OpenCharities

This text was generated using OCR and may contain errors. Check the original PDF to see the document submitted to the regulator.

2025-03-31-accounts

pss PSS (UK) Annual Report 2024-25

Contents

Administrative information .................................................................................................................... 1
Welcome from our chief executive ..................................................................................................... 3
Introduction from our Chair ................................................................................................................... 4
Report of the trustees ................................................................................................................................. 6
Our governance ........................................................................................................................................ 6
What have we been up to this year? ............................................................................................ 13
Our Performance in 2024-25 ........................................................................................................... 34
Risk Management ................................................................................................................................ 40
Auditor ....................................................................................................................................................... 42
Trustees’ responsibilities ......................................................................................................................... 43
Independent Auditors’ Report to the Members of PSS (UK) .................................................. 44
Statement of financial activities including the income and expenditure account ..... 49
Balance sheet at 31 March 2025 .......................................................................................................... 50
Cash flow statement for the year ended 31 March 2025 ......................................................... 51
Notes to the financial statements ....................................................................................................... 52
1
Accounting policies ..................................................................................................................... 52
2
Incoming resources ..................................................................................................................... 58
3
Expenditure .................................................................................................................................... 59
4
Tangible fixed assets ................................................................................................................... 62
5
Investment property .................................................................................................................. 63
6
Fixed asset investments ............................................................................................................ 63
7
Debtors: amounts due within one year ............................................................................. 64
8
Creditors: amounts due within one year .......................................................................... 64
9
Creditors: amounts due greater than one year .............................................................. 65
10 Pension obligations ...................................................................................................................... 65
11 Reserves ............................................................................................................................................. 67
12 Analysis of cash and cash equivalents ............................................................................... 69
13 Analysis of net debt ..................................................................................................................... 69
14 Financial commitments ............................................................................................................. 69
15 Related party transactions........................................................................................................ 70
16 Financial instruments ................................................................................................................ 70

Administrative information

Administrative details of PSS (UK)

Company registration number PSS (UK): 214077 Registered charity number England and Wales: 224469 Registered office (UK) Eleanor Rathbone House Connect Business Village 24 Derby Road Liverpool L5 9PR Telephone: 0151 702 5555 Email: hello@pss.org.uk Website www.pss.org.uk Bankers Barclays Bank plc Lord Street Liverpool L2 1TD Solicitors Hempsons The Exchange Station Parade Harrogate HG1 1DY Investment managers CCLA Senator House 85 Queen Victoria Street London EC4V 4ET Auditors Crowe U.K. LLP 3rd floor St George’s House 56 Peter Street Manchester M2 3NQ Chief executive Jill Sheldrake

1

The trustees on the date of this report and who served during the year 2024/25 were:

Julie Cooke Chair Dr. Kim Heyes Vice-Chair and Chair of People Committee Beverley Mitchell Chair of Finance and Performance Committee Matthew Rothwell Chair of Audit and Governance Committee Jenny Hannon Colin Bell Georgia Marriott-Smith Helen Shaw Richard Bramwell Nicola Parkinson Co-opted 27/3/24, elected 24/6/24

Investment powers and authority

The Articles of Association place no restrictions on the amount or type of investments made by the company. However, PSS complies with the restrictions placed upon it by law.

PSS is a registered charity and, as such, is not liable to income tax or corporation tax.

The current active membership of PSS is 10.

The trustees of the charity derive no benefit, income or capital interest from PSS (UK) ("PSS") except for related party transactions (note 15).

PSS Charitable Objects as declared in our Articles of Association

The advancement of education, the advancement of health, the relief of poverty and the advancement of such other charitable purposes for the benefit of the community in such manner as the trustees shall from time to time think fit and in particular (but without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing) by assisting individuals in need to live and/or manage their needs more independently.

2

Welcome from our chief executive

Hello! I’m so pleased to welcome you to the 2024-25 Annual Report as PSS’s new chief executive. I officially joined the organisation in January 2025 - and what a first three months it’s been!

I couldn’t have asked for a warmer welcome to PSS. Everyone has been so friendly, and I felt that famous PSS culture from day one.

It’s been such a pleasure getting to know the organisation – where it started, where it’s been, and importantly, where it’s going. I’ve met people from all corners of PSS, and it’s been fantastic to have the opportunity to spend time with our teams, getting to know all about the incredible services PSS offers, and the wonderful people who make them so good. I’ve been immersing myself in what PSS is all about and have loved spending time with the people we support (I have to say, I particularly loved going to a play session with the mums and babies who use our Parent-Baby Service. Those are some cute babies!).

One of my first big tasks has been to deliver some Big Thinks. Those are our way of getting all of our teams together to talk about important issues, solve problems and generate ideas. This time, the Big Thinks were about PSS itself, and I’ve been busy getting together with each and every team across the organisation to ask them some important questions. I wanted to hear about people’s challenges, the barriers to doing their best work, and anything they felt could be better. I also wanted to hear people’s ideas for how to make things better – what aren’t we doing that we should be doing, and what would people do if they had a magic wand? Hearing from the people who know PSS best has helped me get to grips with where we are, and what needs to happen next. It’s also underlined what an amazing team we have here. I’ve been so impressed with just how hard everyone works, and how much everyone here goes above and beyond for the people we support. Every time I did a Big Think I was surrounded by so many dedicated, knowledgeable and passionate people who sincerely care about their jobs, and about the people we support. In fact, just like it says in our Big Staff Survey results this year, many people told me that working at PSS was much more than just a job for them – it’s purpose, it’s having an impact, and for a lot of people, it feels like family.

Right now, I’m working on a report that details all my thoughts and experiences over my first 100 days in the role, where I’ll be making some recommendations for things we can do to take away some of those barriers, grow the organisation and make some of those magic wand ideas happen.

Reflecting on all the fantastic things that happened before I came to PSS at the end of this year makes me proud to be a part of it. It’s a really exciting time to have joined – and I can’t wait to get stuck in.

3

Introduction from our Chair

Well what a busy, fabulous year it’s been at PSS.

This year we had the task of recruiting a brand new CEO to take the reins from Lesley Dixon, who took semi-retirement in the autumn. A group of trustees worked closely alongside Peridot Partners, and the PSS team to get the job done. First, we did a consultation process with people from across the organisation to find out what they wanted from our next CEO. Then, using what we learned to help nail down what we were looking for, we launched a big, nationwide recruitment drive. Our comms team made a brilliant video in partnership with some people who use our services, who said what they were looking for in our next leader. It went down a storm, turning lots of industry heads who were full of praise for our person-centred approach. The great news is, it also turned the head of Jill Sheldrake, who, after a lengthy selection process involving trustees, our senior leaders, PSS teammates and people we support, came to join us as our new CEO in January 2025. Jill’s a trained social worker and joined us from her role as deputy CEO and director of services at fellow charity Together Trust, with over 30 years’ experience in social care under her belt. She brings so much expertise to this role. We’re thrilled to have her on our team and know she’s going to be a huge asset to PSS.

We also started an exciting new chapter for our Board this year, when entrepreneur Lisa Maynard-Atem joined us as our first Board apprentice. Our Board apprenticeship scheme was launched last year in partnership with the Black United Representation Network (BURN). Together, we’re helping to tackle systemic oppression by giving senior professionals from global majority communities the opportunity to get valuable experience of being part of a charity Board. Not only does this benefit our apprentices and help people get the visibility they deserve, but it also benefits PSS – we need fresh, diverse perspectives at Board level to make the right decisions that reflect the needs of all the communities we serve. Lisa has been such a huge joy to work alongside and brings so many skills and insights to the table. Not only that, but she’s blogged her whole experience to pave the way for our next apprentice!

Lisa wasn’t the only new person on the Board this year: we also welcomed Nicola Parkinson and Martin Stockdale. New trustee Nicola was on our People Committee and our equity, diversity and inclusion steering group for around a year before she joined the Board, and brings a whole load of HR and organisational development expertise with her. Martin also joined us on our Finance and Performance Committee. Martin’s a lawyer with expertise in data and digital tech, an area that PSS is really branching out in, and brings so much valuable commercial insight to the group. Two great additions to help steer PSS in the right direction.

Speaking of steering PSS in the right direction, we’ve had to take a very careful look at our finances this year. The Government’s announcement that it won’t be exempting social care charities like PSS from the increases to National Insurance payments has put added financial pressure on organisations like ours, who are already operating on limited funds. We’re keeping a close eye on the changing

4

marketplace and will be positioning PSS in the best possible way. In fact, we’re about to get together for a Board away day focused on our new growth strategy, looking at how we can craft an even brighter future.

In the wake of the Southport tragedy last summer, a spate of violent race riots happened all over the country, including here in Liverpool. Sadly, this meant lots of our teammates from global majority communities felt unsafe in their own homes, worried about coming to work and using public transport, their sense of safety in their own cities completely shaken. This was appalling – and an incredibly sad reality for so many people from global majority communities. Nobody should be made to feel this way. The way PSS approached this time made me really proud. Led by our previous chief executive, Lesley, our main priority at such a scary time was making sure our teammates were safe, both physically and psychologically. We worked closely with local authorities and our other partners to learn when the riots were predicted and planned to begin, making sure we could close our centres early to make sure everyone, including the people we support, got home safe before they started. We rang taxis for our Black, Asian and mixed-ethnicity teammates who felt targeted and unsafe to use public transport or to be walking around in public. Our management teams checked in regularly to make sure people who felt targeted were safe, and we made sure nobody who felt worried that they may be targeted had to be out and about in the community as part of their job. We made sure to speak out against the riots with a strongly-worded public statement, calling out the racist, Islamophobic acts unfolding around us, which was also covered in our internal communications, so that our teams could see that we opposed what was happening and were a safe space. I know the management team had feedback from teammates who felt this approach made a personal difference to their lives at that time.

Against the backdrop of society right now, our work around belonging and inclusion feels even more important. It continues to go from strength-to-strength, and this year I was really proud to see our vision and five-year action plan take shape, which you can read more about in our report. We were so impressed to see how much progress has already been made against it this year already, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our equity, diversity and inclusion working group, and our teammates across the organisation who have fully embraced it.

We like to keep an eye on the quality of what we do at PSS. In fact, we have a whole team of people whose jobs it is to keep making sure our work is spot on. This year, the quality team got some honorary members: our volunteer quality checkers. Quality checkers are people with lived experience of using our services who volunteer their time to get in amongst it in our services and give us a report on what they think is good and what needs to change. We loved having our quality checkers at our Board meeting this year to tell us what they’d been up to, what they’d found out and what we need to think more about. We learned a lot from them, and we’ll definitely be hearing from them regularly.

5

Next year marks the sixth and final year of PSS’s Big Plan, our strategy that started in 2020. This time next year, we’ll be starting to put our new Big Plan in place, and we’ll be looking back over the last six years to see how much brilliant stuff we’ve achieved. And let me tell you – it’ll be an awful lot. Our team has worked incredibly hard for another year, and we can already see just how much we've grown, changed and developed as a result of this.

As our Big Staff Survey results revealed this year, our team is happier than ever and feel that what they do is more than just a job – it has special meaning. Every day they give their heart and soul for the people we support: a truly big-hearted and professional bunch of people who really believe in what PSS stands for. And that’s what makes PSS people so wonderful.

Report of the trustees

Our governance

PSS was founded in 1919, is a company limited by guarantee (incorporated in 1926) and registered as a UK charity in 1963. PSS was established under a Memorandum of Association, which sets out what were here to do, and the powers we have. We’re governed under our Articles of Association.

Our membership is made up of our trustees, who are also directors of the company. The Board is required to include a Chair and Vice Chair. Trustees are elected for a term of up to three years but may be re-elected up to three terms of three years.

The Board meets four times a year. It has three sub-committees: Audit and Governance, Finance and Performance and the People sub-committees, which all meet four times per year. The sub-committees exist to provide a level of scrutiny to the work PSS does, each with their own job to do. The Audit and Governance Committee covers things like governance, risk management, internal and external audit, quality, accounts reporting, approval and key policies in their delegation. The Finance and Performance Committee keeps an eye on organisational performance, approves the long-term financial plan and business development strategy, recommends the annual budget to Board and scrutinises the accounts for forecasting accuracy. Finally, the People Committee reviews PSS’s internal functions to make sure that they support effective recruitment, retention, development opportunities and staff pay, as well as making sure that PSS is doing all it can to provide a happy, fulfilling and inclusive place of work, supported by an open and honest culture in line with our values. Each of our committees reports to the full Board.

Charity Governance Code

The principles of the charity governance code are well embedded in the way things are done at PSS, including: the work of the Board; the approach to trustee and staff recruitment and development; policy; procedures; and our approach to putting the

6

people we support at the heart of what we do. Our Board periodically looks at PSS’s performance against the governance code by looking the recommendations under each of the seven principles.

Here’s some examples of how we’ve put the principles into practice this year:

Organisational purpose

Our purpose influences everything we do – from the action plan we set ourselves every year to meet our strategic aims (our Big Plan), to the development of new goals and strategies to help us meet the needs of the people we support and the communities we operate in.

In 2025/26 we will embark on the final year of our current Big Plan. This was originally developed to cover the 2020-25 period but was extended by the Board for a further year to allow our new chief executive to settle in (our big news of the year – lots more on this later!) A major part of our plans for the coming year will be around making sure we achieve what we set out to back in 2020:

to be top of the list for life-changing support led by those using it, for roles that are more than just a job, and for imaginative thinking that challenges the status quo in our sector.

To get there, we developed five themes to base our action plans around:

  1. Only the people we support know what it’s like to be in their shoes – we listen to them, learn from them, use their knowledge to shape PSS and help them shape their lives.

  2. We’ll make wise decisions that keep us around for future generations

  3. People want to be part of our down-to-earth, strong and ambitious team of staff, Shared Lives carers and volunteers. Our differences are celebrated but our values unite us.

  4. We believe technology, when used in the right way, can make everyone’s personal and professional lives easier and better.

  5. We have a positive impact on our sector, local communities, the people within them and the planet we live on.

Throughout this report you’ll see that all of our work during 2024/25 has been focussed on at least one of these themes, sometimes several. We report to our Board at every single meeting on our progress against our Big Plan, with information broken down into the five themes. The Board approved our 2025/26 action plan at their meeting in March 2025 and we’re now busy making sure we can look back at the end of the year and say our Big Plan was a success.

2025 will also see us develop our next strategic plan (to cover the 2026-30 period), ready for launch in April 2026. The internal and external picture has changed considerably since we developed the last plan. Internally, we have a different Board with many new trustees, and a new chief executive. Externally, the world looks like a very different place. Nationally we have a new Labour government. Internationally things feel very uncertain. Cost of living and funding pressures are

7

as great as ever, and we’re having to think smarter and act quicker to make sure we continue to be a sustainable organisation that’s around for many more years to come. In fact, in May 2025, our Board will be having an away day to revisit our approach to growth, the focus of our work and think about the work we might need to do around mergers and acquisitions – all while keeping our purpose in mind. In the meantime, we’ve looked to stabilise our position as much as possible by retaining our Lincolnshire Shared Lives service and winning the tender in North Yorkshire – a brand new area for us.

Leadership and integrity

The leadership principle is all about demonstrating that our Board provide strategic leadership in line with our aims and values. An important part of that is the Board making sure there are proper arrangements in place for the appointment, supervision and support of the CEO. After almost 15 years in post, Lesley Dixon retired as our chief executive in September 2024, and the search for a new leader began. The recruitment process was intensive to say the least and was led by a working group of our hardworking trustees, supported by Peridot Partners.

The integrity principle underlines the importance of supporting our work with a strong culture, led by trustees who act with honesty and care. It’s hard to overstate how seriously the Board took the responsibility of finding the right person for chief executive job and they took great care to consult with stakeholders across the business on what they wanted from our next chief executive. After searching high and low, we were delighted to appoint Jill Sheldrake, who started with us in January 2025.

Decision making, risk and control :

This year has brought some new risks our way, particularly around financial sustainability. The government’s decision to impose increased National Insurance contributions for employers, coupled with local authorities being unable to raise fees to match the cost increases, has meant we’ve had to re-think our financial forecast, and has put increased pressure on our sector. The good news is, the sector is coming together to stand against what’s happening. We’re collaborating with partner organisations and umbrella bodies, like The Voluntary Organisations Disability Group (VODG), to challenge decisions at a regional and national level that we feel will harm society in the long run. Challenges lie ahead for all of us, but as always, our leadership team and Board of Trustees are keeping a close eye on developments and will mitigate risks as best they can. Our upcoming away day focused on our growth strategy will allow us to have a closer look at how we best position ourselves in the marketplace.

Our Board also delegates oversight of key business areas to its sub-committees and, every year, we complete a thorough review of how our committees have performed against their terms of reference. This makes sure our committees are focusing on the

8

stuff they need to be focusing on, and lets the Board know that nothing is being missed.

Our Audit and Governance Committee scrutinise our strategic risk register at every meeting and also welcome a manager from one of our operational teams to talk with them about how they manage risks at service level. During 2024/25, managers from the Parent-Baby service, Shared Lives North-West and Wellbeing Centres presented their risk registers, along with a deep dive of the operations directorate’s register by director of operations, Harriet Michael-Phillips, to demonstrate how frontline risks impact the strategic register, and vice versa.

Board effectiveness

This year saw Nicola Parkinson join our Board as a trustee, following a year’s service on the People committee. Nicola brings excellent HR and organisational development expertise and is a valued member of our Belonging steering group. Back in November 2024, we recruited Martin Stockdale to our Finance and Performance Committee. Martin is a lawyer with a track record of driving innovation and transformation, particularly through data and digital technology; he brings a fresh, commercial approach to this committee.

We were absolutely thrilled to develop a new partnership with the Black United Representation Network and in September 2024 we welcomed Lisa Maynard-Atem as our very first Board Apprentice. Lisa is one of BURN’s directors and as BURN’s first social care partner, she wanted to experience life as a charity board member at PSS for herself. Lisa has brought a whole new perspective to our Board and helped us to appreciate the value an apprentice can bring to a Board. More on Lisa later.

Our Board makes sure that it reviews its own performance, and the performance of individual trustees, including the Chair, in line with the Code’s recommendations. We have a formal appraisal process for trustees each year and aim to complete full Board performance reviews every two years. A review was due in October 2024 but given this was due to fall between chief executives, we agreed that it made more sense to hold this once Jill has had some time in post to get to know how things work.

We completed a full skills audit with our trustees at the end of 2024 and identified some priority areas for recruitment. At the same time, NCVO released a report around the challenges charities face around recruiting and retaining trustees. We contributed towards the research, which found that four out of five respondents have at least one vacant Board position, and well over half had two or more vacancies. Most of these openings have existed for over six months. At the same time, the external environment has become more challenging, forcing trustees to make increasingly difficult decisions to stay financially stable. That being said, it’s no surprise that charities are finding it hard to recruit and hang on to trustees. We know we need to try some new approaches when it comes to Board member recruitment, and this will be our focus during the 2025/26 year.

9

Equity, diversity and inclusion

Last year we outlined the huge first steps we’d taken to become a place of true belonging for everyone who works for and with us - and it’s safe to say, we haven’t slowed down! This year we launched our Vision for Belonging and also the first in our five-year action plan to make our vision our reality and we’re overjoyed with how much we’ve achieved. Trustees Julie, Kim and Nic are on our belonging steering group and we’ve regularly reported on our progress to People Committee. We’ll talk more throughout this report about the changes we’ve made but things already look and feel so different and as a Board we can’t wait to see what year two brings.

Openness and accountability

Every year we ask the people we support, our commissioners, our partners and our Shared Lives carers to take part in our Annual Survey, giving them an opportunity to tell us about their experience of working with us. These results are reported to the Board.

We were chuffed to get feedback from 1471 people this year in total, out of a possible 2722. This is a 54% increase on the return rate achieved in 2023/24.

We got feedback from:

Check out page 18 in the report to see what our overall scores were this year. Safe to say, we’re chuffed to bits with the scores and can’t wait to get stuck into the feedback we’ve received.

Our main focus now is reflecting on and making improvements in the areas where people didn’t have such a great experience - and we’re beavering away on our plan of action.

We’ve also still got a really strong compliments and complaints process, which allows people we support, families, commissioners or anyone else who wants to give us feedback to tell us their thoughts either by email, letter or using a form on our website. Both compliments and complaints are reported to the Board at every meeting to make sure we continue to be transparent and open when responding to feedback. We keep a register of interests so that trustees and senior managers can declare any conflicts or relationships relevant to the agenda at the beginning of each meeting.

10

Trustee performance

The Chair of Trustees meets with every Board member individually every April to talk about their contribution to the Board and to the organisation as a whole. The Chair also has an appraisal done by the Vice Chair, and committee members have an annual meeting with the relevant Chair to talk about their experience of volunteering for PSS and their contribution to their committee. The Board also does a review of its own performance and on the skills and expertise of our Board members on a biennial basis (although as we’ve already explained, we weren’t able to this year due to a change of chief executive), as well as self-assessments against the Charity Governance Code. This helps us to make sure trustees are acting in line with best practice.

Our teams regularly come to Board meetings to talk about the different parts of what they do, and our trustees often get out and about to visit our services throughout the year. Trustees are also expected to regularly attend Board and sub-committee meetings. These elements of trustee performance are reported to the Audit and Governance Committee every quarter.

Delegation of authority

The Board of Trustees give our chief executive responsibility for the day-to-day workings and development of PSS, and for making sure PSS is moving in the right direction towards our goals. The trustees are involved in recruiting our leadership team, made up of PSS directors. We’ve got a delegation of authority framework, which allows our trustees to delegate authority in a structured way. Before every Board meeting, our trustees are given a range of things to read through which give them updates on how PSS is doing, so they’ve always got a great picture of what’s going on and what our next steps are. Trustees are also kept up-to-speed on any risks they need to be aware of, and our Audit and Governance Sub-committee looks at PSS’s strategic risk register really closely before our whole Board sees it and gives their views. Reviews like these feed back into PSS’s business plans. The Board is also involved in making decisions about collaborations with other charities or organisations.

Trustees Statement on Public Benefit

PSS (UK)’s vision is to influence health, social care and community services both locally and nationally, through innovative approaches that make a real difference to people’s lives. It does this by carrying out activities that identify those in need and create innovative service solutions. PSS’s trustees therefore confirm that they have complied with the duty in section 17 of the Charities Act 2011 to have due regard to the public benefit guidance published by the Charity Commission in determining the activities undertaken by the charity.

11

Pay and remuneration

At PSS we’re committed to accountability and transparency in the charity sector, but we believe that personal privacy is also an important factor when it comes to what we share.

All executive pay is determined by our People Committee. The trustees who make up this group are responsible for ensuring a fair pay structure across PSS’s executive team that recognises:

We pay close attention to pay rates for every role and we benchmark pay across our sector to see how PSS rewards compare to other organisations that are similar to us. The results of this research helped inform our pay and remuneration offers across the board, helped us keep pay and remuneration at PSS fair and helped us remain a competitive employer.

Employing people who have disabilities

We make sure that anyone who’s disabled is fairly considered for any roles we’ve got at PSS. We don’t ask people about their health or disabilities before we offer them a job with us, unless we need to know whether someone needs to have some adjustments made. We offer interviews to everyone who considers themselves to be disabled and has all the essential requirements for a role at PSS. When someone who’s disabled comes to work with us, we make sure we make all the reasonable adjustments we need to prevent them being off work, to make sure they have a safe return to work if they are off, and to try and stop them needing to be off work in the future. We encourage all of our teams to develop their skills and qualifications and take full advantage of the promotion and development opportunities, regardless of disability or any other protected characteristic.

Fundraising

By law, we need to make a statement about what we do to fundraise (Section 162a of the Charities Act 2011). The law describes fundraising as ‘soliciting or otherwise procuring money or other property for charitable purposes’. At PSS we don’t do lot of fundraising from the general public. But if we do get any kind of donation, including things like legacies and grants, we make them clear in our accounts as voluntary income.

12

Any fundraising we do is managed internally, without any involvement from professional fundraisers, third parties or commercial organisations. The day-to-day management of any kind of fundraising sits with the senior management team.

We don’t think it’s necessary for us to comply with any voluntary code of practise because we’re not bound by any regulatory schemes. We haven’t had any complaints about our fundraising. Our team’s terms of employment say they have to behave reasonably at all times – and we don’t approach anyone for funds, ask for funds for particular reasons or feel like we need to monitor fundraising in this way.

What have we been up to this year?

It's been a year of lots of little and big changes here at PSS. But one thing that's remained unchanged is the unwavering, creative and personalised support our team provides to so many - either directly, putting their heart and soul into their work with the people we support, or indirectly, working hard to keep PSS at the top of its game in the background. Let's have a look at what they've been up to in each of the areas of our Big Plan (that's our five-year strategy):

Theme one: only the people we support know what it’s like to be in their shoes. We listen to them, learn from them and use their knowledge to shape PSS and help them shape their lives

Jackie leads the way at Liverpool Hope University

We’ve been supporting Jackie, someone we support in our Making Days service, to work with Liverpool Hope University to help them create and launch their apprenticeship framework.

On the day of the launch, Jackie was invited to the university where she listened to lots of ace guest speakers and was also given a guided tour from Dan and Kim, social work leads at the university.

As Jackie is a community engagement volunteer at PSS, we’re looking at the possibility of her being involved in shaping the apprenticeship curriculum by working with the students in the coming months.

The power of a great idea

Dutch Farm in Garston is home to our urban allotment, and Dutch Barn, our wellbeing space. The place has had a few exciting new additions recently, meaning we’ve got more space and tools to support people to live their best lives.

We always want to listen to the people we support to find out how to make our services even better. Tracy, one of our teammates in the Wellbeing Centres team, did

13

just that recently. The people we support and our volunteers shared lots of great ideas with her, and Tracy made them a reality.

With hours of research, numerous meetings and a business plan that crossed all the T's and dotted the I’s, Tracy was ready to take everyone’s ideas to Sarah, our head of growth and great ideas. Sarah was really impressed with all the work that had been done and awarded the service a pot of funds, to create a barn for private therapeutic support, and a pizza cooking station.

Both new additions have been a great success and massively improved the quality of the service. Using produce from the farm, the people we support can now get involved in more cooking sessions, as well as being able to provide hot food for all the events at the farm throughout the year.

Having a smaller, separate barn from the main Dutch Barn means we can offer a private space for people who might be having a one-to-one wellbeing session or need somewhere private to talk.

It’s been so incredible to see the power of a great idea turn into reality.

Raising Wildflowers – a PSS book

Some of the parents in our PSS Parent-Baby Service were supported to create their own book, Raising Wildflowers, as part of a project with Writing on the Wall.

The aim of the book was to create something to support parents to talk about the highs and lows of parenting in an authentic and healthy way. We had five mums, and three dads involved, and they used their lived experience to share their stories.

They particularly looked at how individual experiences can impact some parents, as well as the expectations and pressures that some parents face.

The book was also used as tool to support the parents to work through some difficult situations and redirect how they felt, with the aim of them recognising how amazingly they’re doing.

The book explores themes of child loss, domestic violence and child abuse.

We’re so proud of all the parents involved and for the incredible work they’re doing.

Building a village

We know what they say, when it comes to raising a child, it takes a village. And in our Parent-Baby Service, we’re supporting people to find people to be part of theirs. In our Parent-Baby Service, peer supporters are parents who we've supported before and want to give their time to support others. We first introduced peer supporting to our Parent-Baby Service a year ago, and the peer supporters have gone from strength to strength since then, offering low-level support to other parents.

Their support includes giving guidance on things like breastfeeding, sleepless nights, transitioning your baby into their own rooms and lots more. They provide a service

14

that’s not professionally-led, so it feels like a barrier has been removed to being able to give parents the support they need –with peer support, they're talking to real parents, just like them.

Not only do our peer supporters support other parents, but they also get involved in our co-production work and have been crucial in the creation and success of our PSS Parent-Baby Service conferences. They’ve attended two conferences where they shared their experiences to educate health professionals in the sector. Seeing the parents we’ve supported having their voices and making an impact was a proud moment.

Co-production is such an important aspect of the support we provide, and we couldn’t do it without the peer supporters. We’re lucky to have been able to offer them some financial rewards for the work they’re doing.

With people every step of the way

Is there anything more refreshing than a walk and a talk? One of those walks where you put the world to rights and have a good old gab. That’s exactly what we’ve been up to in our Women’s Turnaround service. Margi, one of the brilliant therapists in our Women's Turnaround team, came up with the idea of taking wellbeing walks with the people she supports, and it’s been a huge hit.

Everyone’s loved getting out and about, sharing how they’re feeling, and making the most of being outside in the fresh air. It’s thoughtful ideas like this, that remind us just how brilliant our teammates are - not only do they truly care about the people they support, but they’re always coming up with creative ways to make that support even better.

When women are supported by our Women’s Turnaround team, we’re with them every step of the way as they turn their lives around, whether it’s during their rehabilitation sessions in our centres, getting support finding a new job, getting furnishings for their new home, or, in this case, a listening ear and someone to talk to.

Remember Me Day

During Grief Awareness Week, our Making Days team came together to support the people in their service for their annual Remember Me Day - a special day to talk about and remember loved ones who have died, in a safe and supportive space. It was also an opportunity to open up conversations about death and dying, something people with additional needs are often excluded from.

