walk, run, cycle or swim 34km over the course of a weekend, as 34,146 is the estimated number of people directly bereaved by suicide a year. Those completing the challenge raised a combined total of £5,605.93!
Last year for Grants and Trusts we received : £5,000 grant from the Mazars Charitable Trust £2,000 grant from the Schreier Foundation £5,000 grant from The Foux Foundation £10,000 grant from the GSK Grow Program & The Kings Fund £9,797.50 grant from The Sanctus Foundation £2,438 from the Mactaggart Third Fund £3,000 from the Knit For Mental Health Foundation
We raised £20,602 from trading merchandise:
Our &Co Bracelets, which were our first ever product, are a symbol and reminder that we always have company; whether this be in family, friends, communities, or charities and services like ours, there is
always a support system available. These bracelets make a great gift, and they help to support those bereaved by suicide! These bracelets have been such a successful product and have sold out multiple times, meaning we have had to restock and release new colours!
We have two different volumes of Self-Care Prints which are beautifully designed with illustrations, inspiring quotes and lyrics, and each one funds a counselling session for someone bereaved by suicide! These prints were designed to bring colour and a touch of positivity and joy to people's homes or offices, whilst enabling us to fundraise to provide counselling sessions. The first launch of prints did so well at the start of 2021 that we decided to do a second launch of new prints at the end of the year! Our prints have been our most popular product so far in terms of units sold.
Our Alphabet Monogram Journals were created as we know that journaling can be a powerful way to explore and express your feelings, manage your stress and navigate your grief. Journaling is proven to be a great tool for your mental health and is something that we always encourage. These were created in the design of the alphabet from our Conversation Guide, and launched in August 2021. In 2021 after their launch, we sold 259 units!
In April 2021 we launched a limited campaign of Mixed Feelings T-shirts with 3 different designs: Fragile & Strong, Angry & Sad, Loved & Lonely. The purpose of the T-Shirts was to highlight that the emotions and feelings that we’re left with after losing someone aren’t always likely matches. All emotions and feelings have their place when navigating grief, or any situation and we wanted everyone to know that this is normal and they don’t have to hide their emotions away! These T-shirts did really well and our community loved them so much that we relaunched them in September for another week.
We brought our Self-Care advent calendar back for 2021 as December can feel isolating, exhausting and hard. The digital Self-Care advent calendars were created to remind people that they have company; a support network around them. Each day included a nudge of comfort and advice by email, including a beautiful illustration and a daily song with a unique playlist launching every day! The calendar only cost £6 and we sold 333 units, making £1,764!
Organisational structure
We were founded in July 2020 by Emma and Amelia, two young women who each lost a parent to suicide. We now have a team of 28 volunteers, 17 whom have lived experience of losing a loved one to suicide. We brought on our first full-time employee, Aimee, in February 2021 and in September 2021 Amelia stepped in as CEO 3 days a week (1 day paid and 2 days volunteer)! We’re incredibly proud to have a 30 year-old woman as our leader and a board of trustees with 4 members under 35!
Risk mitigation and policy review
The trustees are responsible for risk management within the charity. There are four principal risks identified:
i) Our service - the risk that our counselling service cannot meet the demand and scale. The trustees seek to mitigate this risk through ongoing review, evidencing, learning and by dedicating both paid and volunteer resources to manage the service with Professional Help
ii) IT security - the risk that the charity fails to protect stakeholder assets or data. The trustees conduct periodic reviews of systems infrastructure and have policies in place to reflect regulatory (e.g. GDPR) requirements.
iii) Safeguarding - the charity must protect its beneficiaries and its volunteers from mistreatment, discrimination or abuse. To mitigate this, the charity has the policies and procedures it deems necessary in place (e.g. the Safeguarding Policy) and procedures in place to foster a safe environment.
iv) Finance - the risk that the charity has insufficient funds to deliver its objectives. The trustees have mitigated this through the development of a fundraising plan, a budget for income and expenditure and a reserves policy.
Financial review and reserves policy
The trustees have set a reserves policy whereby we should look to hold free reserves of at least three months of operating expenditure. The trustees recognise that as the charity develops its core service, both income and expenditure will likely fluctuate. We will look to mitigate the risks of any shortfall by conducting a regular review of the reserves policy.
