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2024-08-31-accounts

Zoho Sign Document ID". 4AE4CF1A1-TUHZXG14QZYRSQDR9QXEREORCXM5Z1SSXDRLFPV PO r. Baby Umbrella Annual Report & Accounts 2023 - 2024 www.babyumbrella.org.uk info@babyumbrella.org.uk @babyumbrella Kenl Charity Awards Winner: Starl-up 2022 Kent Mental Wellbeing Awards Registered chority number 1190745 HIGHLY COMMENDED 2023

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Contents

Welcome from our Chair of Trustees and Founders..................................................................3 What we do............................................................................................................................... 6 Vision, Mission and Values........................................................................................................ 7 Our strategic purposes and priorities........................................................................................8 Our strategic purposes........................................................................................................ 8 Our priorities to deliver our strategy...................................................................................8 Our finances 2023-24: Summary...............................................................................................9 Our year in review................................................................................................................... 10 Building a foundation for expanding core services........................................................... 10 Our team........................................................................................................................... 13 Our services.......................................................................................................................16 Service support................................................................................................................. 23 Our Impact........................................................................................................................ 26 Fundraising........................................................................................................................ 28 Looking forward to 2024-25.................................................................................................... 33 2024-25 Strategic Priorities............................................................................................... 33 Financial Results...................................................................................................................... 35 Legal and Administrative Information..................................................................................... 37 Objectives................................................................................................................................38 Public Benefit.......................................................................................................................... 38 Governance and Management................................................................................................39 Principal Risks..........................................................................................................................40 Statement of Responsibilities of the Trustees of Baby Umbrella............................................ 41 Independent Examiner’s Report to the Trustees of Baby Umbrella........................................ 42 Statement of Financial Activities.............................................................................................43 Balance Sheet..........................................................................................................................44 Notes to the accounts............................................................................................................. 45

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Welcome from our Chair of Trustees and Founders

Our fourth year of operation has been characterised by an injection of new talent to our team and our Board. Just as the first tiny babies we supported have grown up and are getting ready to start school, our charity has matured too. Our founding Board of Trustees have said goodbye and our new team is excited to take us forward to the next phase.

Our focus during the year has been to continue to build a service support function to meet the needs of our growing charity. We have made progress at paying fair rates for work at our core, rather than relying on goodwill, and brought in additional support for operations, marketing and fundraising as the services we provide have grown.

significantly reducing parenting stress, and helping parents understand and respond to their babies.

Babies are among the most vulnerable individuals in our society, and new parenthood is a uniquely precarious phase of life where mental health can often suffer. We are single-minded in ensuring that families receive best in class support when they walk through our doors, enabling them to find their feet and build strength for the journey ahead.

Ema Saunders

Chair of Trustees

Jennie Yelverton

Education and Practice Lead

We have also made a significant investment in supporting our team of practitioners and volunteers in the form of enhanced onboarding, training and supervision.

Karen McCully

Clinical, Community and Client Lead

Laura Shtaingos

Operations, Finance and Marketing Lead

In August 2024, we received a small grant from Involve to enable us to explore the impact we have on infant mental health. Infants need secure, responsive relationships to thrive. The presence of a reliable, safe, supportive community around new families can transform their lives and their futures.

We found that our appointments have a remarkable impact on families at this early stage, driving improvements in positive relationships with their babies,

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Baby Umbrella (Charity Reg: 1190745) Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24

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Our impact in numbers

Sources: Baby Umbrella data on service booking and delivery, and Baby Umbrella feedback form sent to beneficiaries after their visit.

Baby Umbrella (Charity Reg: 1190745) Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24

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What we do

Our charity was formed in 2020 to provide early parenting support services across West Kent. We are passionate about providing evidence-based, compassionate support which empowers families.

We deliver 1-1 and group support in Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and online 52 weeks a year as well as email, messenger, Facebook and WhatsApp.

We support over 1,000 families a year with breastfeeding, bottle feeding, expressing, introducing solids, and adjusting to parenthood, including parental mental wellbeing and infant sleep. All our support is provided through a DEIB lens and we work with our community to co-create services that meet individual needs.

We offer specialist appointments from highly skilled and experienced

Breastfeeding Counsellors and Lactation Consultants; peer support from our trained Volunteer Peer Supporters; and a dedicated Zoom Listening Service run by Breastfeeding Counsellors with additional counselling skills for parents who are struggling with emotional wellbeing.

We have a fantastic team of Specialist Practitioners, in-house trained volunteer Peer Supporters, and volunteer Group Hosts who together deliver exceptional support to families.

We also plan, organise and host multiple webinars every year to educate both parents and professionals, covering topics such as feeding, infant sleep and mental health. We have fostered relationships with leading UK expert speakers to run these sessions and they are recorded and available free on our website for families to watch afterwards.

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Vision, Mission and Values

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Our strategic purposes and priorities

Our strategic purposes

  1. Provide free of charge, timely access to skilled support on breastfeeding, infant feeding, infant sleep and mental wellbeing across West Kent; and facilitate social connections.

  2. Improve knowledge and confidence in early parenting among parents, supporters and allied professionals.

  3. Connect the dots between services for parents in the area through signposting, collaboration and team building.

  4. Reach a diverse population reflective of the community we serve.

Our priorities to deliver our strategy

Optimising, broadening, deepening and expanding our offering to better meet families’ needs

  1. Diversify and grow our income streams to improve funding stability.

  2. Optimise our current operations to most effectively meet the needs of local families.

  3. Broaden and deepen our support to better meet client needs.

  4. Build links for collaboration and signposting.

  5. Represent and raise local families’ voices; embed diversity in everything we do.

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Our finances 2023-24: Summary

Income and expenditure growth

2023-24 income and expenditure

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Our year in review

Building a foundation for expanding core services

We have continued to see consistently high levels of demand, especially for our specialist breastfeeding and early parenting support services, which receive excellent reviews by attendees. Particularly through November 2023, and April and May 2024, it has proved challenging to predict what capacity we will need, and to add enough additional practitioners at short notice. This has had a knock-on effect on waiting lists. Though we are still managing to see 80% of these bookings within 7 days, our target is 85%. We know that when the service appears very busy, parents delay booking for lower level concerns. We suspect we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in demand.

