Wallsend Childrens Community
A Charity Registered in England & Wales Registration no: 1210254
Financial Statements and Trustees' Report
Financial Period to 31 December 2025
Legal and Administrative Information
Name:
Wallsend Childrens Community
Reg'd Charity No: 1210254 Structure Unincorporated association governed by a constitution. Trustees: Chair and Lead Health & Safety: David Baldwin Treasurer: Stuart Dexter Lead Data Protection Nicolette Shaw Lead Strategic Partnerships Rebecca Pankhurst Lead Equality & Diversity/Volunteering Rachel Blythe Lead Ethics and Domestic Abuse Sarah Ralph-Lane Lead Safeguarding Louise Laws Lead Risk Management Joanna Unthank Address: Wallsend Community Hub and Library 16 The Forum Wallsend Tyne & Wear NE28 8JR Independent Examiner: Mark Thompson MAAT North Tyneside VODA
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Trustees' Annual Report
Objects and Activites
Objects
Our charitable objects as stated in our constitution are:
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To act as a resource for children and young people in Wallsend and its surrounding areas ( Area of Benefit ) by:
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(a) advancing in life and helping children and young people by developing their skills, capacities and capabilities to enable them to participate in society as independent, mature and responsible individuals;
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(b) advancing education;
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(c) relieving unemployment;
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(d) working with and developing multi-agency and partnership approaches which will assist children and young people to participate fully in society;
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(e) undertaking and supporting research into the needs of children and young people living in the Area of Benefit and disseminating the useful results thereof;
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To relieve financial hardship, either generally or individually, among those living in the Area of Benefit who are in need in such ways as the charity trustees from time to time think fit, in particular but not exclusively by making grants of money for providing or paying for items, services or facilities;
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To develop the capacity and skills of the members of the socially and economically disadvantaged community in the Area of Benefit in such a way that they are better able to identify, and help meet, their needs and to participate more fully in society.
Significant activities
Our small staff team are supported by volunteers to deliver a range of activities including:
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Facilitating and convening partners to develop more holistic approaches to delivering services for families across Wallsend
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Engaging with our communities to understand their views and experiences of raising children in Wallsend and connecting them to services to amplify their voice in the development of practice and policy.
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Developing evidence and research to support decision making in Wallsend and the surrounding areas
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Piloting and testing new ways of working through seedcorn funds
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Delivering direct grants to families in crisis
Public benefit
The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with our constitution and guidance issued by the charity commission.
Overview and Purpose:
Origins and Foundation
Wallsend Children’s Community (WCC) was officially established in 2016, the culmination of two years' dedicated groundwork led by David Baldwin. At that time, David served as Head of a local secondary school and Chair of the Wallsend Schools Partnership, a coalition of 17 schools. Observing the decline in services and funding for families beyond the school environment, he astutely foresaw that such reductions would inevitably impact on services to families.
Following a period of investigation and negotiation, a partnership was formed with Save the Children to create the Children’s Community Network (Wallsend, Tameside and Pembury). WCC has been incubated by Save the Children (SCUK) since 2016.
Our Role and Approach
At Wallsend Children’s Community (WCC), we believe in the adage that it takes a village to raise a child. Our role is straightforward yet impactful: to bring additional support into Wallsend, facilitate collaboration, convene stakeholders, build robust evidence, amplify the voices within our community, celebrate the strengths and achievements of Wallsend, and nurture the development of community members and partners.
In theoretical terms, WCC acts as a steward of the system, fostering the wellbeing of the entire community system rather than focusing solely on the organisation itself. Practically, with a concentrated focus on the local area and its systems, WCC works in partnership with others to develop solutions, influence perspectives, and create opportunities for new ways of thinking, learning, and action. This approach enables WCC to have an impact not only locally, but also regionally and nationally, particularly through its partnership with SCUK.
We do this using a range of resources, including:
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Family Grants, given directly to families in need through our network of partners
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Funding for research and action learning
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Seedcorn funding to trial new ways of working or developing innovative services
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Partnership with Save the Children, bringing additional resources and access to a national platform for influencing policy, advocacy and campaigns
Distinctiveness and Impact
What distinguishes WCC is its approach: rather than delivering services or competing with others, WCC secures additional resources that others may not have the capacity to pursue. For instance, between 2022 and 2025, working with schools and community partners, WCC secured £300,000 in additional funding for Wallsend from the Department for Education (DfE).
While showcasing our initiatives may make us seem like a typical charity focused on activity and delivery, this approach is partly intentional to attract funding to Wallsend. However, strategically, our work involves supporting partners to pursue collective goals for children and families, introducing innovative strategies, gathering evidence, and subtly reshaping local narratives and practices to achieve lasting change.
Theory of Change
In collaboration with the community, WCC developed its Theory of Change, centred on three key themes: getting things right early; promoting being fit and healthy for life; and enabling the realisation of ambitions. This framework is regularly reviewed and remains just as relevant and effective as it was upon its inception in 2016.
Given that WCC’s work is primarily focused on supporting others, assessing its own impact can be challenging. To address this, the organisation has developed its own Theory of Change, enabling the core team to deliver targeted interventions and the charity to evaluate its effectiveness.
Growth and Independence
Since 2016, WCC has benefited greatly from direct investment and partnership with SCUK. However, the mutual goal was to achieve self-sufficiency. Over the past two years, WCC and SCUK have collaborated on designing and negotiating an innovative model that enables WCC to become an independent charity, while still enjoying the advantages of being in a partnership. This ongoing relationship provides both organisations with a national platform, ensuring that the voices of those with lived experience drive collective influence and impact.
Achievements and Performance
To support the transition, WCC created it’s own Strategy 2023-2026 with four key strategy objectives, each linked to a number of goals. As an agent for systems change, our objectives can only be achieved through the cumulative efforts of our team and all our partners and community – collectively ‘ A Village Raising our Children ’. Our four strategic objectives are:
1. Growing Collective Impact - we will seek the best possible outcomes for children and young people from cradle to career, working with our community and a wide range of partners in an atmosphere of shared responsibility to enable the children and young people of Wallsend to thrive.
2. Increasing Collective Influence - we will play a pro-active and effective role both supporting and challenging all those who share in the vision of WCC to shape and scale up the number, quality, consistency and sustainability of opportunities that are being accessed by children, young people and families in Wallsend.
3. Securing Essential Resources - we will ensure that WCC has all it needs in terms of secure, sustainable funding and a dynamic and versatile team of staff and volunteers, many of whom will be ‘qualified by experience’.
4. Structuring for Success – our organisation will be the long-term custodian of the Wallsend Children’s Community. Therefore, we will transition into a new legal form choosing the option that will best facilitate our vision. Aligned to this we must consider what roles are required along with more effectively arranging our various boards, working groups and committees to ensure that the people
Our achievements in our first year of independence have been significant and set the tone for how successfully we can develop as an independent agent supporting place-based change. They include the following:
Governance
Through 2025, we focused on establishing ourselves as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, operating independently of SCUK, ensuring it as a robust entity with its own infrastructure.
We concluded on the negotiation of a 5-year Partnership Agreement with Save the Children which has now been operationalised with quarterly governance meetings overseeing delivery aligned to key performance indicators.
As part of our governance arrangements, we recruited trustees and now have a board of eight trustees who met twelve times through 2025. Together they finalised our Risk Register and signed off a policy and procedure suite to support all our regulatory requirements and duty of care. All trustees have a lead role now in areas of safeguarding, equality and diversity, risk management, health and safety, finance, data protection and research ethics. A schedule for six 2-hour in-person meetings has been developed through 2026.
In 2025, we also developed an Income Generation Strategy 2025-2030 and achieved our first large grant of £500k through the National Lottery Community Fund for a five-year systems change piece of work to bring families and schools closer ‘Story of Parent Power’. As a result of this we engaged our first employee and will be recruiting another role in 2026.
We enter into 2026 with a small surplus, £10k reserves as per our policy and have secured a Philanthropic donation of £50k to support our core work, family grants and our Youth Participatory Action Research programme.
In terms of demonstrable impact, we implemented our Impact Assessment Framework and published our first reports whilst also creating the foundations of our new website.
Core work
Amongst the core work, we delivered two new pilots and continued on another:
Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR)
Delivered in partnership with Burnside College, YPAR is a democratic, youth-led research approach that empowers young people (YP) as experts in their own lives. It shifts power from adults to YP, enabling them to lead research, make decisions, and drive change in their lives. This approach supports YP to lead research with their peers, while adults act as facilitators. This process builds YP’s communication, research, and socioemotional skills, while nurturing their sense of confidence, empowerment, and agency.
Including All
With a range of Wallsend schools and Clennell Education Solutions in partnership with Save the Children, this action research initiative explores opportunities for early intervention in tackling school absence, with a particular focus on secondary school years. The project involved collaboration with one secondary school and five feeder primary schools. The research aims to engage families experiencing attendance difficulties in secondary school, especially where siblings attend the feeder or other primary schools. The core action is the implementation of a Family Facilitator, whose role is to support families by connecting them with wider community services and acting as a liaison between school and home to overcome practical barriers to regular attendance
Magic Movers
We entered into the third year of our innovative programme addressing early years developmental delays, originally funded by the DfE’s Opening Schools Facilities Fund. This is now being self-funded by the school supporting early years development in nursery and operated by two Wallsend based organisations and featured as a PodCast through Schools North East as exemplar practices in early years.