During the session, we had our 'Remember Me' pass the parcel session where each layer revealed a question about the person they were remembering. We also supported everyone to create their own personal books to think about their funeral wishes, things like, choosing flowers, music or whether they’d prefer to be buried or cremated.

15

We hope that by having these books it makes it easier to spark conversations at home between families, parents and carers about wishes and planning.

We’re proud of the work our teammates are doing to support the people in our services to have more choice in their life, from the little things to the really big things – it's all important work. Conversations like these don’t have to be negative, it’s about giving people the safe space they need to talk about life’s most important and sometimes difficult topics.

Letters of Love for Grief Week

To mark National Grief Week, we set up a post box on the second floor at Eleanor Rathbone House, where our teammates and people we support where invited to write and post letters to their loved ones who have passed away.

Writing the letters was a way we could support people to reflect on the people and pets they've lost and use it as a tool to help process emotions around grief.

The post box is locked and secured, so no one is able to read the letters inside whilst we look at sustainable and symbolic things we can do with the letters - for example, turning them into compost to be used at Dutch Farm or in our community gardens.

Being able to support our teammates and people we support with something as important as grief has been really special.

Mums do funny

A group of mums who use our Parent-Baby Service worked with The Comedy Trust to learn how to do stand-up comedy. Bringing their experiences of motherhood to life and giving a relatable insight into what it's like to be in their shoes, the gang worked really hard to put a comedy performance together - Mums and Dads Do Funny. The mums we support were also filmed and interviewed by journalist Jessica Bradley, who's making a short film about their journey to 'doing funny' at PSS.

The mums were that funny they even bagged themselves a space at Hot Water Comedy Club where they, and some of the dads who get support from Everton in the Community, were able to showcase their amazing routines.

Telling professionals like it is

Our PSS Parent-Baby Service held their second conference, ‘How we built our village: the power of co-production’ at Hope University this year. The conference was entirely led by our peer-supporters, who designed the day and did lots of brill educational talks for local health and social professionals. They told their audience all about their lived experiences of using housing, health and social services. They wanted to tell things like they were, and were generous enough to use their stories to help show our attendees how good and bad experiences shape people’s lives.

16

They also gave everyone a taste of some of their newly-crafted stand-up routines that they worked on as part of our Mums And Dads Do Funny project with The Comedy Trust. We worked together with our partners Everton In The Community, who followed suit and presented some videos made by the dads they support.

It was a powerful and thought-provoking day, and it was truly inspiring to hear the parents share their experiences and shed light on how professionals can better support families.

Co-production is something we’re really passionate about, and we’re so proud of the

work being done in the PSS Parent-Baby Service and across the organisation.

The Lost Twinkle

Not one to blow our own trumpets (maybe a little bit!), but our Making Days gang sure know how to put on a show. The Lost Twinkle at The Valley Theatre was the end of year pantomime, created by and starring our Making Days gang.

Not only was it oozing with professionalism, but it was funny, festive, and most importantly – FUN! The gang had months of rehearsing and put in so much time, effort and enthusiasm to put on an incredible end of year show.

Everyone in the audience loved the show and we received so much positive feedback from the friends and family of supported people.

Ears to the ground

Every year, we ask people we support and their families and carers, our PSS Shared Lives carers, our commissioners and our partners to tell us what they think of the work we do and how we do it. A total of 1471 people did our 2024-2025 Annual Survey, and the results gave us a fantastic picture of where we were at in each of our individual services.

As an overall social care provider, we’re chuffed to have been rated 4.8/5 stars.

Here’s a snapshot of what some of our most important people - the people we support - told us in their survey:

We also got lots of wonderful feedback through the comments part of the survey:

17

‘The people who support us at PSS are a credit to their profession. They go above and beyond to help; they make you feel like family.’

‘PSS has simply been a life-changer. I could not ask for more care and support than what I am being given.’

‘Very welcoming, always a smile on their faces. They ask how you are doing which is nice to hear. I always feel comfortable when I am at PSS.’

‘The staff are always welcoming and understanding with us. The atmosphere is always warm and puts me immediately at ease. I can’t fault them and the service.’

‘I have learnt about gardening and building flower beds. PSS staff have helped me to enjoy being part of a group.’

‘Love the PSS peer supporters. They are so knowledgeable, helpful, caring, and kind. They make every group fun.’

‘I am looking forward to the future because of Making Days.’

‘I’m treated like a human and not judged.’

Our Annual Survey results have given us a brilliant insight into the things we’re really good at, and the things we need to work on. We’ll continue to work hard to be the best we can be - and up those scores next year.

Quality checkers brief our Board

We’re serious about co-production at PSS, and our quality checking scheme, which we kicked off last year, has been flying. We’ve brought an amazing group of people we support together who work as a team to do inspections on our services, checking out how people are feeling about the support they’re getting, and making recommendations about how things can be better.

On a cold, dark December evening (check out the pictures – you can tell how wintery it was outside!), representatives from our co-production and quality checker groups went to their first ever PSS Board meeting to talk about how their quality checks have been going. Everyone was really enthusiastic when telling our trustees about the important work they’d been doing and what they’d found. Expertly supported by two of our co-production superstars, Charlotte and Tess from our Making Days team, and our head of quality Simone, the group were able to tell the Board all about their plans, ask some important questions and get direct feedback from the trustees. It was the first of many – and our quality checkers are now a regular on our Board meeting agendas.

18

Theme two: we’ll make wise decisions that keep us around for future generations

Ace feedback for our Women’s Turnaround teammates

There’s nothing better than someone giving you good feedback, but it’s extra good when it’s from our commissioners.

Our team were celebrated for their great partnership work, professionally handling challenging decisions, and continuing to support the women leaving HMP Styal to obtain accommodation on release from custody, despite significant pressures on services.

The team found accommodation for 93.68% of women released in February. This is a huge achievement given the pressure on services, the timeframes to find solutions, and the number of people who need our help.

Proud.

A RAWDsome collaboration

Our PSS Making Days services have been working with RAWD, a professional theatre company for people with disabilities. They’ve worked on multiple projects like, ‘To the Moon and Back’, a theatrical performance, loads of awesome workshops and the best of all, The Wizard of PSS – a PSS panto!

Since working with RAWD, the people in our services have grown in confidence, created performance skills and now support each other to be their most authentic selves. If that’s not the best news, we don’t know what is!

We’re going to continue to work with RAWD on loads of exciting stuff, including, the putting together of a coproduction strategy for the organisation and also, the creation of a pathway for people with lived experience to have a place on our Board of Trustees. Exciting times!

Joining forces with Nelson Trust

In January, we were really excited to get the news that we’d retained our contract to continue providing our amazing Women’s Turnaround service to women in North Wales, but this time, working alongside Nelson Trust as one of their sub-contractors. Nelson Trust shares our passion for giving women in the criminal justice system the chance to turn their lives around with brilliant rehabilitation. Together, we’ve been empowering women in North Wales to take control of their lives.

Three more years of support for Prisoners’ Families

19

With huge thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund, in November we found out we won three years’ worth of funding to keep supporting children who have a parent in prison and their families.

Many children who have a parent in prison serve what we call a ‘hidden sentence’. So often, they carry a sense of shame, guilt and confusion about where their mum or dad might be, feeling like they need to keep it a secret, or not knowing how to talk about it to people around them. This can leave children feeling lonely, scared and isolated – all for something that isn’t their fault. That’s where our Prisoners’ Families service comes in.

We support children in Merseyside aged 5 – 18 to cope with the difficulties of having a parent in prison. We introduce them to other people their age who are in the same boat, make sure they’re not on their own with their feelings and help children to process their emotions. We’ll support children to visit their parent in prison if needed, and we’ll give them some much-needed space to just… be a kid. We also work with the children’s families to help them have good conversations about imprisonment and what the children can expect and give family members time to support each other.

Not only that, but our expert team also train professionals, like teachers, in how to go about supporting children who have a parent in prison, for example, while they’re at school.

We couldn’t be more proud of the work we do with the children who need us – and we’re made up that our funding pot from The National Lottery Community Fund means we can keep on being there for the next three years.

Commissioners assemble!

If there’s one major thing we’re certain all seven of the local authority teams that commission our Shared Lives services in England and Wales have in common, it’s that they commission our Shared Lives services in England and Wales. Sounds obvious, right? But although each team’s got a similar goal, they’ve all got a unique approach to what they do – and they’ve all got their own ways of making it work. There’s so much we can all learn from each other when local authorities commission the same service in different regions: what works, what doesn’t, what PSS does well and what we can do better across the board. So, we came up with the idea to bring all of our Shared Lives commissioning teams together under one roof back in February, to get to know each other, talk about the Shared Lives model and how we can make the model really successful together. We’ve now formed a bit of a Shared Lives commissioner network, and we plan to keep it going.

20

Working together for change

We say it all the time: there’s nobody better to learn from than people who’ve been there, and everything works much better when you do things with people, not to them. When we want to make improvements to something we do, the people we work with are usually our first port of call. So, when it came to how we could take our Shared Lives service up a notch in Staffordshire, we brought the people we support, commissioners, Shared Lives carers, social work colleagues and our Staffordshire team together to have a big chat. Everyone had a say about what was and wasn’t working for them, and together, we came up with a solid plan of action for how we can do things even better.

Stickin’ around for people who need us

We were chuffed this year to have retained lots of our contracts. Our Shared Lives contract in Staffordshire has been extended until at least April 2027, we’ll be providing our Shared Lives service in Lincolnshire until at least April 2030, our Parent-Baby Service team celebrated having their contract extended with Liverpool City Council until December 2027, and in our Women’s Turnaround service, we started doing some fab new work at HMP Styal, working with women who are on remand.

Saying goodbye

This year we’ve had to say goodbye to two services of ours.

Newby House was our mental health re-enablement centre in Knowsley, where people who had mental health support needs could safely live as independently as possible in their own apartments, with 24/7 support from our team. The people we supported at Newby learned ways to thrive in their community, and we kept them safe until they felt well enough and ready to move out into their own place again.

Although this was an incredible service that did such great work, as a charity, we always have to think about what’s financially sustainable for us, so we don’t let anyone down. Sadly, it just didn’t make financial sense for us to keep the service going. We made the decision to do the right thing and pass the baton on to another provider – YMCA – who have since taken the reins.

Our fabulous Newby team consistently went above and beyond to give the people they support the best experience with PSS, showing up for them through thick and thin, including during a worldwide pandemic when the Government asked millions of us to stay home. We’ll never forget the kindness and dedication they showed then, and every day, and we’re so proud of all they achieved for the people they supported during their time at PSS, and we wish them the very best at YMCA.

Another fantastic service we sadly had to make the tough decision to let go this year was our out-of-court-disposals work, which sat under our Women’s Turnaround umbrella. Sadly, this decision was also about resources – although the women our

21

fabulous Women’s Turnaround team worked with got so much out of the support they got from us and the service was top-notch, we just couldn’t find sustainable funding to keep it going.

Theme three: people want to be part of our team of staff, carers and volunteers. Our differences are celebrated, but our values unite us.

Raising the bar on CEO recruitment

Being person-centred is in our DNA, and when we recruit for pretty much any role at PSS, the people we support are involved at some point. So, recruiting our new big boss was no different.

Lots of people we support feel passionate about what we do at PSS, and when we asked them what they thought about us getting a new CEO, some people felt strongly about the type of person who should be at our helm. We like to practise what we preach at PSS, so, our head of communications, Lisa, wanted to make sure the people we support were there, as part of the process, from the very beginning. She busted out the camera and worked with the people we support from across the organisation on a video where they spoke honestly about what they wanted from our next CEO. They made lots of brilliant points, including how they wanted someone who’s inclusive, empathetic, human, likes a laugh and will do the right thing when nobody’s looking. One of the women we support in our Parent-Baby Service made it clear that as PSS’s CEO, she and others who use PSS’s services will be watching on to see if they lead by example. So, the bar was set high!

The video went down a treat, both with Peridot, who we partnered with to help us find someone for the role, and with the candidates who saw it. It was shared far and wide on LinkedIn and on our other social media platforms, with some people using it as an example of how to put people first, saying they wished other organisations would do more of this type of thing. Needless to say, we were really proud of it.

And the good news is – it worked!

Say hello to our new CEO!

We’re so chuffed to welcome our brand new CEO, Jill Sheldrake MBE, to our team. Jill joined us in January 2025 from Together Trust, where she was deputy CEO and director of services. Jill’s worked in social care for over 30 years and is a skilled social worker. She’s such an amazing fit for PSS, and we’re mega chuffed to have her leading us.

Here’s what she had to say about coming to PSS:

‘When I saw the video about what the people you support were looking for in the next CEO and read the job advertisement, I knew I had to apply. I've admired PSS for

22

a long time, I could see how brilliant it is, and I knew it was somewhere I’d love to work.

During my interview process, I met lots of different people – the front of house team and the people PSS supports who were volunteering that day, last year’s Brilliant Award winners who were part of my interview panel, the leadership team, some of the people who use Shared Lives, PSS trustees, and various people who ferried me about the building and facilitated the interview sessions. From those brief first impressions, I could already feel how warm and wonderful the culture at PSS is, and when I started, everyone welcomed me with open arms. It’s immediately obvious how passionate all of our teams are about what we do here; how much they care. Whether they’re working directly in one of our services or behind the scenes in our Central Services team, everyone works so hard to make sure we’re doing all we can to give people services we’re proud of.

Since January, I’ve been busy getting to know about all things PSS: our services, our people, our contracts, our Shared Lives carers, our volunteers and of course the people we support. There’s so much exciting stuff to get to grips with. It’s been a pleasure to visit each of our regional teams and get to know how things are looking locally, and to meet lots of our stakeholders and partners.

Getting out and about and seeing the organisation at work has given me loads of insight into how we can get even better at what we do and given me some food for thought around ways we can grow. The next step is for me to do my 100-day report to the Board, where I tell them what my first impressions have been, and what I recommend we do next. After that, it’s time to get cracking on writing our next fiveyear strategy, or as we call it round here, our Big Plan!

I’m so excited about what the future holds, and I’m delighted to be part of the team.’

Volunteer power

Our volunteers are a massive part of who we are at PSS. We were founded by volunteers over 100 years ago and we’re continuing to grow our volunteer base today. We’re proud to say that we’ve currently got 181 volunteers giving their time and expertise to our services.

We’ve separated our volunteer roles into three categories:

Everyday heroes: our standard volunteering roles

These roles are for volunteers who are offering a service to other people within PSS or sharing their experience and knowledge.

Quality champions: volunteer roles who offer quality reassurance in services

These roles don’t sit within one specific service; they work across our services and are about making sure we’re doing things right in PSS.

Change makers: co-production groups

23

These roles are all about helping make positive changes in our services and working with people to have a voice and choice in how things are done at PSS.

We’re going to be spending the rest of the year making sure all our volunteers are getting the best out of their time at PSS and look at how we can approach corporate volunteering next.

Rolling out the virtual red carpet for our volunteers

This year we rolled out the virtual red carpet for the very first PSS Volunteer Awards. A huge celebration of the incredible work our volunteers do all year round.

With six brand-new award categories and nearly 40 nominations, it was tough choosing just a handful of winners from such an outstanding group.

It was such a joy to reflect on volunteering across the organisation and have people joining us both in person and online from across the UK. While we may be spread out, the connection across our volunteer network is stronger than ever!

Our volunteers make what we do possible - from gardening gurus and peer supporters, to recycling superstars and so much more. We’re so grateful for their incredible dedication.

Time to Talk

Talking about mental health isn’t something we shy away from at PSS, we normalise it, encourage it, and talk about it all year round.

But on Time to Talk day, we like to join in the national conversation, and support our teammates and supported people to take some time out, get together, talk about how they’re feeling (if they wanted to) and spend time doing things that will boost their wellbeing.

This year, some of our supported people in Making Days got together and created their own wellbeing quotes and spent time meditating.

Our Women’s Turnaround team made each other positivity bracelets, ate pastries, had some good chats and a few giggles along the way.

Some of our Shared Lives teammates spent the day at the beach, whilst our Eleanor Rathbone House teammates spent the afternoon eating cake and playing with one of our office dogs, Bobby.

Whether it's long walks along the beach, getting arty, or having puppy cuddles, we love seeing our teams taking time out to get together.

Making our policies better

In January, a crack team of PSS's people and culture, operations, governance and comms experts squirreled themselves away from the office to get stuck into a massive piece of work: rewriting our people and culture policies.

24

This brilliant bunch reviewed some of our core people and culture policies with fresh eyes, to see how we can make them more inclusive, shorter, easier to understand, and a bit more like a friendly conversation than a list of dos and don'ts. After all, policies are there to help.

This is a huge piece of work, but one we’re really excited about. Having easy to understand policies, with our people at the heart, is something we’re proud to be doing.

Mindful times

Cath, our in-house yogi and meditation expert, has been working with our teammates to offer virtual meditation sessions. Cath provided six-weekly meditation sessions that people were invited to join from the comfort of their own home. They didn’t need to put the camera or microphone on; they could simply log in and zone out.

We encouraged all of our teammates to get involved either on the day or via the recorded sessions. We got such great feedback and so much so, we’re starting them up again soon.

All aboard for the first PSS Board apprentice!

This year we saw the launch of our first-ever Board apprentice! We welcomed the fab Lisa Maynard-Atem to our brilliant Board.

Lisa is an entrepreneur who is passionate about equity and diversity, acting as one of the directors at The Black United Representation Network (BURN).

Black United Representation Network's Board apprenticeship scheme gives Black professionals who are part of the BURN network the opportunity to experience what it's like to be on a Board for a year.

Here's some of what Lisa had to say about her experience:

‘This experience has shifted my perspective on what a board meeting can be. It’s reminded me of the power of humility, empathy, and openness in leadership. When people feel seen, heard, and valued, something remarkable happens—they thrive. And when carers feel like more than ‘just’ carers, when quality checkers feel useful, and when Board members sit in spaces of learning and reflection, it’s not just good governance—it’s transformational.

If there’s one takeaway, I’d love for other organisations to consider, it’s this: Never underestimate the power of inviting people into the room and listening to them with intent. Real change happens when you’re willing to do that. PSS isn’t just talking about coproduction—they’re living it, and I’m honoured to have seen it in action.’

We’re so chuffed with the feedback Lisa’s given us and we’re so excited for Lisa to bring her time, skills and expertise to PSS.

25

Recognising our Shared Lives carers

For Shared Lives Week 2024, we held a live virtual awards ceremony to announce the winners of our Shared Lives Carer Awards. The hour-long ceremony was cohosted by our previous chief exec, Lesley Dixon, and director of operations, Harriet Michael-Phillips.

We had fifty wonderful nominations from social workers, fellow carers, supported people and Shared Lives team members, handing out well-deserved awards to six fantastic carers. We’re super proud of all of them.

PSS does Pride

Liverpool and Lincolnshire Pride saw our amazing team members, and friends out in full force at both marches, showing our support for the LGBTQIA+ community. It was such an amazing afternoon flying the PSS flag alongside so many other organisations supporting the LGBTQIA+ community.

We’re committed to being a place where everyone can feel like they belong and being present at Pride Festivals – showing up and taking a stand, is just one of the ways we can do that.

Supporting our teammates with gender identity

At PSS, we're on a mission to become the most equitable, inclusive and diverse organisation we can be and are always looking for new and innovative ways to support our teammates.

One of the ways we’re doing that is by creating our brand-new gender identity policy. We’re currently working with Christian, who is a trans man and founder of Gender Space, to support us with our policies and to help us become the most inclusive organisation we can be.