A priority for 2024-25 is to build additional flexible capacity across the service among practitioners, peer supporters and volunteers, so that we are able to expand our support. This will include looking at our process of training and retaining peer supporters and improving volunteering rates.

2023- 2024 Milestones

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Our improved safeguarding processes have enabled us to further understand the need for mental health support. Our Listening Service continues to develop and we have trialled four taster Maternal Journal mental wellbeing groups for mums which were well received. We are finding that different families like to access mental wellbeing support in different ways, and that word of mouth is absolutely critical in this area.

With such a small team, the split focus of managing service delivery capacity, innovation and fundraising has been challenging. We have also found it harder to find funding for our core service and its support function rather than funding for innovation. While we have cautiously increased resourcing for service support during the year, we need to continue to invest here.

We have also managed significant change in our governance structures this year, with most of our founding Board of Trustees moving on, and brought in some fantastic new skills and experience to the team. With more charity professionals coming onto our Board, we are starting to build the governance structures at Board and subcommittee levels to manage our charity really effectively and provide a springboard for increasing our impact in the community. We are also seeing greater collaboration between our trustees and the Management team.

As we near the end of the financial year, there is a clear agreement across the Board and Management team that we need to invest in our fundraising capacity, particularly to drive funds towards our core service delivery and support, so that we can continue to grow the remarkable impact our core services make every single day. Our grants income stream is the initial priority to invest in, followed by non-grant income encompassing supporter engagement and community outreach.

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Our team

Board of Trustees

We have had several changes to our Board of Trustees this financial year as two of our founding trustees have moved on and we prepare for several more terms to complete over the next year. We have always been very fortunate to have a very strong set of applicants to our Board and in 2023-24 we welcomed five new trustees with skills in charity governance, safeguarding, healthcare, finance and strategy.

We have also created some new Board sub-committees to enable the Board to support the Management team with their individual areas of expertise. These include: Safeguarding, Fundraising Strategy, Non-Grant Income and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion with an ambition to set up a Finance and Risk Committee in early 2024-25.

Management and Service Support team

Our Management team have continued to cement their roles and in 2023-24 we have made further progress towards paying them in line with market rates, reducing their pro-bono support for the charity to promote equity and sustainability, and to reduce key person risk. Our four specialist contractors support the charity with book-keeping, operations, HR, marketing, bid-writing, and events. We have carefully increased our paid team from 1.8 FTE in 2022-23 to 2.4 FTE in 2023-24 (comprising Management, Service Support and Practitioners).

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Our Practitioners

Our core team of eight practitioners have over 100 years of combined experience supporting families with breastfeeding and early parenting. All our practitioners are trained and licensed as either "Lactation Consultants" or "Breastfeeding Counsellors" by recognised breastfeeding organisations. Many have additional training in related sectors such as Midwifery, Nutrition, Antenatal Education, Babywearing, Infant Sleep and Perinatal Mental Health. We also provide ongoing support and development, as well as supervision, to all of our practitioners to ensure their knowledge and skills are up to date.

In April we said goodbye to one of our Lactation Consultants, Jane Gerard-Pearse, on her retirement from practice (and from our Board of Trustees). Jane is often referred to by families as “The Jane” so prodigious are her skills! We will miss her greatly and will be looking to add a replacement practitioner to our team in 2024-25.

Our Peer Supporters and Volunteers

We are extremely lucky to have fantastic volunteers across our charity who give up their valuable time to help us and the families we serve.

Seventeen trained Baby Umbrella Breastfeeding Peer Supporters volunteered for us during the financial year. These are volunteers who have breastfed their own babies and completed 14 weeks of training in Breastfeeding Peer Support, as well as additional training in perinatal mental health and infant sleep.

Throughout the year, our Peer Supporters volunteered 648 hours for us, offering breastfeeding support and information to families at our peer support groups.

We also have thirteen further volunteers who have helped us host and run our face-to-face sessions throughout the year. These volunteers provide a crucial warm welcome when parents walk through the door, sometimes just hours or days after giving birth and at a time which can often feel very daunting and vulnerable. They ensure everyone is looked after and offered a hot drink and brownie, as well as completing all our paperwork and making sure sessions run smoothly. These generous individuals have contributed 240 hours of their time this financial year.

Behind the scenes, we also must mention our fantastic graphic designer - thank you Izzy!

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Our services

We provide information and support on a variety of Breastfeeding and Early Parenting topics covering feeding, sleep, mental wellbeing and building communities. We offer a variety of channels of support so parents can access it when and where they need it. Our specialist and drop-in support sessions run every week of the year, only pausing for bank holidays.

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Specialist 1-1 appointments for Breastfeeding and Early Parenting Support

Our Breastfeeding Counsellors and Lactation Consultants are available for bookable 1-1 specialist support in all of our in person groups, as well as on Zoom. During this financial year, we have completed 1,384 individual face-to-face appointments and 236 individual Zoom appointments, all with dedicated and tailored support from our specialist practitioners.

This year we have seen consistently high demand for specialist support appointments, with the majority of requests being seen within a week. By its’ nature, serving new families can be unpredictable, with peaks in demand that come at different times each year. April and May 2024 were particularly busy and at times we have struggled to add enough capacity at short notice to serve this with a knock-on effect on waiting times.

1-1 specialist appointments served by location - year on year comparison

Families come to us from across West Kent (and sometimes farther afield) for all sorts of urgent and overwhelming reasons.

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The majority of families are first time parents and 98% are breastfeeding (with 26% feeding formula alongside and 4% feeding solids alongside). Almost half are referred directly from midwifery, with word of mouth referrals this year jumping from 15% to 20%. 39% first book within 7 days of birth. We are proud to welcome partners and supporters to all our sessions with 53% of our attendees bringing someone with them for support.

For the first time this year, we trialled offering specific specialist 1-1 appointments for families antenatally. We found this a great way to build relationships with families before birth and help them plan for how to feed and care for their babies. 65% of these families returned for support after their babies were born. Families told us that the appointments helped them feel more confident and knowledgeable about feeding their baby and knowing if feeding is going well, understand more about the types of support available, and feel more able to reach out for support if needed. We continue to see families antenatally as required.

Our practitioners also reported finding these appointments valuable for them and for the parents who visited. It also helped encourage them to come back into the space for postnatal support.

Peer Support

Many of our families really benefit from meeting other families in the area and our weekly Peer Support groups provide a safe space to come with your baby and receive a hot drink and a warm welcome. Our trained Peer Supporters are embedded into these sessions and support our mums with questions on normal breastfeeding and life with a baby.

Alongside the social groups, we also run a public Facebook page , a closed Facebook group , and a WhatsApp group for each of our locations .

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Listening Service & Mental Wellbeing Support

Our Listening Service continues to support parents who are struggling with their emotional wellbeing via 75 minute appointments on Zoom. These appointments are run by two of our practitioners who have done additional training in advanced listening skills and perinatal trauma. They also receive additional supervision and training to support them in this work.

Those who have used the service report it being extremely effective, with parents saying in particular that they feel heard and listened to, they have more ideas on how to support their emotional wellbeing, they know how to access additional support, and they understand their feelings and experience better.

In August 2024 we ran a focus group to better understand how parents view the service. We found that cultural taboos around seeking mental health support in the perinatal phase continue to be a hurdle we have to navigate. Many parents feel it is a ‘crisis service’ for people who must be ‘worse off than them’. Indeed it is common even for those who access the service (who are often encountering multiple very difficult challenges), to apologise and say that they feel like a fraud and a failure for booking.

We are very proud to deliver an accessible service that local families in crisis can access freely and without delay. In addition to this, we’re still working to break the taboos of mental wellbeing support and widen access for the many families booking in for feeding support who we feel would benefit from additional emotional support too. We are continuing to experiment with various ways to deliver emotional support that might feel lighter touch and more informal for parents to access in this vulnerable phase.

In 2023-24 this has included running four taster Maternal Journal sessions for new parents. These sessions use creative journaling prompts to help mothers complete a simple creative exercise in their journals and share their experiences in a small group. Our taster sessions were very well received and many attendees went on to use the Listening Service to explore their experiences further. By weaving emotional literacy throughout all of our services we are enabling families to access support in their own time according to what they feel most comfortable with. We are looking forward to further similar pilots in 2024-25.

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Online Resources

This year we added three new video courses to our website to extend our topics to cover perinatal mental wellbeing and feeding. For the first time we have added talks recorded by our own practitioners (covering breastfeeding, bottle feeding, expressing, and how we talk to ourselves as new parents), bringing their vast experience and knowledge to parents to access whenever they like.

We also welcomed Mia Scotland, a leading UK perinatal psychologist, to the platform. Her workshop covers protecting your mental health when a new baby arrives and shares many of the techniques our practitioners and Peer Supporters learned from her last year.

Lastly, our local Singing Mamas leader, Laura Lamn, joined us to explore how singing in the postnatal period can support mental wellbeing with exercises to practice at home.

These talks join our existing ones and are available on our website to watch for free at babyumbrella.org.uk/education.

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Website

In June 2023, we significantly restructured our website to make it easier to navigate and added several new online resources to support parents. The development of a resources section forms the foundation for us to be able to use our new CRM platform to send out relevant resources to parents based on their booking behaviour and what they tell us they need.

Service support

Internal Education and Training

Internal training programmes: We continue to provide our practitioners with training to support their work in breastfeeding, infant sleep and perinatal wellbeing. This year we have rolled out extensive training in infant sleep to ensure our practitioners are confident and skilled in this important area of our work. We often find that sleep forms part of the discussion with parents and this knowledge will help our team support and protect normal infant sleep as well as knowing what to do if they spot any concerns. This training ran from September 2023 and was completed as a group over the following six months. We concluded the training with a session run by Lyndsey Hookway to ask questions and look at scenarios that we might come across in practice.

In January 2024, three of our practitioners completed facilitation training for Maternal Journal, allowing us to run groups for mothers face to face and online. These groups are highly effective at encouraging mothers to spend time reflecting on their experiences together and learning creative tools to support their mental wellbeing. We hope this will be the start of being able to pilot sessions over a number of weeks to monitor the impact of this support over a longer period.

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We have continued to roll out our Mia Scotland training in perinatal mental health for our practitioners. This 5 module course will aim to be completed by the remainder of our team in 2024-25.

We have started to review our training in safeguarding this year with our new subcommittee. We have added Level 1 training in safeguarding adults to our team requirements (in addition to safeguarding children) and have required the Management team to do level 3 in children and adult safeguarding. In 2024-25 we aim to bring in external knowledge and skills taking the Management team’s safeguarding training to level 5.

We have not trained any new Peer Supporters this year, but our current cohort have been working really well with parents. One thing we have identified is that our training may be hard to access for some, requiring them to attend a number of consecutive face to face sessions and only running irregularly. We are therefore considering moving more of it online, ensuring key elements remain face-to-face and making it more accessible and flexible for parents who are often going back to work earlier than in previous years. We hope this will also improve retention and completion rates. We aim to develop this new training programme in the Autumn of 2024 to start training in early 2025.

We continue to build our support and supervision function to provide flexible and accessible support for our team. We have identified that volunteers lack a supervision group so have started some work to see how best to support them. We are looking at the pros and cons of inviting them to the peer supporter group sessions.

Safeguarding

A particular focus for our service support team this year has been a full proactive review of our safeguarding policy and processes including working with various professionals with safeguarding expertise across our local networks. A key change has been to set up a Safeguarding Subcommittee at board level, providing policy and process oversight as well as expert support for individual cases when required.

In May 2023 we improved our process for flagging low level safeguarding concerns. As many of the families who visit us are in the vulnerable stages of new parenting, we felt it would be useful to have a lower level concern for those who do not need proactive referrals but still may need additional support, time, signposting or perhaps a more proactive outreach from us. 2023-24 has seen a focus on improving practitioner confidence at flagging these concerns for the safeguarding team to monitor and escalate where appropriate. Most concerns relate to maternal mental health or baby’s weight gain and can be supported within our service, and through signposting specific support from our network of allied services within the area for individual needs.

These low level concerns are carefully monitored and escalated by the safeguarding team if required. Occasionally we feel that we need additional specialist knowledge to manage risk and ensure we are taking the right steps for families we are worried about (including

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proactive referrals if necessary). We would in particular like to thank Sam Haspell, CEO of DAVSS (Domestic Abuse Volunteer Support Services in West Kent), for her specialist support here in helping us develop processes to manage higher level safeguarding concerns. We are committed to learning from cross-partnership working and proactively asking for expert input.

DEIB

Our Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB) workstream has continued, and we have spent time evaluating and improving our volunteer onboarding process to ensure that anyone who would like to get involved in our team is supported to do so and any accessibility concerns are addressed. We have also developed a robust offboarding process to ensure that there are proper endings to volunteering, allowing volunteers to feed back to us, and for us to thank and learn from those who have worked with us. We have attended various webinars and conferences on DEIB related issues relating to the workplace and to our particular beneficiary demographics. One idea we have taken from this outward looking work is to pilot some small community WhatsApp groups for marginalised communities in our locality.

Systems development

We have begun work in earnest to implement a CRM system (Zoho) that will enable us to have a better understanding of our beneficiaries and donors and serve them with more individualised and timely information to better meet their needs. We are excited about the opportunities it will bring, particularly in terms of identifying beneficiary behaviours that suggest urgent support is required (e.g. multiple cancellations, or indications of high levels of distress) and building automated processes to bring these to our attention such that we can prioritise support and information delivery. We anticipate that this system will start to bear fruit in Spring 2025.

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Our Impact

Our impact continues to be both wide-reaching and significant. We estimate that of the 3,300 babies born in Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells districts each year, we see approximately one third of them coming through our service for support.

We request feedback from all those we support by email after their visit. This financial year we received feedback from 124 of our appointments, representing 11% of the individual families seen. We are always looking at ways to improve upon this response rate and bring feedback methods into our groups. We receive consistently strong feedback and very high recommendation rates from those who review our service.

Through our appointments, we aim to support parental and feeding confidence, emotional wellbeing and also enable parents to socialise and receive peer support within our face-to-face groups. Our feedback shows unambiguously that we are meeting these aims. We have emerging findings that show that while all of our services meet these aims very well, some of them are particularly effective in specific areas. For example 1-1 Specialist and Listening support is most effective at reducing anxiety and boosting confidence, but for a mood booster and a reduction in loneliness, you can’t beat Peer Support.

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This financial year we have begun to monitor our impact on parent-infant relationships and infant mental health, at the very foundation of our work.

Infants need secure, responsive relationships to thrive, ideally from their parents. The presence of a reliable, safe, supportive community around new families can transform their lives and build a foundation for future mental wellbeing.

In December 2023 we contributed to the co-creation of a new five-year Strategy for Perinatal Mental Health and Parent Infant Relationships in Kent, providing a case study on how Baby Umbrella services support good Parent-Infant Relationships and Perinatal Mental Health.

In August 2024 a grant from Involve then allowed us to test whether our appointments were having the impact on relationships we hoped - the results were remarkable.

Our appointments drive improvements in parents’ relationships with their babies, reduce parenting stress, and help parents better understand and respond to their babies.

Our aim is to make a positive impact on families over the long term. We see this anecdotally, with repeat visits, progression to additional services, engagement with volunteering and peer support training, and taking part in community and fundraising events. Focusing investment in

the next year in our CRM system will enable us to better understand and demonstrate this impact.

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Fundraising

This year has brought further challenges for both grant funding and individual donations, with a rise in grant giving organisations closing their doors, spending down or pausing to take stock as they deal with record numbers of applications. Funding is thin on the ground too from local authorities, and inflation continues to wreak havoc on household finances, impacting individual giving.

Despite all this, we have managed to grow our income by 22% this year, to £131,609. In particular, grant income rose significantly to £74,217, with a boost at the very end of our financial year from The National Lottery Awards for All.

As a relatively new small charity, we are heavily dependent on grant income and this must continue to be a primary focus for our strategy. The environment for grants funding seems to become more difficult with each passing year, but our focus around mental wellbeing, creativity, the early years, and DEIB is attractive to many funders and in 2024-25 we will be looking to increase our resourcing to manage applications and reporting for trusts and foundations.

Our beneficiaries are in a life stage that places unique restrictions on their disposable income and their free time, however our service makes an enduring difference to those who come through our doors. This stage of life often brings new perspectives alongside its challenges and many parents are keen to pass on support to those who come after them. Although many are unable to pay for support when they desperately need it, they often do return to support us further down the line when they have more disposable income and time to give. The investment in our CRM is a key way to support this strategy, enabling us to deepen relationships over time and build a support network across our community. We aim to build our resources through 2025 and 2026 to support this arm of our fundraising strategy, covering community fundraising and individual giving, events, and corporate partnerships.

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We wish to thank all of our supporters this year for their generous contributions. If you feel you can help us meet this fundraising challenge in whatever way, large or small, we would love to hear from you. Please get in touch at info@babyumbrella.org.uk.

Grants

A large source of our income is from charitable trusts and foundations and we have been successful in gaining the support of various trusts over the past year.