Collective Influence/Impact
In ongoing support of our partners and understanding the context of our place:
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Our Transition research continues to investigate the effects of the transition from primary to secondary school on young people, with a focus on identifying improvements to the process and clarifying the roles of key stakeholders. This study gathers insights from Year 6 pupils before their transition, as well as their parents and primary school staff. Additionally, we capture perspectives from Year 7 pupils who have experienced the transition, alongside their parents and secondary school staff. We have shared the findings thus far with Schools North East and will continue to work with them influencing policy in this regard.
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We have re-ignited our Oral Health programme working in partnership with Newcastle University Dental School to deliver Brush-up sessions in all thirteen primary schools reception classes, delivering oral hygiene packs and literature to both children and their parents.
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We delivered two summer activity days with our community and our work with our Community Champion Network continued, recruiting new community members and seeing others engage in service delivery design, campaigns and actively supporting other community members.
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Our Community Champion Network continues to grow with thirty six active members on our WhatsApp channel, offering daily insight into the life raising children in Wallsend. This group actively support the codesign and development of activities, services and materials going into the community. They supported directly through Save the Children, the 2-child limit campaign and continue to provide expert knowledge on issues of SEND, Cost of Living, Health initiatives and Community Hubs.
New Initiatives
Story of Parent Power
Immediately upon registering as an independent charity, WCC starting talking to the National Lottery Community Fund about an innovative opportunity to develop Story of Parent Power. In July 2025 WCC were awarded £499,901 for a 5-year project which seeks to bring schools and parents together to understand one another's perspectives on what parental engagement is and how collectively they can achieve it in each individual school and then across Wallsend schools.
Reviews of previous interventions that have sought to improve parental engagement have found mixed results, but mostly finding that interventions are largely ineffective. What is different about Story of Parent Power is that it:
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first explores differences in beliefs and attitudes towards parental engagement, from the perspectives of both parents and school staff
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encourages groups of parents and school staff to work together, emphasising the importance of being respectful of differences, to find and accept a common understanding
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empowers parents, providing them with the requisite skills, to advocate on behalf of their wider parent peer groups
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builds a parent network across multiple local schools connecting parents so that they can share and consolidate their learning.
While the project has clear, overarching goals, it is nevertheless complex and continually evolving. We believe a key reason past interventions have fallen short is their failure to recognise schools and parents as equal partners, or their tendency to take a prescriptive approach to "improving" engagement. Story of Parent Power avoids this pitfall by adopting a facilitative role rather than direct intervention. Our focus is on creating the conditions for parents and schools to collaborate, navigate differences, and find common ground. We provide the foundation for this process, helping both groups see the value in working together, without imposing solutions.
Wallsend Active Schools Partnership
Supported the development of the Wallsend Active Schools Partnership (WASP). This is a collaborative initiative with a shared mission: to address rising childhood obesity and re-engage young people in positive, active lifestyles through fun, accessible, and sustainable sporting activities. The work of the Partnership is made possible through the continued support of WCC, whose commitment, local knowledge, and resources enable a
Financial Review
Financial position, principal funding sources, and reserves policy.
Financial position
During this first financial year, were successfully awarded three grants, the most significant of which is with the National Lottery Community Fund totalling £499,901, securing £52.6k of this into 2025.
These accounts show a small surplus of £10,134 during this period, £10k of which will be allocated to meet our Reserves Policy objective. Our balance sheet shows that we hold £81,740 in restricted funds.
Principal funding sources
Our main source of funding is grants through our partnership with SCUK (three years of secured funding), and Trusts and Foundations, including Sir James Knott through which we have secured three years funding of £5k per year 2025-2027.
We brough forward existing funds of £24,400 for restricted initiatives, previously held by our partner Churchill Community College, directly into our Charity’s bank.
A sum of £12,795 was transferred to WCC following the closure of the Wallsend Action for Youth, a charity that had supported the Wallsend Schools Partnership for over 20 years. This fund is designated for spend only in Wallsend Schools and it is incumbent upon WCC to manage this fund on their behalf with spend directly into schools.