The policy has been created with the support of Christian and our comms and people and culture team. We’re really looking forward to launching the policy and having something in place that supports our people.

Allyship at PSS

We’ve been working with the wonderful Irene Afful MSc. to deliver a series of equity, diversity and inclusion workshops with a focus on belonging.

We’ve loved seeing how engaged everyone has been in the sessions and how safe they’ve felt talking about their own experiences. It’s been a proud moment to see our teammates supporting one another while exploring difficult issues with honesty and respect.

Subjects covered included recognising microaggressions, unconscious bias, and being an ally.

26

Award-winning care

On Friday 18th October, PSS Shared Lives carer, Karen Jackson, took home the Gold award for community care in this year’s Wales Care Awards, organised by Care Forum Wales.

Karen has been a Shared Lives carer for 17 years, but her career in care spans even longer. Talking about her win, she said: ‘It was a great honour and privilege to receive the Gold Award for care. It was a fantastic experience to be in the company of so many dedicated people.’

Lots of our Shared Lives carers say the best part of their role is seeing the difference they make every day in the lives of the people they support. But we reckon winning a national award for it comes pretty close, too!

Celebrating neurodiversity with author Pete Wharmby

A big gang of PSS people and Shared Lives carers joined author, speaker, and advocate Pete Wharmby on a webinar recently to learn more about what it's like to be autistic and have ADHD.

Diagnosed with autism at the age of 34, and later with ADHD, Pete told us all about his experience of growing up undiagnosed. His diagnosis had a profound impact on his life, allowing him to finally accept himself for who he is – and this webinar provided an amazing and insightful look into that journey.

Pete is one of many guest speakers we’ve invited to talk to our teammates and carers as part of our commitment to learning about, understanding, and supporting everyone who walks through the doors of PSS, while celebrating the things that make us all unique. This was an incredible and informative session that gave us lots to think about when it comes to supporting our teammates, volunteers, people we support, and Shared Lives carers.

Riding the waves of change

Our previous chief executive, Lesley, stepped down in September 2024. In the time between Lesley leaving and our new big boss starting in January 2025, our director of finance and people, Sharon, and our director of operations, Harriet, stepped up to the plate and worked together to lead PSS from the front. They were effectively our interim CEOs, helping us navigate a big period of change for the organisation. And they did a cracking job of it. We saw our best ever Staff Survey results last year and not once did we take our foot off the accelerator.

27

Our vision for belonging: the journey so far

If you’re an avid PSS fan and have been keeping up with what we’ve been working on over the past five years, you might’ve heard that we’re really passionate about making sure PSS is the most inclusive organisation we can be. We want to be a place where everyone feels like they belong, and where, no-matter what’s happening in the world around us, people feel safe and accepted.

This year, we’ve been beavering away at making that a reality, and have done so much work on it.

One of the first things we did was come up with a vision for our work, which, signed off by the whole organisation through a series of our Big Thinks, is helping to guide us. And we’re really proud of it:

‘PSS is shaped and led by the communities we’re part of, and we find joy in celebrating and learning about everyone’s experiences. Anyone we work with is met with warmth, safety and a deep sense of respect, care and belonging.

We’re passionate about disrupting the oppressive behaviour, power systems and structures our communities face.’

To help us make our vision a reality, we’ve got a five-year strategy in place, which runs from 2024 up until 2029. We really believe in this work, and it’s been so tempting to rush things to try and make quick progress on what we know we want to do, but it’s important that we do things in the right way, at the right pace, so we can make that meaningful and lasting change.

This year, our big areas of focus have been:

28

And those are just the biggies! There have been lots and lots of little, important wins along the way that are all adding up to some big, important change.

Our best Big Staff Survey results, ever!

Our staff tell us what they think of working here at PSS every year. This year, our teams told us they’re the happiest they’ve ever been.

A huge 72% of our team filled the survey in. That’s the best turnout we’ve ever had. The Net Promoter Score, which measures how many of our people would recommend us as an employer to their family and friends, is measured on a scale from -100 all the way up to +100. Our score this year was the best it’s been in 10 years: +64. That’s pretty amazing.

Our Employee Satisfaction Index score was 84, which ranks as ‘very high satisfaction’ on the index. Music to our ears.

And the good vibes didn’t stop there:

Those are some shiny, happy people.

Of course, no place is completely perfect, and we also had some areas for improvement. This year, we’ve been working away to make some improvements in two main areas: giving people even more learning opportunities and explaining how we benchmark our salaries.

29

With such amazing scores, can we get even better ones next year? We’ll give it a good go!

An agenda for everyone

Any internal communications professional knows the age-old dilemma of how you make sure people who aren’t desk-based, or who work out in the field, hear all the things they need to know without having a big focus on instant messaging and emails, and are able to feed their views back up the chain. It's been a challenge, but this year we brought something in that we think might have cracked it at PSS. We’ve started something we’re calling the ‘Everyone Agenda’, and it’s, basically, a set of meeting agenda items that every team manager has to cover in their face-to-face team meetings on a monthly basis. The agenda is set by our leadership team, and all of our managers are briefed about what’s on it and why, complete with key messages to get to their team, every month. We’ve then got a nifty little form that managers can fill out to tell the leadership team what their teammates made of the items – if there was any feedback, if their team want leadership team to hear any ideas, etc. So far, it’s gone down an absolute storm, and means our communications team can bridge the gap between desk-based people who read our weekly newsletter, and people who never get to sit in front of a screen.

Be Brilliant leaders

This year we introduced our Brilliant Leaders Programme, a way to nurture the talents of our teammates across PSS who are on their leadership journeys. Thoughtfully designed by Sharon, our head of learning and development, the programme is based on our Be Brilliant framework, which lays out all the competencies we need to work on to be the best in our roles. With talks from senior PSS leaders, trustees and field experts, the programme covers everything from strategy and people management to resilience and change management, aiming to support our future leaders to develop the skills and behaviours that will move them to the next level in their careers.

Bringing Honolulu and Scarborough to Liverpool

When the people who use our Making Days service caught wind that our lovely Scarborough team were coming to visit us in Liverpool for the first time back in May, they said they were well up for the challenge of throwing them a welcome party which, they decided, had to be Hawaiian themed. Complete with leis, paper pineapples, tropical decor, and of course a full spread of food including home-made strawberry tarts and sandwiches, they worked so hard and went to so much effort to make everyone from our Scarborough team feel welcome and celebrated. Lots of PSS people from across Central Services and Merseyside Shared Lives came to say a big hello to our new teammates and the sun even came out. The only thing missing was the beach.

30

Theme four: we believe technology, when used in the right way, can make everyone’s personal and professional lives easier and better.

New possibilities with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on the rise everywhere, and as a social care organisation with lots of work to do, it’d be daft of us not to investigate some of the ways it can help us do things faster and smarter while keeping our people and our information safe.

We brought a group of people together this year to have a good think about how we can use AI, the benefits, the risks involved, what we’d need to do to make sure our sensitive information is protected, and how we’d use AI ethically. Led by our head of tech, Ian, and our head of growth and great ideas, Sarah, we put a framework together which lays out the safe ways AI can be used and puts boundaries in place to help people decide when it’s right and not right to use it. For example, as an organisation all about putting people at the centre, it felt really important to us to make sure we didn’t rely too much on AI to do the stuff that humans with big hearts, professional expertise, open-minds, genuineness and determination do best – like support planning, or writing people's stories.

Once we’d thought everything through, our tech team got to work on bringing some AI tools into use at PSS that we could keep a close eye on. We chose Microsoft Copilot, which we’ve set up to be completely secure, and we’re currently trialling it to see how we get on.

New PSS website gets underway

Your website is a little bit like your shop window, and after working with our current site for over ten years, we’ve invested in building a brand new one. The new website will feel much simpler, more accessible and more streamlined, and will put the stories of people we support front and centre. The communications team’s working hard to get it up and running in summer 2025, and they couldn’t be more excited about it!

All systems go for our brand-new PSS Learning Hub

We’ve moved across to our brand-new learning platform – the PSS Learning Hub! We made the decision to move platforms as we wanted access to a broader learning catalogue for the different services and job roles we have, something that would be easier to navigate and would be compatible with smart devices.

Since making the move, we’ve now reduced our costs, got access to loads of different courses that are user-friendly and tailored towards PSS, we’ve got a site that’s a lot simpler to use and can be accessed from any PSS smart device (perfect for our teammates who aren’t office-based) - result!

Our teammates are loving the new platform so far, and we can’t wait to see how much more engaged people are when it comes to their learning and development.

31

Civica launch in three, two, one... lift off!

It’s been an exciting time in our people and culture team with the launch of our brand-new HR and payroll system, Civica. This new system has lots of ace self-service capabilities, which means that our teammates can now do things like access their digital payslips and manage their own leave. They can also update their personal information and receive organisation updates from their phone or laptop.

Moving over to Civica from our previous system Cascade has been a massive job for our people and culture and finance team, but they've taken it in their stride and really supported each other during the transition.

Theme five: we’ll have a positive impact on our sector, local communities, the people within them and the planet we live on

Swap ‘til you drop

We're celebrating two years of having our beloved Swap Shop at Eleanor Rathbone House. Our Swap Shop is where we can bring in clothes, shoes and accessories that we no longer want or need, and shop for free preloved items. It gives us a way to help keep unwanted clothes out of landfill (and, let’s face it, helps keep us all looking stylish), and means anyone struggling to afford new clothes for themselves or their children have a chance to find what they need for free.

In 2023-2024, 738 items were taken from our Swap Shop, which we thought was pretty decent. But in 2024-2025, a massive 1128 items were given a new lease of life!

It isn't only our staff who benefit. People who use our services have enjoyed it, too. We have people visiting from Community Support to have a look and make it part of their day out. Making Days enjoy browsing the rails. We've been able to help visitors from our Women's Turnaround service who are in need of clothes when they come out of prison, and our Parent-Baby Service mums absolutely love it.