Below are the accounts.
| Suicide & Co | Suicide & Co | Suicide & Co | Suicide & Co | Suicide & Co | 1187985 | 1187985 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Receipts and payments accounts | |||||||||
| For the period from |
Period start date | To | Period end date | ||||||
| 01/01/2021 | 31/12/21 | ||||||||
| Section A Receipts and payments | |||||||||
| Unrestricted funds |
Restricted funds |
Endowment funds |
Total funds | Last year | |||||
| to the nearest £ |
to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | |||||
| A1 Receipts | |||||||||
| Individual Giving | 50,405 | - | - | 50,405 | 17,314 | ||||
| Trading Income | - | 20,602 | - | 20,602 | 3,950 | ||||
| Grants/Trusts | 10,000 | 43,655 | - | 53,655 | 3,707 | ||||
| Corporate | - | 3,430 | - | 3,430 | 800 | ||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 60,405 | 67,687 | - | 128,092 | 25,771 | ||||
| A2 Asset and investment sales, (see table). |
|||||||||
| - | - | - | - | ||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| Sub total | - | - | - | - | - | ||||
| 128,092 | |||||||||
| **Total receipts ** | 60,405 |
67,687 | - | 25,771 | |||||
| A3 Payments | |||||||||
| Monthly Fees | 2,316 | - | - | 2,316 | - | ||||
| Salaries | 18,982 | - | - | 18,982 | - | ||||
| Service Costs | 70,263 | - | - | 70,263 | - | ||||
| Design fees (website & merch) | 5,688 | - | - | 5,688 | - | ||||
| Fundraising (merch orders) | 6,385 | - | - | 6,385 | - | ||||
| Annual subscription fees | 947 | - | - | 947 | - | ||||
| Merch packaging & postage | 1,629 | - | - | 1,629 | - | ||||
| Fundraising costs (race places etc) | 1,439 | - | - | 1,439 | - | ||||
| Other expenses | 3,400 | - | - | 3,400 | - | ||||
| **Sub total ** | 111,049 |
- | - | 111,049 | 5,492 | ||||
| A4 Asset and investment purchases, (see table) |
|||||||||
| - | - | - | - | ||||||
| - | - | - | - | ||||||
| **Sub total ** | - |
- | - | - | |||||
| **Total payments ** | 111,049 |
- | - | 111,049 | 5,492 | ||||
| **Net of receipts/(payments) ** | - 50,644 |
67,687 | - | 17,043 | 20,279 | ||||
| A5 Transfers between funds | - | - | - | - | - | ||||
| A6 Cash funds last year end | - | - | - | - | - | ||||
| **Cash funds this year end ** | - 50,644 |
67,687 | - | 17,043 | 20,279 | ||||
| Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period | |||||||||
| Categories | Details | Unrestricted funds |
Restricted funds |
Endowment funds |
|||||
| to nearest £ | to nearest £ | to nearest £ | |||||||
| B1 Cash funds | Bank Current Account | 58,249 | 10,000 | - |
000000CCXX R1 accounts (SS)
00000008/04/2021
0000001
| - | - | - | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | - | - | |||||||
| Total cash funds | 58,249 | 10,000 | - | ||||||
| (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) |
Agreement Error | Agreement Error | OK | ||||||
| Unrestricted funds |
Restricted funds |
Endowment funds |
|||||||
| Details | to nearest £ | to nearest £ | to nearest £ | ||||||
| B2 Other monetary assets | - | - | - | ||||||
| - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | |||||||
| Details | Fund to which asset belongs |
Cost (optional) | Current value (optional) |
||||||
| B3 Investment assets | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| Details | Fund to which asset belongs |
Cost (optional) | Current value (optional) |
||||||
| B4 Assets retained for the charity’s own use |
- | - | |||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| Details | Fund to which liability relates |
Amount due (optional) |
When due (optional) |
||||||
| B5 Liabilities | - | ||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees |
Signature | Print Name | Date of approval |
||||||
| Kevin Corrigan | 30/06/22 | ||||||||
000000CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
00000008/04/2021
0000002
INDEPENDENT EXAMINER'S REPORT
TO THE TRUSTEES OF SUICIDE & CO.
I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the financial statements of Suicide & Co. ("the charity") for the year ended 31 December 2021.
Responsibilities and basis of report
As the trustees of the charity you are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (the 2011 Act).
I report in respect of my examination of the charity's financial statements carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act. In carrying out my examination I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the 2011 Act.
Independent examiner's statement
I have completed my examination. I confirm that no matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:
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1 accounting records were not kept in respect of the charity as required by section 130 of the 2011 Act; or
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2 the financial statements do not accord with those records; or
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3 the financial statements do not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a true and fair view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination.
I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the financial statements to be reached.
Knill James LLP
One Bell Lane
Lewes
East Sussex BN71JU
Dated: