2025-03-31-accounts

The Essenelle Foundation Annual Report

2024- 2025

The Essenelle Foundation (TEF) is a Mental Health Charity focused on empowering and supporting the Sickle Cell community.

TEF is made up of 3 pillars:

• Provide people who have Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and their families access to traditional therapies, counselling and emotional well-being courses.

• We will work with schools, councils and hospitals to educate on the policies that will encourage better practices and support for the community.

• Run events and campaigns to educate and raise money so we can help everyone impacted by SCD get the help they need.

A note from Our Founder

The Essenelle Foundation exists to address a critical and often overlooked gap: the mental health and emotional well-being needs of people living with Sickle Cell Disease and those who support them. While Sickle Cell is widely recognised as a physical health condition, the psychological impact of chronic pain, repeated hospitalisation, diagnostic delay, and systemic inequality remains under-resourced and poorly understood.

During 2024–2025, demand for our services continued to increase. Individuals and families came to us at moments of crisis, transition, and emotional exhaustion, often following changes in healthcare provision, distressing media coverage, or periods of personal health deterioration. Much of our work this year was characterised by responsiveness, with programmes designed and delivered at pace to meet urgent need. We provided therapeutic support, education, and community-based mental health interventions rooted in trauma-informed practice and lived experience. Our services are not a generic mental health provision.

They are culturally aware, condition-specific, and delivered by professionals who understand the realities of living with Sickle Cell Disease.

Operating with limited financial resources continues to present challenges, but the strength of our impact lies in our clarity of purpose and close relationship with the community we serve. This report reflects a year of meaningful, grounded work and a foundation committed to delivering support with integrity and care.

Our Trustees:

Candy Boakye Zhane Walcott Layla Lawson Fadumo Khamis

O U R P U R P O S E

O U R M I S S I O N

TThe Essenelle Foundation primarily supports people living with Sickle Cell Disease, including children, young people, and adults, as well as their families and carers. We also work with schools, professionals, and community organisations to improve understanding of the emotional and psychological impact of the condition.

To support the Sickle Cell community and start more conversations around the impact SCD has on mental health and emotional well-being.

To provide resources and tools that will allow all those who need help and guidance to understand and navigate their emotional journey.

Many of the people we support experience intersectional disadvantage, including racial inequality, health inequity, and barriers to accessing appropriate mental health services. Our work is designed with this context at its core, ensuring support is accessible, validating, and relevant to lived experience.

It was one of the best training sessions I’ve attended. Real, practical, and emotional, not just theory.

Our 2024-2025 Goals

1

Our third year of operation was focused movement toward education, understanding of policies and supporting the foundation of research and new developments in the world of SC

Therapies

One of our key pillars is providing those impacted by SCD with access to trained therapists. We extended that further to life coaching and other wellness teams this year. We created a dedicated programme that focuses on building a hub of specialists that the community can access.

Making sure we are consistently listening and actioning concerns or dealing with service issues is part of our dedicated effort toward growth.

2

3

Workshops and Education

Events and fundraising

We kept our workshops the same as they were popular. We did our best to extend resources so that we could reach a wider community.

This in turn allowed us builder stronger relationships outside of the community. it allowed us to educate the services that were providing workshops or events for us.

Events allow us to bring together large numbers of beneficiaries to the same place. It encourages networking and strengthens the community it also allows us to invite different companies to learn and develop new systems that encourage better support for the SCD community.

We are always looking at different ways to engage with the wider country and educate and encourage donations that go towards our mission.

Our Core Strategy

We know that the community want to be heard and feel valued. They are the experts on the condition and help should be given in the way it is needed. The parents and patients being included in the way the service is delivered allows for a bridge to be built between the service provider and the service user.

It also gives agency and ownership back to the community.

When we planned our focus for the year, we knew some things were important and would be defining:

• Mental health is the core

• component of our projects

• Considering patients of all ages Not excluding caregivers

• Taking the time to educate

• ourselves on what the community needs

• Having conversations with hospitals/schools and workplaces to ensure education and good practices exist.

O U R W O R K I N 2 0 2 4 – 2 0 2 5

Therapeutic Services

Therapeutic support remained central to the Foundation’s work this year. A total of 120 new individuals accessed counselling and emotional wellbeing services through the Foundation.