Any clothes that aren't taken away within a period of time are donated to local hospice Claire House, who then raise money by selling the items. It's an all-round sustainability success.

Supporting our community after the Southport tragedy

July brought news of the horrific knife attack on a group of children in Southport, leading to the devastating murder of little Bebe King, Elsie Dot Stancombe and Alice da Silva Aguiar. The nation was in a state of shock, disbelief and grief, as news outlets everywhere continued reporting on the situation as it developed.

As adults, we’re able to make sense of what’s happening, put things into context and find ways of our own to come to terms with the news. But for the children in our lives, hearing about such an awful thing that happened to children like them could be extremely distressing, particularly for children living locally.

32

Our very own in-house clinical psychologist, Dr Michael Galbraith, was invited onto BBC Radio Merseyside in the weeks following the attack to talk to local listeners about how to look out for signs of distress in children, how they can go about explaining what happened in a way that helps them understand, and how parents can help their children to process their feelings. Michael talked everyone through the ways they can be honest with their children about what happened while also giving them the reassurance that events like this are rare, and that they’re safe.

We’re really proud that Michael was able to guide people during this time.

The fruits of our labour

We’ve had official sign off to start the work on our new gardening project at Eleanor Rathbone House. We’re going to be embarking on a fantastic green space redesign which will bring lots of wildlife, some brilliant biodiversity and social activities to our head office, and for our Making Days service in particular. One thing we’re really keen to do, too, is start growing our own fruit and veg for our Making Days gang to use in their cooking classes.

As part of our coproduction meetings, we’ve done lots of research and planning into understanding what people wanted from our outdoor space. We’ve taken so much learning from this planning work, and it will be great to see our volunteers and teammates from Dutch Farm to help us make this happen. We’ve also been working Jane Bingham from Cheshire Gardens who has been instrumental in supporting with this.

The ground works for this are starting in a couple of weeks, so very soon we’ll literally be able to see the fruits of our labour coming together!

Looking after our planet, looking after PSS

We’re doing lots of exciting work to make sure that PSS is the most sustainable and environmentally friendly organisation it can be. One of the ways we’re doing that is by focusing on reducing our carbon footprint. We’ve been working with Green Element to monitor our usage since 2021.

We reviewed our usage, and we’re delighted to say our carbon footprint decreased from 19.30 in 2021/2022 to 4.19 in 2023/2024.

Our Eleanor Rathbone House saw a decrease of 26.5% and our Bridge Chapel centre in Garston, had a decrease of 76.1%.

We’re going to continue our work, and all managers will now be asked to complete an e-learning module that will look at how we can reduce our footprint. We’ve also got a dedicated Teams chat that anyone in PSS can join to find ways to be more environmentally friendly.

33

We went viral!

In the age of click bait and misinformation, to go viral (in a good way!) as social care charity means we’re doing something right. Our comms team have been super busy creating and implementing our brand-new external communications and social media strategy.

Our communications strategy for social media is simple: we put our people at the heart; we raise voices and highlight the incredible support our services are providing.

And here’s the proof of what a good story on our social media can do. We made a simple TikTok video about Chloe, a Norfolk Shared Lives carer who is supporting three people at the age of 26, and the video got a whopping 350k views on TikTok, over 3.5k likes and lots of amazing comments from people showing their support, people who are now interested in becoming carers, or people who are considering Shared Lives for someone in their family.

On the back of Chloe’s video, we then saw an influx of likes and interactions on our consecutive videos, which resulted in us going viral another two times, one video got 115k views and the other one got 161k views!

We know we can’t go viral every week, but having the strategy in place means we can keep creating heartfelt, positive content that we know is raising awareness of who we are, what we do and the people we support.

Abundance Day at Dutch Farm

Our Abundance Day event is an annual celebration of community spirit, togetherness, and sharing the rewards of an abundant summer.

This year’s event was filled with sunshine, live music, homemade pizzas and pasta (made with produce from the farm), cakes and most importantly, joy! We were also able to sell batches of our very own honey and jam, courtesy of the farm.

It was so lovely to see the people we support, volunteers, teammates and members of our local area coming together.

The next part of our report is all about our financial performance. There's a lot of financial language in this bit, and it can be a bit difficult to understand when you're not an accountant or don't have knowledge about business finances. If there’s something you read in the next section that you’d like to understand more about, please drop us a line at hello@pss.org.uk and let us know which bit you’d like us to talk you through.

Our performance in 2024-25

The remainder of the Trustees’ Report constitutes the Strategic Report requirements of the Companies Act 2006.

34

Financial results

It’s been another good year. Providing statutory services continues to support our financial sustainability in a way that relying on grants or donations wouldn’t. Our net income and expenditure, inclusive of gains and losses on investments, resulted in a surplus of £0.1m (23/24: £0.9m). Losses on investment for the year totalled £0.3m against a prior year gain of £0.5m. The underlying position exclusive of gains and losses on investments was £0.4m, (£0.3m in the previous year).

During the year, we rewarded each staff member with a £300 High Street shopping voucher to recognise the huge amounts of work they did this year. We also continued to pay our lowest-paid earners the Real Living Wage, and did our annual benchmarking exercise to make sure our pay rates are competitive for our sector across the board.

There are no post balance sheet events.

Statement of Financial Activities

Income

Our yearly income of £23.8m represents an increase of £2.7m on last year’s income. The increase is mainly because of inflationary rises in fees received, and the full year impact of winning our North Yorkshire Shared Lives service in January 2024.

Income by portfolio:

Our Shared Lives service remains the strongest, generating 77% of our income. This is up 8% on the year before, mainly because we won our North Yorkshire Shared Lives service, and saw some fee increases. During the year we merged our Homes and Communities and Strengthening Families service portfolios, and this is now our fabulous Families and Communities service. Our new portfolio is 9% down on the year before, because we had to make the difficult decision to hand back our Supported

35

Living service in January 2024. The service was relatively small, and because of a lack of economies of scale and fee pressures, we wouldn’t have been able to continue to pay the real living wage, which is very important to us at PSS.

Expenditure

Our yearly expenditure of £23.5m represented a £2.6m increase on prior year. This happened mainly because of self-employed carer cost and salary increases. Our salary increases were made because we want to maintain the Real Living Wage for our lowest paid staff, and we did a benchmarking exercise completed during the year for all the PSS team. We’re confident this will help PSS remain an employer of choice in our sector.

Pension

During 2024/25, PSS made a deed of prepayment, to record the fact that PSS, as a departing employer of the Pension Trust Growth Plan, paid £718,097 on account to the trustees. This represents the reasonable pre-estimate of the amount of the debt due by PSS in relation to the Growth Plan multi-employer scheme.

The Trustees of the Growth Plan were unable to certify the debt because of the ongoing court case about the potential non-adherence to plan rules. The court case finished March 2025, and we are now waiting for the outcome, which is expected late 2025. At this point, as the outcome of the court case is highly uncertain, no adjustment to our balance sheet provision has been made.

Gains and losses on investment

During the year, losses on investments totalled of (£0.3m). Our annualised return for the year was -1.46%, against a fund comparator of +4.05%.

This was one of the most concentrated years in stock market history - relatively few stocks were responsible for much of the overall market’s performance.

The fund’s performance, relative to its comparator, was impacted by its underweight exposure to the so-called ‘Magnificent 7’ stocks. The fund’s relative performance also suffered from weakness in the share prices of businesses and segments in which we continue to have confidence for the long term.

Steep rises in bond yields at the end of 2024 led to falling valuations for alternative assets such as infrastructure and private equity.

The underlying health of the businesses in the fund’s portfolio is strong. The fund’s diversified portfolio is well-positioned to benefit from a widening of the ongoing stock market

Balance sheet

Our total funds position is £10.9m. This is an increase of £0.1m on prior year.

36

Working capital

Our liquidity position has remained healthy with £2.3m (23/24: £1.1m) being held in cash at year-end. The organisation can cover its immediate liabilities by a factor of 2.2 (23/24: 2.0).

Debt

During 2024/25 we secured £0.7m loan finance from our bankers, Barclays, which was used to pay our Section 75 exit debt from The Pensions Trust pension scheme. The loan was secured by legal charge against our head office. The balance at the end of the year is now £0.5m.

Investments

The value of our investments stood at £5.9m, a decrease of £0.3m against prior year.

Our investments are held with CCLA (COIF Charities Investment Fund).

CCLA COIF Charities Ethical Investment Fund is a Common Investment Fund established and regulated by the scheme dated October 2009 and made under Section 24 of the Charities Act 1993, now Section 96 of the Charities Act 2011.

The Fund is managed by the manager as an unregulated collective investment scheme and as an alternative investment fund in accordance with the FCA Regulations and the AIFMD Legislation.

The investment objective

The objective is to provide a long-term total return comprising growth in capital and income.

The investment policy

The portfolio is an actively managed, diversified portfolio of assets designed to help both present and future beneficiaries from the effects of inflation. It has an emphasis on equities but also includes property, bonds and other asset classes.

Target returns

Over time, the fund aims to achieve an average total return before costs of consumer price index (CPI) inflation, plus 5%.

The Fund follows a client-driven ethical investment policy.

Reserves

Our Reserves Policy outlines the level of free reserves that PSS holds to make sure we can cover our current cash flow needs and potential future obligations. This is done with the objective that we would be able to continue our work if faced with difficult financial times, whilst having time to adjust our business strategy, and additionally maximise the funds available to fund charitable activities. Our free reserves are unrestricted reserves less tangible fixed assets.

37

Our balance of free reserves currently stands at £6.9m. This includes approximately ten to twelve weeks’ worth of anticipated expenditure. The remaining balance is our Transformation and Development Fund. This is reviewed regularly, and our trustees consider the level of free reserves held to be satisfactory.

Restricted reserves

Our restricted funds are to be used for detailed purposes as specified by the original objectives of those funders. Two of the restricted funds - Child Welfare and Liverpool Queen Victoria Fund - have been invested. The income arising is spent on the specified purpose. The Mountford has a balance of £10k carried forward.