We would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to the following trusts, foundations and local councils that have generously supported us this year:

The National Lottery Community Fund (£16,744)

Colyer Fergusson (£10,000)

Kent County Council (£8,624)

KCF: High Hilden fund (£6,000)

Foyle Foundation (£5,000) Leathersellers (£5,000) Schroder Charity Trust

Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council

Tesco Community Fund Dunton Green Parish Council Sevenoaks Town Council Paddock Wood Lions Big Give Women and Girls Match Fund Brasted Parish Council Involve Kent Marden Parish Council The Royal Tunbridge Westerham Parish Wells Round Table Council Tunbridge Wells Borough Wrotham Parish Council Council Edenbridge and Wadhurst Warriors Westerham Rotary Club The Chandris Foundation Eynsford Parish Council Tonbridge Round Table Horsmonden Parish Council Otford Parish Council

Donations

The landscape for seeking individual donations has continued to be difficult, with the cost of living crisis meaning many families are struggling to make ends meet. Many families say to us they could never have afforded support like ours if they had had to pay and we are committed to providing services that are free for anyone to access no matter their circumstances.

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We are very grateful to those families who feel they can give back to us and aim to make it as easy as possible to do so. We have contactless donations at all our face-to-face services and donations can also be made at booking, in cash at our face-to-face services, via QR code, or online.

We would particularly like to thank Guy Butler Ltd for their kind donation; and Christ Church Tunbridge Wells who gave us a donation in kind worth £2,127 of rent this year.

Fundraising events

We run various fundraising events throughout the year and these often serve a dual purpose as a chance for families to get together or try something new while supporting us at the same time.

We had 10 brilliant runners sign up to run the London Landmarks Half Marathon this year, double the number from last year. Together they raised a fantastic total of £6,900. Go Team!

This year for the first time we took part in the Big Give Women and Girls Matched Crowdfunder challenge, successfully raising over £3,000 in individual donations and gift aid, matched with a further £2,470 by the Big Give.

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We ran three successful collaborations with Sarah Hart Photography , allowing 237 local families to access professional quality photography of their growing families at low cost, and raising us over £4,600 for Baby Umbrella. Thank you Sarah!

Christmas is a key time for fundraising for us, and our custom made Christmas Handprint Decorations in collaboration with Eat Pray Print were again hugely successful this year, raising the charity £5,700. Thank you Joy!

We ran another successful collaboration with Eat Pray Print for Father’s Day , with customised mugs, cufflinks and keyrings, raising over £800.

We ran a fantastic Spring Treats Prize Draw in March raising a total of £700. Thank you to the wonderful local businesses who generously donated gifts as prizes!

Karen (our Clinical, Community and Client Lead) had the opportunity to put her prodigious face painting skills to the test this year at four separate local community fairs. We always enjoy bumping into families we’ve supported in the past, and raising awareness of our services. In total, we raised over £1,600 from donations. Thank you Karen!

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We brought our community together in March for our first live Poetry Evening at the Old Auction House in Tunbridge Wells. It was a night to remember with beautiful words, music, and lots of new connections made, and also raised us £400.

Thank you to Ema Saunders and the West Peckham Craft Fair who ran bake sales in our aid; Little Learners who ran a messy play fundraiser; and Monica Atkinson for a sponsored Walkathon . Together they raised over £1,000 for us!

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Looking forward to 2024-25

During our coming fifth year (2024-25) we have a joint focus on continuing to improve operational processes, governance and further strengthening and building engagement with our community.

2024-25 Strategic Priorities

1. Diversify income streams to improve funding stability

With a still unpredictable and very competitive funding environment, our highest priority has to remain fundraising. We will be continuing to apply for grants, large and small. An investment in data and systems will enable us to be smarter at individual donor activation. We will also be continuing to innovate with our proprietary fundraising events, local commercial partnerships and peer-to-peer fundraising through challenges and events.

2. Optimise current operations to most effectively meet the needs of families

We would like to continue to optimise our website and communications, to improve the understanding of the services we provide and ensure the experience and navigation is user friendly for all new and existing beneficiaries. Improvements to our data storage and processing will enable us to be smarter about how we provide information to various beneficiaries at various stages of their journey with us.

3. Broaden and deepen support to better meet client needs

We will be continuing to develop our safeguarding monitoring system to ensure we are doing all that we can for the most vulnerable families in our service. We are committed to the ongoing growth of our peer support programme such that we can support families with smaller niggling problems who we know hesitate to take our specialists’ time away from tiny babies. We will continue to test group support formats such as Maternal Journal to support perinatal mental health, and drive awareness and understanding of our Listening Service. In parent education, we will continue to engage leading speakers to bring relevant topics to our local parents and build out the self-service resources available on our website.

4. Build links for collaboration and signposting

Relationship building with local maternity services and health visiting will continue to be important. Continuing our strong links with allied services across West Kent enables us to signpost our beneficiaries effectively, understanding what free, affordable and private

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sector options exist for parents in areas such as paediatrics, osteopathy, tongue tie division, speech and language therapy, mental health support, physical rehabilitation after birth and much more!

5. Represent and raise local families’ voices; embed diversity in everything we do

We are looking forward to trialling some small WhatsApp groups bringing together members of the community who might not feel as comfortable accessing our services. These will be run by community members sharing various characteristics such as language, ethnicity or culture. We hope this will enable us to think creatively together about changes we can make to improve access to our services or develop different services according to needs.

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Financial Results

Summary

During our fourth year of operation the charity raised £131,609 and spent £113,629. After allowing for the allocation of the appropriate expenditure in the year against restricted funds, there was a surplus of £56,141 of reserves; of which £55,384 was available as free reserves (excluding fixed assets).

Unrestricted funds

The charity raised £66,722 of general or unrestricted income. Expenditure of £59,519 was set against this, leaving a surplus of £7,203.

Restricted funds

We raised £64,887 of restricted income and the associated expenditure was £54,110, leaving a surplus of £10,777.

Sources of income

£74,217 was received from grants and trusts, £38,856 from individual donors and £18,191 from fundraising events.

Expenditure

Our main expenditure is on office and overheads (mostly administrative support for our services, and project work), and practitioner fees to run our client-facing charitable activities. We also incur costs for rent and refreshments for in-person services, and fundraising.

Reserves Policy

The Board of Trustees has agreed a reserves policy whereby the unrestricted funds not committed or invested in tangible fixed assets (the ‘free reserves’) held by the charity should provide sufficient funds to cover at least 3 months of full-scale operation.