Support focused on managing anxiety, trauma, and depression linked to chronic pain, navigating medical trauma and repeated healthcare interactions, coping with uncertainty and fatigue, and strengthening emotional resilience and selfadvocacy.

Sessions were delivered in safe, supportive environments where individuals felt heard and believed, often for the first time within a mental health setting.

Education and Awareness

Education continued to be a core strand of our work. During the year, the Foundation delivered over 50 workshops, learning sessions, and training activities.

These sessions supported schools, professionals, families, and community groups to better understand Sickle Cell Disease beyond physical symptoms, with a focus on emotional wellbeing, mental health, and practical support strategies. This work contributes to improved awareness, reduced stigma, and more supportive environments for people living with the condition.

Community Support and Responsive Mental Health Programmes

A defining feature of 2024–2025 was the Foundation’s rapid response to community mental health work. During the year, more than 20 rapid response support sessions were delivered in response to breaking news, changes in health guidance, service pressures, and public discourse affecting the Sickle Cell community.

These sessions reached over 1,500 individuals through online and communitybased formats and were often organised within days of emerging issues to address immediate emotional impact.

Programmes included facilitated group support sessions, moderated online spaces, and targeted wellbeing workshops focused on managing fear, uncertainty, anger, and emotional fatigue. Feedback showed that over 80 percent of participants felt less isolated after attending, and more than 70 percent reported increased emotional clarity and confidence. By providing timely, accessible support grounded in lived experience, the Foundation helped prevent the escalation of distress and strengthen emotional resilience during moments of heightened vulnerability.

Research and Learning

Throughout the year, the Foundation deepened its focus on understanding critical transition points within the Sickle Cell journey, particularly for young people moving from paediatric to adult care. These transitions are frequently accompanied by a decline in mental wellbeing, reduced service engagement, and increased anxiety for both individuals and families. We began informal consultations with young people, carers, and frontline professionals to better understand emotional needs at these moments.

This research, though small-scale, surfaced clear patterns: inconsistent handover processes, lack of emotional preparation, and reduced trust in adult services. As a result, the Foundation began refining internal service design to offer more anticipatory support during these transitions. We also initiated a community-led mapping process to identify what makes transitions safer and more emotionally manageable, which will inform programme development in the coming year.

Reach, Outcomes, and Impact

During 2024–2025, The Essenelle Foundation supported approximately 4,000 people through a combination of therapeutic services, education sessions, outreach work, and digital resources. While many of our interventions were brief or one-off, a significant proportion involved ongoing support.

Outcomes included a reported increase in emotional safety, improved understanding of the link between mental and physical health, greater confidence among carers, and reduced experiences of isolation. Informal evaluation across services showed that more than three-quarters of participants left sessions with increased clarity or confidence, and over 80 percent described feeling “more supported” than before.

One participant described the Foundation’s support as the first time they felt emotionally safe in a space that understood Sickle Cell not just as a condition, but as a lived experience.

Feedback and Service Improvement

Feedback from participants, families, and professionals remains central to how we shape and refine our services. Over the past year, we gathered input through session check-ins, evaluation forms, informal conversations, and follow-up calls. These insights helped us understand both the strengths of our approach and the areas that could be improved.

We learned that participants value consistency and emotional safety, particularly when support is delivered by familiar and trusted practitioners. Feedback also highlighted the importance of culturally relevant content in our education and awareness work, and the need for more structured support for carers and young people in transition.

In response, we introduced clearer follow-up processes for group sessions, adapted our workshop materials to include more practical tools, and prioritised the development of our transition support work. We will continue to listen actively and co-develop services with our community to ensure our work stays relevant, safe, and grounded in real needs.

Strategic Priorities for 2025–2026

The coming year presents an opportunity for the Foundation to build on its existing strengths while deepening its focus on service quality, targeted support, and organisational learning. We aim to respond more effectively to the evolving emotional needs of the Sickle Cell community, especially during periods of transition and instability.

Our strategic priorities are:

• 1.Strengthen emotional well-being support during transitions in care, with a focus on young people navigating the shift from paediatric to adult services. This includes developing new tools and resources that help prepare individuals and families for this phase and piloting small-group support tailored to transition points.

