Trustees’ Annual Report for the period
From 1[st] January 2022 To 31[st] March 2023
Charity name: Youth: Action for Mental Health Support (Y:AMHS)
Charity registration number: 1197713
Summary of the purposes of the charity as set out in its governing document:
“To preserve and protect the mental health of young people between the ages of 10 and 18 within the Borough Council area of Crawley, West Sussex and the surrounding areas, by providing funding for treatment where this has not been possible within the local public services, raising awareness, campaigning and providing information and support for parents and carers.”
Summary of the main activities in relation to those purposes for the public benefit, in particular, the activities, projects or services identified in the accounts.
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Fundraising in order to fund the treatment of mental health issues for children and young people in our area.
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Setting up a parent and carer support group to provide a safe space for parents of children with mental ill health to be able to talk, gain support and signposting to other services which may be able to offer assistance.
The trustees have noted and paid due regard to the guidance issued by the Charity Commission on public benefit.
Our policy on grant making is set out in our Priority Criteria, which is available to the public on request, but which sets out a maximum amount of funding that each family can be allocated in any 12 month period. We wish to make this funding as generous as possible, to account for the range and length of treatment that may be required in order to make significant impact on a child or young person’s mental health and to allow them to engage with activities that are developmentally appropriate and necessary. Our Priority Criteria has not been needed in this financial year, due to the small number of applications so far received, so that all applications have been met with some funding allocation, with the exception of one which did not meet our eligibility criteria.
In the second year of the Charity’s inception, it’s first as a registered charity, we were able to enlist further ad-hoc support from volunteers, who assisted with our fundraising and awareness activities. We have continued to work hard to recruit further volunteers, and have sought support from local organisation, Crawley Community Action to help us with this.
Achievements and Performance
We have been grateful in this year to have received more than £24000 in donations, either directly through our own fundraising efforts or through the efforts of local organisations. A special mention must be made for Reigate Heath Golf Club who raised more than £12000 for us through various events that they ran throughout the year. Over £1200 was also raised for us by the Church of Latter Day Saints in Crawley at their Christmas concert and this support has put us in a good position to be able to increase our offer throughout the next financial year.
We have also been running our own fundraising activities, with an Ultra Run in September raising over £200 and our Christmas Quiz raising over £400. The Christmas Quiz was a hugely popular event and we have taken some learning from feedback on the format with a view to running this again next year. We have been fortunate to have had the support of St Francis of Assis Primary School Choir on several of our visits to Crawley County Mall and their beautiful voices have helped raise awareness of our charity - we are so grateful to all of the children and their music teacher, Mr Symsyk.
We have also been promoting our regular donors scheme, ‘Y:AMHS Champions’ and have been able to recruit 9 regular donors. We hold a quarterly prize draw for our regular donors and are grateful to local businesses such as the Hawth and Kingscote Vineyard, who have provided prizes for this.
In this financial year, we were able to offer over £7000 in funding for mental health support for young people in our area, and as knowledge of us grows, we look forward to this amount increasing as applications increase. Feedback from young people and their carers tells us that this support really is making a difference. Young people who have received our support have told us they are feeling heard, listened to, understood and that they are having fewer thoughts of self-harm and suicide and feeling more able to manage their anxiety. Feedback included : “This charity is a life saver to our children…”, “receiving such early support was vital…”, “I am starting to think I will be able to get through it…”, “I feel a bit more hopeful.”
This year we also continued to run our Parent Support Group, but with numbers starting to dwindle, we looked to a different venue in the town centre in the hope that this might be more accessible. However, this continued to be a struggle, with many weeks seeing no parents at all, so the decision was taken in March to end the weekly drop in sessions and look to provide some regular events for parents around mindfulness and self-care.
Feedback from parents told us that they felt some sort of support group for young people would be helpful and so during this year, we have been working on a project to run a small group for young people where they will feel comfortable to come along and mix with others. We launched a SurveyMonkey to gain the view of young people in our area on what they thought the group should look like and were encouraged by the large number of replies we received. We then started to plan using this feedback. We were fortunate to be able to
recruit some volunteers to run the group and were looking to launch it at the YMCA’s YAC centre in the Crawley Town Centre. However, two of our volunteers subsequently withdrew and concerns were raised around whether we had enough of a framework in place around safeguarding. We have since spent time reviewing all of our policies and procedures around this group and have been able to put in place a robust framework to protect both our young people and our volunteers. We are currently looking to recruit further volunteers for this project and hope to be able to run a pilot session of this group in the next few months.
Financial Review
At the end of the financial year, the charity held £13,650 in cash funds in the current account, with a further £442 in the savings account. £442 of our funds are reserved for the purposes of funding the parent support group over the remainder of the calendar year, in line with the stipulations of the grant offered to us by Sussex Community Foundation. A further £1020 will remain ring-fenced for the purpose of funding our liabilities in relation to our website and mobile phone contracts. This leaves a total of £12,630 with which we can currently continue to run our services.
Our fundraising strategy for the coming financial year will include seeking local partners to assist and sponsor us financially. We are grateful to have been made the Charity of the Year last year at Reigate Heath Golf Club, and were also sponsored by it’seeze Horsham, who offered to sponsor any events we choose to hold. We also have sponsorship of our blog page by local company AIP Exhibitions, for which we are hugely grateful. The trustees are in agreement to try and build on this model and actively seek out further corporate and organisational support, as well as expanding our regular donor base and continuing to run our fundraising activities where we can.