Reserves policy
The trustees set our Reserves Policy at £10k per year each year in our first three years of being an independent charity to cover winding up the charity. These costs are set at this sum to achieve a reserve of £30k by the end of year 3. This may seem slightly unambitious but is set as such due to the Partnership Agreement with SCUK, as
Structure, Governance and Management
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Trustees’ Responsibilities in relation to Financial Statements
Charity Law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which comply with the regulations set out in the Charities Act 1993.
Signed:
David Baldwin, Chair Date: 31 March 2026
INDEPENDENT EXAMINER'S REPORT
Report to the Wallsend Childrens Community trustees of
On accounts for the year ended
31 December 2025 Charity no 1210254
Respective The trustees of the organisation are responsible for the preparation of responsibilities of accounts; they consider that an audit is not required for this year under trustees and section 144(2) of the Charities Act 2011 and that an Independent examiner Examination is needed.
It is my responsibility to
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examine the accounts (under section 145 of the 2011 Act),
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follow the procedures laid down in the General Directions given by the
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Charity Commission (under section 145(5)(b) of the Act), and
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state whether particular matters have come to my attention.
Basis of My examination was carried out in accordance with General Directions independent given by the Charity Commissioners. An examination includes a review examiner’s of the accounting records kept by the charity and a comparison of the statement accounts presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accounts, and seeking explanations from the trustees concerning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all the evidence that would be required in an audit, and consequently I do not express an audit opinion on the accounts.
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Independent In the course of my examination, no matter has come to my attention: examiner's 1. which gives me reasonable cause to believe that in, any material
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statement respect, the trustees have not met the requirements to ensure that:
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proper accounting records are kept (in accordance with section 130 of
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the Act); and
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accounts are prepared which agree with the accounting records and
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comply with the accounting requirements of the Act; or
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to which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.
Signed: Date: 31 March 2026 Name: Mark Thompson MAAT Address: VODA
Wallsend Childrens Community Receipts and payments account, period ending 31 December 2025
| Receipts Grants Contract Income Donations Total Receipts Payments Charitable Activities Office & Running Costs Policy & Fundraising Staff Costs Trustee Support Total Payments Surplus / deficit for the year Transfer between funds Funds at 1 January 2025 Funds at 31 December 2025 |
Unrestricted Restricted Total Funds Funds Funds 2025 2025 2025 £ 166444 166444 0 134 134 0 0 134 166444 166578 37234 37234 2209 2209 12263 12263 21546 21546 1452 1452 0 0 74704 74704 134 91740 91874 10000 -10000 0 0 10134 81740 91874 |
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Wallsend Childrens Charity Balance Sheet as at 31 December 2025
| Current Assets Cash at Bank Debtors Liabilities Total Current Assets Net Assets at 31 December 2025 . Represented By: Restricted Funds Unrestricted Funds Total Funds at 31 December 2025 |
2025 £ 107109 11900 -27135 91874 91874 81740 10134 91874 |
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The financial statements were approved by the following members of the Board:
Signed:
Position: Chair
Signed:
Position: Treasurer
Date: 31 March 2026
Wallsend Childrens Charity
Notes to the accounts 2025.
1. Basis of accounts
The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2015) – Charities SORP (FRS 102), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and the Companies Act 2006
Wallsend Childrens Charity meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy note(s).
2 Trustees and Staff
No Trustees were remunerated or received expenses payments, nor does the organisation employ any staff during the period of the accounts.
3 Costs of financial services
The cost for the Independent Examination for the financial period will be £400.
4 Grants
| Grants received through the year: National Lottery Community Fund Okay to Play Oral Health Rathbones SAVE URF Sir James Knott Trust Susan Knoffke Award WAFY Wasp Youth Participatory Action Research Total Grants Received |
52610 5755 3990 2500 68962 4386 750 12796 14695 166444 |
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6 Fund Analysis
| Fund Analysis | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trans to | December | |||
| Restricted Funds | Income | Expend | Unrestricted | 2025 |
| National Lottery Community Fund - Story | ||||
| of Parent Power | 52610 | 25707 | 26903 | |
| Okay to Play | 5755 | 5755 | ||
| Oral Health | 3990 | 155 | 3835 | |
| Rathbones | 2500 | 2265 | 235 | |
| SAVE URF | 68962 | 35103 | -10000 | 23859 |
| Sir James Knott Trust | 4386 | 3063 | 1323 | |
| Susan Knoffke Award | 750 | 750 | ||
| WAFY Wasp | 12796 | 12796 | ||
| Youth Participatory Action Research | 14695 | 8412 | 6283 | |
| Total | 166444 | 74705 | -10000 | 81739 |
7 Related party transactions
There were no significant transactions between the project and any related parties during the period. No payments have been made to Trustees.