Trustee Annual Report July 2021 - June 2022
The Belay Foundation is a charitable incorporated organisation registered in England and Wales number 1192653. This trustees' annual report is for the period 1st July 2021 to 30th June 2022. Our registered address is 209 Trowbridge Road, Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire BA15 1EU. The Trustees have maintained regard to upholding the public benefit of the charity’s aims and activities.
Our Charitable Objectives:
To relieve the needs of children who have previously been in local authority care and who suffer disabilities, including early trauma, by:
a) Providing support services to parents who are providing a permanent home particularly, but not exclusively, through adoption;
b) Finding, training and supporting specialist support workers to provide in-home support;
c) Supporting parents and caregivers to protect their own mental health
d) Linking families to funding sources;
e) Other support and respite services as the trustees deem appropriate; f) Advancing the awareness of the impact of childhood disabilities, including early trauma, to professionals in training, particularly but not exclusively to those studying psychology, education and social work.
What we do
Reducing financial hardship in these families by offering support to apply for disability benefits
Sourcing, training and supporting of Specialist Support Workers to offer therapeutic childcare and respite to families whose children have experienced early childhood trauma
Advancing the knowledge of early childhood trauma in emerging professionals by offering degree placements supporting families.
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21
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48
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students completed placements/dissertations with us
f amilies received help applying for disability benefits
families received a Specialist Support Worker
4
Achievements and Performance
Message from the Chair of Trustees Ali Crowther
Message from the CEO Sarah Fry
"This year, in which I took on the position of Chair has seen massive growth in the help we have been able to give busy and distressed families. We have helped through one-to-one services like practical help to claiming Disability Living Allowance, placing sensitive and appropriately trained adults in chaotic households to bring relief to the whole system, or training and supporting students, support workers and professionals to understand and support trauma. Currently demand is far outstripping our capacity to deliver, so in the short term we are adjusting systems to be able to cope with much higher workloads and working with partners to highlight and address the massive funding gaps that exist between social care and the families in need of help. By helping these families we saved local authorities thousands of pounds a week in broken placements, allowing money and effort to be place in other needed areas. Practically we have given isolated families much needed human contact and in their own words increased their wellbeing massively, allowing them a little space to regroup and catch up. I would like to thank the amazing staff for their unbounded eagerness to help our families, being so creative and flexible and above all cheerful and supportive of each other."
"In our second year of trading I’ve been delighted with the work we’ve been able to achieve with very limited resources. We have been responsive to feedback we’ve received and additional service gaps we’ve noticed, such as a lack of support around applying for Personal Independence Payment, and have continued to lay foundations for future growth to help more struggling families. Fully separating operational work from governance through the appointment of Ali Crowther as Chair of Trustees means we continued to mature as an organisation and are well set for developing our services into our third year. I thank all our staff, volunteers and trustees for their dedication and passion to support some of the most vulnerable children in our society."
Achievements and Performance
During the period of July 2021 to June 2022 we helped 21 families to find Specialist Support Workers. All of these were adoptive families whose children had experienced very complex trauma early in life. Most of these families had no other option of finding trauma-responsive childcare and had a significant need for respite. The majority of these families contacted us directly but 4 were referred through their post-adoption Social Worker. For one family we were asked to offer 1:1 specialist parent coaching in addition to finding a Specialist Support Worker. All of our Specialist Support Workers working in families’ homes were trained in developmental trauma, safeguarding and professional boundaries and received group and clinical supervision.
We offered 1:1 support to 16 families who required help with Disability Living Allowance applications and ran 16 further workshops on disability benefits with an average of 2 families attending each workshop. Having seen an additional need to offer advice on Personal Independence Payment (disability benefit for those 16yrs+), an advisor was professionally trained and delivered 7 workshops to families throughout the year.
Regarding our objective to increase awareness of developmental trauma to the next generation of professionals, we deepened our links with the University of Bath and the University of the West of England. We offered 2 placements to Social Work students from the University of Bath and the University of the West of England and supported 2 Psychology undergraduate students from the University of the West of England to complete their final year dissertation on a qualitative analysis of the support offered to families by The Belay Foundation. These experiences were valued both by the students and families participating and lay a strong foundation to expand our work supporting the development of professionals in training working with children.
In order to meet our charitable aims and create a strong foundation for our future development we made some considerable improvements to our infrastructure and resources during the period:
Governance: Sarah Fry stepped down as Chair of Governors in November 2021 to separate operational leadership from trustee governance. Ali Crowther stepped in as Chair of Trustees. We said goodbye and thank you to Molly Deakin and hello to Paula Sullivan as trustees in 2021. Staff increase: An Operations Director was engaged in May 2022 to develop our offering to families and ensure we could meet the growing level of need.
Staff training: our Designated Safeguarding Officer received training by NSPCC in February 2022. Our member of staff directly supporting parents received training in level 1 DDP (dyadic developmental psychotherapy) in May 2022 to better support the challenges facing parents. All Specialist Support Workers received 3 days of training in DDP by Dr Vicky Sutton in September 2022 in addition to quarterly training/clinical supervision sessions. IT: we launched a new website in November 2021 funded by a grant from Comic Relief. Communications: we started a quarterly newsletter in December 2021.
Financial Review
Our income during the period has been £16,767 and cash funds are at £7,742 of which £4,040 are restricted to be spent on training costs. All other funds for the period are unrestricted.