In July 2024, the Board decided to increase this target to 4 months to account for the unpredictable funding environment. We anticipate that 4 months will give the Board adequate time to come together and appeal for additional funding from both trusts and individual donors. At 31st August 2024 four months of full-scale operation equated to £35,448, leaving a surplus of £19,936 from our total free reserves of £55,384.

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Investment Policy

Our funds are currently held in a current account and a savings account at HSBC, with a small amount at PayPal.

Fundraising Policy

We aim for best practice in fundraising to ensure our donors feel safe, valued and well supported, taking care that our fundraising activities are within the WHO Code for the Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes as well as adhering to the Fundraising Regulator and other professional fundraising bodies.

We never buy or sell people’s personal information and we work hard to respect people’s wishes about how they want us to communicate with them. We have embedded the General Data Protection Regulation into the way we work.

We do not use cold calling or cold mailing to raise funds and do not employ external companies to fundraise on our behalf, with the exception of one individual bid-writer. We are registered with the Fundraising Regulator and we have received no complaints about fundraising in 2023-24.

Donors, funders and fundraisers

The Trustees would like to thank all trusts, organisations and individuals who generously supported the work of Baby Umbrella. With your support we’ve been able to make a huge difference to the lives of families who come to us at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives.

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Legal and Administrative Information

The Trustees present their annual report for Baby Umbrella Charitable Incorporated Organisation for the year ended 31 August 2024. The financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011 and Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Report Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) issued October 2019 (effective 1 January 2019).

Status

Baby Umbrella is a registered charity (CIO), charity number 1190745, registered in England and Wales.

Trustee Board

The members of the Board during the year were:

Hope Maguire term ended 26/10/2023
Jane Gerard-Pearse term ended 27/04/2024
Sarah Martin appointed 25/03/2024 term ended 04/07/2024
Bronwen Halfpenny-Ray term ended 26/10/2024
Alison Day term ended 26/10/2024
Alissa Brumby term ended 26/10/2024
Chloe Gastrell term ended 26/10/2024
Nicola Kirkwood
Ema Saunders
Cat Hardwick appointed 25/03/2024
Jaime Phipps appointed 25/03/2024
Rebecca O'Dwyer appointed 25/03/2024
Marissa Conway appointed 25/03/2024
Katherine Barnes appointed 18/10/2024
Amy Tippen-Smith appointed 18/10/2024

Management Committee

The members of the Management Committee during the year were Jennifer Yelverton; Karen McCully; Laura Shtaingos

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Principal Office: 51 The Avenue, Tunbridge Wells, TN2 3FJ

Independent Examiner: Tonbridge Accountants Ltd, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX

Objectives

The objectives of the CIO are:

The advancement of health for the public interest by providing easily accessible skilled support for postnatal physical and mental health in and around West Kent.

1) By providing open access community groups with skilled, non-judgemental professionals (including Lactation Consultants and Breastfeeding Counsellors) and trained volunteers in order to support breastfeeding and parenting, reduce postnatal social isolation, and improve postnatal mental health;

2) By providing education, training and volunteering opportunities, building expertise within the sector and supporting parents to increase confidence and return to work;

3) By working in partnership with NHS, Local Authority, Third Sector and Private Sector services to ensure continuity of parent-centred responsive care;

4) By increasing accessibility and inclusivity of support services to address inequality.

Public Benefit

We have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing our aims and objectives and in planning future activities. In particular, the Trustees have considered how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives they have set. Our activities are set out in more detail elsewhere in this report but in summary, we provide breastfeeding and early parenting support in three physical locations as well as online and through social media and messages every week, and have provided group social support in person and online to enable parents to meet. We also provide a perinatal Listening Service, and regular online educational parenting talks. These are in the public interest and benefit parents and new parents in particular.

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Governance and Management

Board of Trustees

Members of the Trustee Board who served during the year and up to the date of this report, are set out on the previous page.

The Trustee Board is responsible and accountable for Baby Umbrella’s policies and activities to the Charity Commission, to Funders and beneficiaries, and for compliance with charity law. It is responsible for the financial and strategic affairs of the charity, for the Annual Budget and the Annual Report and Accounts.

Diversity

We are committed to ensuring our services are accessible to, and accessed by, all parents in need of them. This year we have kicked off our Diversity, Equality, Inclusion and Belonging project which aims to build a strategy and activities to ensure our services are accessible to all.

Trustee Recruitment

Appointment to the board of Trustees continues to be via an open and formal recruitment process. Every trustee must be appointed for a term of between two and five years by a resolution passed at a properly convened meeting of the charity trustees.

Trustee Induction and Training

An induction programme is in place for new Trustees. Any training needs may be identified for both new and established Trustees in collaboration with the Chair of Trustees.

Trustee Meetings

The Trustees meet as a full Board 4 times a year. The Trustees also hold an Annual Strategy Away Day which includes the Management Committee.

Management Committee

The Management Committee is responsible for the day-to-day delivery of the activities and services of Baby Umbrella. It meets formally twelve times a year as well as working collaboratively on a day-to-day basis. The Management Committee is accountable to the Board of Trustees and presents regular reports against the charity’s agreed strategic aims and plan.

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Principal Risks

The Trustees reviewed the risks to which the charity could be exposed and are satisfied that the charity has taken all reasonable steps to minimise risk and that it has policies and procedures in place to manage risk effectively in all areas of the charity’s work, including a risk register that is updated regularly by Management and key risks circulated to the Board. The key risks were identified as follows:

Financial Solvency/ Fundraising

Steps to mitigate:

Inadequate safeguarding

Steps to mitigate:

Loss of key staff & Staff illness/ burnout

Steps to mitigate:

IT - systems fail to meet operational requirements

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Statement of Responsibilities of the Trustees of Baby Umbrella

The Trustees are required by charity law to prepare financial statements for each year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and of the surplus or deficit of the charity for that year. In preparing these financial statement, the Trustees are required to:-

(a) Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;

(b) Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;

(c) Prepare the financial statements on a on going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the Charity will continue in operation;

financial position of the charity and to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Charities Act.