• 2.Refine and test new methods of capturing emotional impact. We will assess the tools currently used across therapy and community sessions, and explore new approaches to measure emotional change, relational safety, and user experience without increasing burden on participants.

• 3.Embed learning and feedback into programme development. Over the next year, we will consolidate internal reflections, participant feedback, and informal evaluations to strengthen quality across all services. This will include reviewing facilitation methods, group dynamics, and accessibility for underrepresented subgroups.

• 4.Consolidate and scale our most effective education and response programmes. This includes reviewing our rapid-response model, strengthening partnerships with schools and community settings, and ensuring materials reflect current health and emotional well-being narratives.

• 5.Invest in co-design and lived experience involvement. We will continue to centre the voices of people affected by Sickle Cell in programme planning, safeguarding discussions, and evaluation work. Where appropriate, we will formalise peer input into advisory roles to ensure decisions remain grounded in community reality.

• As the Foundation moves forward, our focus remains on delivering safe, relevant, and emotionally attuned support. By working closely with our community and reflecting consistently on our own practice, we aim to improve service quality while staying true to our values of trust, responsiveness, and cultural care.

This was the first time I didn’t have to explain myself. They just got it. I felt heard in a way I haven’t before.

After the session I felt calmer and more in control. It gave me tools to manage when everything feels overwhelming.

As a parent, I’m often focused on managing my child’s condition. It was powerful to have support just for me

The school workshop really opened my eyes. I work with young people but had no idea how isolating Sickle Cell could be

Financial Review

O U R F O C U S

The charity ensures that all funds are responsibly used, and policies are in place to monitor the charity’s assets continually. The charity ensures that we can meet unexpected expenses and take advantage of change and opportunities for development when they arise. This is achieved by setting aside income when the charity can afford it, as a reserve earmarked for specific future purposes rather than used immediately for the charity’s aims.

The trustees regularly assess the appropriate reserve level to avoid putting the charity’s future development or activities at risk.

This means the trustees:

• Consider whether the charity needs to keep reserves – the trustees’ primary consideration is the well-being of the beneficiaries and their needs.

• Have a reserves policy which explains the levels of reserves to be kept and how they can be used

• Review their reserves policy regularly to take account of changing financial circumstances and new operating and financial conditions

• Comply with the annual reporting requirements to set up.

• Identity which of the charity’s funds have restrictions on their use, i.e. reserve funds that are freely available to spend are distinguished from funds that may have restrictions on their use set by their donors

• Plan for future development and sustainability when looking at levels of reserves, i.e. designating funds for use on future projects if appropriate as a way of setting aside and building up funds separated from the charity’s general reserves

Financial Review

F inancial Overview

Income and Expenditure 2024–2025

During the financial year, The Essenelle Foundation continued to operate with a modest but focused budget, ensuring that all income was directed towards delivering impactful services and supporting the Sickle Cell community. Total income for the year amounted to approximately £24,000, primarily from a combination of grants and donations. These funds supported therapeutic services, educational outreach, community wellbeing programmes, and operational sustainability.

Total expenditure for the same period was approximately £23,200. The largest share of expenditure went toward direct service delivery, including therapy provision, community workshops, and session resources. Remaining funds covered essential operational costs such as freelance staffing, materials, and core administration.

End-of-year reserves remain small but positive. Trustees are committed to responsible reserve management and continue to assess the charity's long-term financial sustainability.

CategoryAmount (£) Total Income 24,000 Grants & Donations 24,000 Total Expenditure 23,200 Service Delivery 18,000 Staffing & Freelance 3,200 Overheads/Resources 2,000 End-of-Year Reserves Small/Modest

Notes

The Foundation prioritised keeping administrative and staffing costs lean in order to maximise frontline delivery.

Grant funding supported both short-term response programmes and the piloting of longer-term interventions.

The charity's financial model remains lean but effective, with continued focus on diversifying income and building reserves.

This financial summary reflects our commitment to transparency, accountability, and efficient use of charitable funds.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to all those who have helped us thrive and continue to support our community for the second year.

Thank you to all our supporters and grant suppliers.

We thank you for your continued support in our programs.

The Essnelle Foundation 59 Pruden Close Southgate, London N14 6DX 107597134287

www.theessenellefoundation.co.uk [e-mail]