Our income has increased by 101% since the previous financial year and our income is greater than our expenditure by a greater extent than the previous financial year.
Reserves are that part of a charity’s unrestricted funds that is freely available to spend on any of the charity’s purposes. The Belay Foundation maintains free unrestricted reserves:
·to provide a level of working capital that protects the continuity of our work
·to provide a level of funding for unexpected opportunities
·to provide cover for risks such as unforeseen expenditure or unanticipated loss of income. the board of trustees will review the above criteria with reference to The Belay Foundation’s strategy and Annual Plan and determine the target level of free reserves to meet these. The Board of Trustees will at times designate funds from free reserves for significant project costs or replacement of major assets.
We secured a grant of £4,040 from Nationwide Building Society to develop our training materials and training delivery.
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Organisational Structure
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Induction of Trustees
Trustees are required to undertake an enhanced DBS check and child protection training. Trustee induction includes access to the training in developmental trauma received by Specialist Support Workers. Trustees are also offered training in charity governance through an organisation such as NCVO. In addition, new trustees are offered 1:1 onboarding sessions with the Chief Executive and Chair of Trustees.
Trustees
Our trustees during the period are:
Ali Crowther - Chair of Trustees Alana Buckingham - Treasurer Jade Fullick - Trustee and Co-Founder Sarah Fry - Trustee and Co-Founder and CEO Molly Deakin - Trustee (stepped down in July 2021) Matt Humberstone - Trustee and Fundraising Lead Paula Sullivan - Trustee
Relationships with Other Parties
We have been engaged under contract with two Local Authorities to provide trauma-responsive respite and family support: Hampshire and Lincolnshire
We have worked with the University of Bath and the University of the West of England to offer 70-day placements to their Social Work undergraduates and have supported psychology undergraduate students from the University of the West of England to complete their community placements and final year dissertations.
We continue to work with DDP Connects UK, and specifically with Dr Vicky Sutton, to ensure our Support Workers have DDP-informed supervision and support.
Future Plans
Our future plans include increasing the number of families we support and continuing to develop our support services according to the needs within the community of families parenting traumatised children. We will deepen the training and support that we offer to Support Workers and ensure that we work on our organisational foundations to give us a solid base for long-term growth.
Registered charity in England and Wales 1192653 info@thebelayfoundation.org.uk www.thebelayfoundation.org.uk
| The Belay Foundation | The Belay Foundation | The Belay Foundation | 1192653 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Receipts andpayments accounts | |||
| For the period from |
01-Jul-21 | To | 30-Jun-22 |
CC16a
| Section A Receipts and payments | Section A Receipts and payments | Section A Receipts and payments | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 Receipts | Unrestricted funds to the nearest £ |
Restricted funds to the nearest £ |
Endowment funds to the nearest £ |
Total funds to the nearest £ |
Last year to the nearest £ |
||||
Donations and Legacies |
4,639 | 4,020 | - | 8,659 | 6,144 | ||||
| Service/Fee Income | 8,108 | - | - | 8,108 | 1,770 | ||||
| Loan | - | - | - | - | 400 | ||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 12,747 | 4,020 | - | 16,767 | 8,314 | ||||
| A2 Asset and investment sales, (see table). |
|||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| Sub total | - | - | |||||||
| Total receipts A3 Payments |
|||||||||
| 8,314 | |||||||||
Accountancy |
873 | - | - | 873 | 720 | ||||
| Computer Costs | 291 | 1,188 | - | 1,479 | 946 | ||||
| Office/General Administration | 949 | 320 | - | 1,269 | 696 | ||||
| Other Professional Services | 1,019 | - | - | 1,019 | 544 | ||||
| Payroll | 6,366 | - | - | 6,366 | 2,172 | ||||
| Advertising | 144 | - | - | 144 | - | ||||
| Insurance | 226 | - | - | 226 | - | ||||
| Travel | 885 | - | - | 885 | - | ||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| **Sub total ** | 10,753 | 1,508 | - | 12,261 | 5,078 | ||||
| A4 Asset and investment purchases, (see table) |
|||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| **Sub total ** | - | - | |||||||
| Total payments Net of receipts/(payments) A5 Transfers between funds A6 Cash funds last year end Cash funds this year end |
|||||||||
| 5,078 | |||||||||
| 1,994 | 3,236 | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| 2,486 | - | ||||||||
| 4,480 | 3,236 |
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Categories Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees B1 Cash funds B2 Other monetary assets B5 Liabilities B3 Investment assets B4 Assets retained for the charity’s own use |
Signature Loan Details Details Bank account Details Total cash funds (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) Details Details |
Unrestricted funds Restricted funds to nearest £ to nearest £ 4,480 3,262 - - - - 4,480 3,262 OK OK Unrestricted funds Restricted funds to nearest £ to nearest £ - - - - - - - - - - - - Fund to which asset belongs Cost (optional) - - - - - Fund to which asset belongs Cost (optional) - - - - - - - - - Fund to which liability relates Amount due (optional) Unrestricted 400 - - - - Print Name |
Endowment funds to nearest £ |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| OK | |||
| Endowment funds to nearest £ |
|||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| Current value (optional) |
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| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| Current value (optional) |
|||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| When due (optional) |
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| Date of approval | |||
Notes to the Accounts
1. Related Parties
In the year the Charity was loaned £400 (£400 - 2021) by a person connected to a charity trustee. As at year end the full balance is outstanding. The loan is interest free and is repayable in accordance with the loan agreement.