The Trustees are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

The Trustees confirm they have referred to the guidance contained in the Charity Commission's general guidance on the public benefit when reviewing the charity's aims and objectives and in planning future activities.

(d) State whether the policies adopted are in accordance with the Charities Act 2011 and with applicable accounting standards and Statements of Recommended

Practice, subject to any material departure disclosed and explained in the financial statements;

(e) Observe the methods and principles of the Charities SORP.

The Trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the

Approved by the Board of Trustees on: 22nd April 2025.

Signed on its behalf by:

Ema Saunders (Chair of Trustees)

Rebecca O’Dwyer (Treasurer Trustee)

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Independent Examiner’s Report to the Trustees of Baby Umbrella

I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the accounts of Baby Umbrella for the year ended 31 August 2024.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (“the Act”).

I report in respect of my examination of the Charity’s accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the Act.

Independent Examiners Statement

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect:

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 accounts to be reached.

Apr 22 2025

Laughton Ross FCA Independent Examiner

Tonbridge Accountants Limited

27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AX

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Statement of Financial Activities

For the period ended 31 August 2024

Notes
Income
Donations and legacies
3
Investments
Other trading activities
Total
Expenditure
Raising funds
Trading activities
Charitable activities
5
Total
Net income/ (expenditure)
and net movement in funds
Reconciliation of funds:
Total funds brought forward
Total funds carried forward		 2023-24
2023-24
2023-24
2022-23
Unrestricted Restricted
Total
Total
£
£
£
£
48,186
64,887
113,073
91,909
345
-
345
-
18,191
-
18,191
16,290
66,722
64,887
131,609
108,199
6,301
2,943
9,244
5,224
6,875
-
6,875
7,845
46,343
51,167
97,510
72,538
59,519
54,110
113,629
85,607
7,203
10,777
17,980
22,592
33,909
(11,316)
22,592
36,253
41,111
(539)
40,572
58,845

The statement of financial activities includes all gains and losses recognised in the year. All income and expenditure derive from continuing activities.

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Balance Sheet

As at 31 August 2024

Notes
Fixed Assets
Tangible assets
7
Intangible assets
8
Total fixed assets
Current assets
Debtors - accounts receivable
Debtors - prepayments
Cash at bank and in hand
Total current assets
Creditors: amounts falling due
within one year
9
Net current assets
Total assets less current
liabilities
Total net assets
Funds of the Charity
Restricted income funds
Unrestricted funds
Total funds		 2023-24
2022-23
Total
Total
557
350
200
232
757
582
18,241
3,214
1,321
1,190
67,013
60,142
86,574
64,546
10,506
6,283
76,068
58,263
76,825
58,845
76,825
58,845
20,684
9,906
56,141
48,938
76,825
58,845

The notes on pages 40 to 47 form part of these accounts.

Approved by the Trustees on 22nd April 2025 and signed on their behalf by:

Ema Saunders Rebecca O’Dwyer (Chair of Trustees) (Treasurer Trustee)

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Notes to the accounts

1. Accounting policies

The principal accounting policies adopted in the preparation of the accounts are as follows:

Basis of preparation and assessment of going concern

The accounts have been prepared under the historical cost convention with items recognised at cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant note to these accounts. The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the second edition of the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice issued in October 2019, the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and the Charities Act 2011.

The trustees consider that there are no material uncertainties about the charity’s ability to continue as a going concern.

The trust constitutes a public benefit entity as defined by FRS 102.

Funds

Unrestricted income funds comprise those funds which the trustees are free to use for any purpose in furtherance of the charitable objects. Unrestricted funds include designated funds where the trustees, at their discretion, have created a fund for a specific purpose.

Restricted funds are funds which are to be used in accordance with specific restrictions imposed by the donor or trust deed.

Further details of each fund are disclosed in note 10.

Income recognition

All income is recognised once the charity has entitlement to the income, it is probable that the income will be received, and the amount of income receivable can be measured reliably.

Donations are recognised when the charity has been notified in writing of both the amount and settlement date. In the event that a donation is subject to conditions that require a level of performance before the charity is entitled to the funds, the income is deferred and not recognised until either those conditions are fully met, or the fulfilment of those conditions is wholly within the control of the charity and it is probable that those conditions will be fulfilled in the reporting period.

Other trading activities comprise income from non-primary purpose activities to raise funds for the charity.

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Expenditure recognition

Liabilities are recognised as expenditure as soon as there is a legal or constructive obligation committing the charity to that expenditure, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. All expenditure is accounted for on an accruals basis. All expenses including support costs and governance costs are allocated or apportioned to the applicable expenditure headings.

Support costs have been allocated between governance costs and other support costs. Governance costs comprise all costs involving the public accountability of the charity and its compliance with regulation and good practice. These costs include costs related to the independent examination and legal fees together with an apportionment of overhead and support costs.

Cost of raising funds

The cost of raising funds comprises costs incurred in generating grant funding and online and offline fundraising activities to generate individual donations.

Expenditure on charitable activities

Expenditure on charitable activities include direct costs of provision of breastfeeding and early parenting support; governance costs and support costs.

Tangible fixed assets and depreciation

Tangible assets compromise computers used in the charity and are depreciated over 3 years, being their expected useful life.

Intangible fixed assets and amortisation

Intangible fixed assets comprise the cost of trademarking the name of the charity and is amortised over 10 years, being its expected useful life.

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2. Related parties and Trustees’ expenses

The trustees give their time and expertise freely, and without any remuneration; benefit in cash or in kind; and the trustees do not claim expenses for personal costs incurred for the charity.

One trustee, Jane Gerard-Pearse, was also contracted by the charity as a Lactation Consultant and paid for those services provided to the charity on that basis as follows.