Structure, Governance and Management
The charity is a CIO, governed under our constitution, which is available to the public through our website.
There are four trustees who have founded the charity and who will remain in position for a varied number of years to ensure consistency of governance.
New trustees may be appointed thus:
“Apart from the first charity trustees, every trustee must be appointed for a term of two years by a resolution passed at a properly convened meeting of the charity trustees.
In selecting individuals for appointment as charity trustees, the charity trustees must have regard to the skills, knowledge and experience needed for the effective administration of the CIO.
The charity trustees will make available to each new charity trustee, on or before his or her first appointment:
(a) a copy of the current version of this constitution; and
(b) a copy of the CIO’s latest Trustees’ Annual Report and statement of accounts.”
The charity trustees currently undertake the roles of secretary and chair, with the treasurer role being jointly undertaken by the chair. The trustees continue to seek to fill the position of treasurer separately and have carried out various advertising campaigns locally. This is one of the set objectives for the coming financial year. Additionally, we were sad to lose one of our trustees, Shamilla Sheridan, due to her moving out of area, but would like to extend our heartfelt thanks for all she has done to help us in establishing the charity, and we wish her and her family well in their new home.
Trustees will all be required to have a DBS certificate and will be given basic safeguarding and Prevent training each year. Further training may be given where deemed appropriate and relevant. Our safeguarding policy and procedures include further detail on the training that both trustees and volunteers are offered and are expected to undertake. The charity continues to review these policies and procedures to ensure they match the activity of the charity’s trustees and volunteers and the needs of their beneficiaries.
Reference and Administrative details
| Charity name | Y:AMHS |
|---|---|
| Other name the charity uses | Youth: Action for Mental Health Support |
| Registered charity number | 1197713 |
| Charity’s principal address | 27 Barber Close Maidenbower Crawley West Sussex RH10 7LU |
Names of the charity trustees who manage the charity
| 1 2 3 4 |
Trustee name | Office (if any) | Dates acted if not for whole year |
Name of person (or body) entitled to appoint trustee (ifany) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rachael Colbran | Chair | |||
| Shereen Jenkins | Secretary | |||
| Helena McGill | ||||
| Shamilla Sheridan | Jan 22- Jan 23 |
Declarations
The trustees declare that they have approved the trustees’ report above.
Signed on behalf of the charity’s trustees
Signature(s)
Full name(s)
Position (eg Secretary, Chair, etc)
Date
Charity Name No (if any) Receipts and payments accounts CC16a For the period Period start date Period end date To from
Section A Receipts and payments
Unrestricted Restricted Endowment funds funds funds
funds |
funds |
funds |
Total funds | Last year | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| to the nearest | £ | to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | ||||||
| A1 Receipts | |||||||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 24,069 |
- | - | 24,069 | 10,002 |
| Section A Receipts and payments Unrestricted |
Section A Receipts and payments Unrestricted |
Restricted | Endowment | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 Receipts - - - - - - - - 24,069 funds to the nearest £ Sub total(Gross income for AR) |
to the nearest £ - - - - - - - - - funds |
to the nearest £ funds |
Total funds to the nearest £ - - - - - - - - 24,069 |
Last year to the nearest £ |
|
| - | - | - - - - - - - - - |
- | - | |
| - | - | - | - | ||
| - | - | - | - | ||
| - | - | - | - | ||
| - | - | - | - | ||
| - | - | - | - | ||
| - | - | - | - | ||
| - | - | - | - | ||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 24,069 |
- | 24,069 | 10,002 | |
| - - Sub total - Total receipts 24,069 A3 Payments - - - - - - - - - Sub total 10,416 - - Sub total - Total payments 10,416 Net of receipts/(payments) 13,653 A5 Transfers between funds - A6 Cash funds last year end - Cash funds this year end 13,653 A2 Asset and investment sales, (see table). A4 Asset and investment purchases, (see table) |
- - - - - - - - - - - - - 720 - - - 720 - 720 - - - 720 |
- - - 24,069 - - - - - - - - - 11,136 - - - 11,136 12,933 - - 12,933 |
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| - - - |
- | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | 24,069 | 10,002 | |||
| - - - - - - - - - - |
- | - | |||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | - | ||||
| 11,136 | - | ||||
| - - - |
- | ||||
| - | |||||
| - | - | ||||
| - | 11,136 | - | |||
| - 720 | - - - - |
12,933 | 10,002 | ||
| - | - | - | |||
| - | - | - | |||
| - 720 | 12,933 | 10,002 |
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Categories B1 Cash funds B2 Other monetary assets B3 Investment assets B5 Liabilities B4 Assets retained for the charity’s own use |
Details Current Account Savings Account Details Details Details Laptop Details Website Mobile Phone Total cash funds (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) |
to nearest £ 13,652 - - 13,652 Agreement Error to nearest £ - - - - - - Restricted Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted funds Unrestricted funds Fund to which asset belongs Fund to which asset belongs Fund to which liability relates |
to nearest £ - 442 - 442 Agreement Error to nearest £ - - - - - - Cost (optional) - - - - - Cost (optional) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Restricted funds Restricted funds Amount due (optional) |
to nearest £ Endowment funds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| OK | ||||
| to nearest £ Endowment funds |
||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| Current value (optional) |
||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| Current value (optional) |
||||
| 200 | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| When due (optional) |
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| Website | Unrestricted | - | 01 May 2024 | |
| Mobile Phone | Unrestricted | - | 01 January 2024 | |
| - | ||||
| - | ||||
| - |
Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees
Signature
Date of Print Name approval