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KENT
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Baby Basics, Kent: Annual Report 2023-2024
Charity’s aims:
Baby Basics Kent was founded in Medway, Kent in August 2019 with the aim of supporting vulnerable families with essential baby care items in Kent and Medway. We work with local services who assess need and refer families on to us. We gift Moses baskets, buggies, cots and clothes/nappies/hygiene items as needed.
Summary 2023-2024:
Baby Basics, Kent has been very active in this financial year. We have increased our list of referrers and celebrated our 5[th] year in operation. We are proud to have supported 246 families during this time.
In this financial year we have had a total income of £5680 and total outgoings of £6685
The local community continues to support us with donations of new and nearly-new items to regift, but also with donations of much needed consumables such as nappies and wipes, as well as with their time.
This year saw the employment of our one of our former trustees and volunteers to work one day at week, following the successful application to the National Lottery Fund to pay her wages last year. This has been hugely helpful in securing the future work of Baby Basics, Kent and keeping the day to day running of the charity on course.
Our partners and supporters:
We continue to enjoy being at the centre of the community in Gravesend at the Guru Nanak Gurdwara who kindly gift us the use of their premises for storage. This is a vital hub to receive donations and for our referral partners to collect items for the families we support. We enjoyed attendance at the Gravesend Regatta in June, which again allows us to spread the word of our work to the local community and has generated many new donations.
We continue to be fortunate to be gifted a storage premises by MHS homes, who offer us the free rental of a garage for our larger items. It is very well-used by us!
We continue to enjoy working with our many referrers and partners in the community, including the midwives of Medway and Swale, the mother and baby unit in Dartford, social services, Spurgeon's family liaison services and social prescribers and GP surgeries.
Additionally, we are so grateful to Emma and her team at the Medway Hygiene Bank who support us by supplying toiletries and nappies for us to gift. We are also grateful to Morrison’s supermarket in Maidstone who supported us with many bags of toiletries and baby care items that were donated by their customers. All of these items help to make our Moses basket gifts look beautiful and are so useful to the families we support.
Our families:
In the last year of operation, we have supported families in significant financial hardship, asylum seeker and refugee families, very young mothers, families with a relative in acute psychiatric care, and those suffering from domestic abuse. The need in our local area continues to rise as families face the ongoing fall-out of the cost of living crises.
In the 2023-24 financial year, of the 246 families we helped, 82 referrals came to us an emergency. These referrals are urgent, often requiring a same-day response or delivery inside 24 hours. Requests for emergency referrals are growing and each one represents a family in immediate need. Via these referrals we supported 338 children and this represents thousands of gifted items helping local families.
Fundraising:
During this financial year we fundraised £680 from generous direct debit donations and local events. £5000 was part of the National Lottery Grant that was fundraised to employ our charity worker.
The future: 2024-2025
In our next year of operation, we aim to continue our search for more storage as our charity expands, and recruit another trustee. We also aim to raise funds to further future-proof our charity, ensuring we can continue to operate for years to come, as demand grows. We also look forward to celebrating our 6th birthday! We are excited about our future and are committed to meeting the needs of local families.
BABY BASICS – KENT
ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 AUGUST 2024
Registered Charity Number 119302
Registered Office 72 Victoria Road, Chatham, Kent ME4 5EU
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BABY BASICS – KENT BALANCE SHEET
| 2023-24 | 2023-24 | 2022-23 | 2022-23 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FIXED ASSETS | 0.00 | 0.00 | ||
| CURRENT ASSETS | ||||
| Bank Account | 3,825 | 9,830 | ||
| Debtors | - | - | ||
| Pre-Payments | 234 | 234 | ||
| --------- | --------- | |||
| 4,059 | 10,064 | |||
| TOTAL ASSETS | 4,059 | 10,064 | ||
| CURRENT LIABILITIES | ||||
| Creditors | - | - | ||
| Grants/LotteryFunding | (5,000) | |||
| Start-upcosts funded byDS | (530) | (530) | ||
| Loan from DS | (70) | (70) | ||
| Accruals | - | - | ||
| ------------- | ------------- | |||
| TOTAL CURRENT LIABILITIES | (600) | (5,600) | ||
| ---------- | ---------- | |||
| CURRENT ASSETS LESS CURRENT LIABILITIES |
3,459 | 4,464 | ||
| ===== | ===== | |||
| GENERAL FUND | 4,464 | 3,543 | ||
| Surplus/(Deficit) | (1,005) | 921 | ||
| ---------- | -------- | |||
| TOTAL FUNDS | 3,459 | 4,464 | ||
| ====== | ===== |
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BABY BASICS – KENT INCOME AND EXPENDITURE ACCOUNT
| INCOME | 2023-24 | 2023-24 | 2022-23 | 2022-23 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Donations | 680 | 360 | ||
| LotteryFunding/Grants | 5,000 | 4,000 | ||
| FundraisingEvents | - | 1,249 | ||
| Sundry | - | - | ||
| ------- | ------- | |||
| TOTAL INCOME | 5,680 | 5,609 | ||
| EXPENDITURE | ||||
| GiftingItems | 1,276 | 1,898 | ||
| Rent | 1,497 | |||
| Insurance | 234 | 234 | ||
| Office/Storage | 1,560 | 68 | ||
| Subscriptions | 300 | - | ||
| FundraisingEvents | 57 | 294 | ||
| Sundries | 200 | 360 | ||
| Staff costs | 2,250 | |||
| Volunteers | 508 | 337 | ||
| ------- | ------- | |||
| 6,685 | 4,688 | |||
| -------- | ------- | |||
| SURPLUS/(DEFICIT) | (1,005) | 921 | ||
| ====== | ===== | |||
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