Name of Legal Total annual remuneration Total annual remuneration
trustee authority 2023-24 2022-23
£ £
Jane Governing 1,775 1,327
Gerard-Pearse Document

Related parties: Key management personnel

Key management personnel remuneration (for both management and clinical services) is detailed as follows:

Relationship to charity Total annual remuneration Total annual remuneration
2023-24 2022-23
£ £
Management team 50,556 34,462

3. Income

The charity offers free breastfeeding and early parenting support as its primary activities. The free provision is supported by voluntary donations from individuals that use the service; trading activities from events and fundraisers and charitable grants from government and other charities.

Notes
Donations and gifts
Gift aid
General grants provided by
government/ other charities
4
Total		 2023-24
2023-24
2023-24
2022-23
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Total
£
£
£
£
35,473
-
35,473
44,705
3,383
-
3,383
3,254
9,330
64,887
74,217
43,950
48,186
64,887
113,073
91,909

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4. Government grants

Grant Description 2023-24
funds
received
Kent County Council Peer Support, Maternal Journal, Listening service £5,396
Tonbridge & Malling Core activities (Tonbridge), Training & Maternal £3,689
Borough Council Journal
Kent County Council Antenatal support pilot £3,228
Sevenoaks Town Council Core activities (Sevenoaks) £2,600
Tunbridge Wells Borough Peer Supporter and Volunteer Training £1,290
Council
Sevenoaks Town Council Core activities (Sevenoaks) £500
Otford Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £480
Dunton Green Parish Core services (Unrestricted) £300
Council
Westerham Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £200
Marden Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £200
Wrotham Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £200
Brasted Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £200
Horsmonden Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £100
Eynsford Parish Council Core services (Unrestricted) £100
Description 2022-23
funds received
Sevenoaks Town Council Sevenoaks Town Resident support services £1,380
Tonbridge & Malling Tonbridge support services £1,000
Borough Council
Paddock Wood Town Core services £500
Council

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5. Charitable activities – costs

The charity undertakes its charitable activities through use of Lactation Consultants, Breastfeeding Counsellors, qualified volunteer Peer Supporters and volunteers.

Notes
Governance and support costs
6
Direct costs - practitioners
Direct costs - rent
Direct costs - refreshments		 2023-24
2022-23
Total
Total
£
£
45,207
26,428
40,711
36,213
10,336
8,795
1,257
1,103
97,510
72,538

6. Governance and support costs

Governance and support costs are allocated across restricted and unrestricted funds on a usage basis. No general apportionment is made across the two funds.

Office administration
Supervision and Training
IT costs
Bank charges
Printing and stationery
Equipment
Insurance
Depreciation
Advertising & Marketing
Legal and professional fees
Accountancy and independent examiner
Total		 2023-24
2022-23
Total
Total
£
£
36,157
18,638
2,887
3,804
1,998
1,385
790
747
955
623
786
438
459
376
313
232
342
100
339
85
180
0
45,207
26,428

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7. Tangible assets

Cost
At beginning of the year
Additions
At end of the year
Depreciation
At beginning of the year
Depreciation
At end of year
Net book value at the beginning of the year
Net book value at the end of the year		 Fixtures,
fittings and
equipment
Fixtures,
fittings and
equipment
2023-24
2022-23
£
£
600
600
488
-
1,088
600
250
50
281
200
531
250
350
550
557
350

8. Intangible fixed assets

Cost
At beginning of the year
Additions
At end of the year
Amortisation
At beginning of the year
Amortisation
At end of year
Net book value at the beginning of the
year
Net book value at the end of the year		 Patents and
trademarks
Patents and
trademarks
2023-24
2022-23
£
£
320
320
-
-
320
320
88
56
32
32
120
88
232
264
200
232

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9. Creditors

9. Creditors
Trade creditors
Accruals
Creditors: due within one year		 2023-24
2022-23
£
£
10,326
5,923
180
360
10,506
6,283

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10. Analysis of funds

10.1. Analysis of funds held in Current Reporting Period (2023-24)
Fund
Fund balances balances
brought Gains and carried
forward Income Expenditure Transfers losses forward
Fund Type* Purpose and Restrictions £ £ £ £ £ £
Core services R Core services of breastfeeding support, 6,083 34,165 23,382 - - 16,866
delivered face to face and online in
Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and Tunbridge
Wells
Mental Wellbeing R Improving our ability to support 3,428 4,317 6,674 - - 1,071
perinatal mental wellbeing
Other R Training, mixed grants 395 6,271 3,920 - - 2,746
General funds U General unrestricted funds 41,633 66,722 50,318 (5,000) - 53,037
Designated funds U Specific priority project work* 7,306 - 9,201 5,000 - 3,105
Total Funds as per balance sheet 58,845 111,475 93,495 - - 76,825

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10.2. Analysis of funds held in Previous Reporting Period (2022-23)

Type
Purpose and Restrictions
Core services
R
Core services of breastfeeding
support, delivered face to face and
online in Sevenoaks, Tonbridge and
Tunbridge Wells
Mental Wellbeing R
Improving our ability to support
perinatal mental wellbeing
Infant Sleep
R
Improving our ability to support
families with infant sleep
Miscellaneous
restricted funds
R
Equipment grant
General funds
U
General unrestricted funds
Designated funds
U
Specific priority projects
Total Funds as per balance sheet		 Fund balances
brought
forward
Income
Expenditure
Transfers
Gains
and
losses
Fund
balances
carried
forward
£
£
£
£
£
£
15,240
32,464
41,621
-
-
6,083
3,650
3,986
4,208
-
-
3,428
1,398
-
1,398
-
-
-
935
-
540
-
-
395
15,030
71,749
35,646
(9,500)
-
41,633
-
-
2,195
9,500
-
7,306
36,253
108,199
85,607
-
-
58,845

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www.babyumbrella.org.uk

Baby Umbrella 51 The Avenue Tunbridge Wells TN2 3FJ

Baby Umbrella Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 covers the period 1st September 2023 to 31 August 2024.

Baby Umbrella is a registered charity 1190745. The name “Baby Umbrella” is a registered trade mark. Copyright © Baby Umbrella 2025.

Baby Umbrella (Charity Reg: 1190745) Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24 54