Going concern

The trustees have considered the basis of preparing financial statements in the context of the challenging times affecting the charitable sector.

A going concern paper was delivered to the PSS Board of Trustees in June 2025 highlighting our favourable position in terms of reserves, and our latest rolling threeyear financial forecast.

Our Finance Committee reviews the financial forecast quarterly. This includes sensitivity analysis, reflecting best and worst-case scenarios. The latest projection for the period ending March 2026 and March 2027 show expected surpluses of £0.4m. Worst case scenario for March 2026 is forecasted as a surplus of £0.1m and in March 2027, a deficit of (£0.1m).

Our management accounts to April 2025 are showing a surplus of £21k, which is ahead of budget, reflecting the prudent nature of our forecasting.

Our reserves remain very strong, and our worst-case scenario can be fully covered. Our free reserves stand at £6.9m, which would cover our total costs net of carer payments for nine months.

The trustees consider that the going concern basis remains appropriate. Further information in this respect is given in the accounting policies.

38

Key performance indicators

KPI 24/25 24/25 24/25 24/25 Year-
End		 23/24
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4
Result
Number of Shared Lives Carers
approved at panel
(Target = 65)		 11 16 16 14 57 60
Commentary: This year’s total is 88 % of the annual target.
Progress against annual new growth
target
(Target = 100%)		 0% 32% 32% 61% 61% 173%
Commentary: Actual End of Year Position £91,220 / Budget £150,000
Regulated services compliant 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Commentary:
All rated as good or above.
Number of Active Volunteer roles
(Target =132)		 125 141 149 146 146 110
Commentary:As of March 25, we have a total of 146 active volunteers across the organisation.

Managing external pressures: funding

We receive the majority of our income from contracts with the public sector, and as a result, the continued squeeze on public finances does impact our ongoing budgeting, new work price setting and continual need to re-evaluate costs and spend. Therefore, our approach to pricing, value for money and creativity in budget setting and service design are critical to our continued growth and impact.

We have a Business Development Strategy which has a focus on retaining key work and continued growth in our three core areas of work. None of this growth is for growth's sake and we'll only look at opportunities if we believe we can improve on the current provider's offer. All new work opportunities we look at must fit with our team's skills and specialisms, our core families and of course must be financially affordable.

In 2024-2025 we retained funding around key contracts including:

39

We’ve also built on our Growth Strategy by winning the following contracts:

Work that ended during the year:

Risk management

1. Financial risk - relating to contract margins squeeze

The current economic climate remains challenging, specifically the financial challenges arising from the cost-of-living crisis and resulting wage expectation. We continue to mitigate financial risk by focusing on securing new contracts through our Business Innovation Strategy. We have a high-level long term financial plan that considers the financial risks and how they can be mitigated. The introduction of changes to employers’ national insurance contributions from April 2025 has put further pressure on margins, however our financial plan shows PSS is able to withstand this.

In terms of investments, PSS is exposed to market price risks arising from movements in the value of units held in the COIF Charitable Investment fund.

CCLA Fund Managers are responsible for all the investment management, risk management and administration services.

They employ a risk management process, including the use of appropriate stress testing procedures, which enables it to identify measure, manage and monitor at any time the relevant risks of the positions to which the Fund is or may be exposed and their contribution to the overall risk profile of the Fund.

2. Cyber security risks

Cyber security continues to be an important part of our operational and financial functions. Ransomware attacks, fraudulent activity, entrapment and attempted grooming of vulnerable people are all pertinent risks faced by PSS. During the year we gained assurance in this area as follows:

40

Cyber safety, data protection and the Friends Against Scams scam prevention course are mandatory training courses for staff and Shared Lives carers and it is a topic covered with people we support as part of support planning or when risks arise within safeguarding incidents. The trustees are happy with the work being done in this area, including regular penetration and vulnerability testing, as well as the learning and development that supports the prevention of individuals being impacted by cyber risks.

3. Local authority instability

We recognise the financial challenge faced by local authorities and notice that over the past couple of years, the number of councils issuing Section 114 notices has increased.

Within the Local Government Finance Act 1988, Section 114 (3) dictates that: ‘The chief finance officer of a relevant authority shall make a report under this section if it appears to him/her that the expenditure of the authority incurred (including expenditure it proposes to incur) in a financial year is likely to exceed the resources (including sums borrowed) available to it to meet that expenditure’.

The only allowable expenditure permitted under an emergency protocol would include the following categories:

41

Most of the services PSS provides are statutory, which gives some level of protection. In the event one of our funders issued a Section 114 notice, payments relating to existing contracts being protected and the comfortable level of our free reserves mean our trustees are comfortable we would be able to weather the storm.

Auditor

In respect of each trustee at the date the Trustees’ Report is signed:

Signed on behalf of the trustees

Julie Cooke

Julie Cooke (Oct 7, 2025 10:35:42 GMT+1)

Julie Cooke, Chair

42

Trustees’ responsibilities

The trustees are responsible for preparing the strategic report, the trustees’ annual report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and regulations.

Company law requires the trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (United Kingdom Accounting Standards and applicable law). Under company law the trustees must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and of the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, of the charity for that period.

In preparing these financial statements, the trustees are required to:

The trustees are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the charity’s transactions and disclose the financial position of PSS with reasonable accuracy at any time and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the UK Companies Act 2006. They’re also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

Financial statements are published on PSS’s website in accordance with legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements, which may vary from legislation in other jurisdictions. The maintenance and integrity of the charity’s website is the responsibility of the trustees. The trustees’ responsibility also extends to the ongoing integrity of the financial statements contained therein.

43

Independent Auditors’ Report to the Members of PSS (UK)

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of PSS (UK) for the year ended 31 March 2025 which comprise the Statement of Financial Activities, the Balance Sheet, the Statement of Cash Flows and notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion the financial statements:

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trustees’ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the charitable company's ability to continue as a going

44

concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. The other information comprises the information included in the annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. Our opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

Our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinions on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion based on the work undertaken in the course of our audit:

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In light of the knowledge and understanding of the charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the directors’ report included within the trustees’ report.

We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

45

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the trustees’ responsibilities statement set out on page 43, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as the trustees determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditor’s report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists.

Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud is detailed in the next paragraphs.

46

We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory frameworks within which the charitable company operates, focusing on those laws and regulations that have a direct effect on the determination of material amounts and disclosures in the financial statements. The laws and regulations we considered in this context were the Companies Act 2006 and the Charities Act 2011 together with the Charities SORP (FRS 102). We assessed the required compliance with these laws and regulations as part of our audit procedures on the related financial statement items.

In addition, we considered provisions of other laws and regulations that do not have a direct effect on the financial statements but compliance with which might be fundamental to the charitable company’s ability to operate or to avoid a material penalty. We also considered the opportunities and incentives that may exist within the charitable company for fraud.

Auditing standards limit the required audit procedures to identify non-compliance with these laws and regulations to enquiry of the trustees and other management and inspection of regulatory and legal correspondence, if any.

We identified the greatest risk of material impact on the financial statements from irregularities, including fraud, to be within charitable service fee income, grant and other income and the override of controls by management. Our audit procedures to respond to these risks included enquiries of management about their own identification and assessment of the risks of irregularities, designing audit procedures over income, testing on the posting of journals, reviewing accounting estimates for biases and reading minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.

Owing to the inherent limitations of an audit, there is an unavoidable risk that we may not have detected some material misstatements in the financial statements, even though we have properly planned and performed our audit in accordance with auditing standards. For example, the further removed non-compliance with laws and regulations (irregularities) is from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, the less likely the inherently limited procedures required by auditing standards would identify it. In addition, as with any audit, there remained a higher risk of non-detection of irregularities, as these may involve collusion, forgery, intentional omissions, misrepresentations, or the override of internal controls. We are not responsible for preventing non-compliance and cannot be expected to detect non-compliance with all laws and regulations. A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company’s members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has

47

been undertaken so that we might state to the charitable company’s members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charitable company and the charitable company’s members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Vicky Szulist Senior Statutory Auditor For and on behalf of Crowe U.K. LLP Statutory Auditor

St George’s House 56 Peter Street Manchester M2 3NQ

48

Statement of financial activities including the income and expenditure account

expenditure account
Note
Income and Endowments from:
2
Donations and legacies
Charitable activities
Investments
Other
Total
Expenditure on:
3
Raising funds
Charitable activities
- standard expenditure
Total
Net gains/(losses) on investments
Net income/(expenditure)
Transfers between funds
Other recognised gains/(losses)
Gains/(losses) on sale of property
Gain/(loss) on revaluation of pension liability
10
Net movement in funds
Reconciliation of funds
Total funds brought forward
Total funds carried forward		 Unrestricted
£
21,071
22,814,863
170,746
221,932		 Restricted
£
-

580,896
31,933
-
2025		 Total
£
21,071
23,395,759
202,679
221,932
23,841,441
788
23,457,089
23,457,877
(260,505)
123,059
-
2,500
-
125,559
10,724,467
10,850,026		 Unrestricted
£
7,114
20,193,924
165,063
219,105		 Restricted
£
150
506,536
31,534
-
2024		 Total
£
7,264
20,700,460
196,597
219,105
23,228,612
788
22,866,603		 612,829
-
590,486		 20,585,206
769
20,276,815		 538,220
-
538,220		 21,123,426
769
20,815,035
22,867,391
(212,769)		 590,486
(47,736)		 20,277,584
448,693		 538,220
100,668		 20,815,804
549,361
148,452 (25,393) 756,315 100,668 856,983
-
2,500
-		 -
-
-		 -
-
(9,761)		 -
-
-		 -
-
(9,761)
150,952
9,732,709		 (25,393)
991,758		 746,554
8,986,155		 100,668
891,090		 847,222
9,877,245
9,883,661 966,365 9,732,709 991,758 10,724,467

PSS has no recognised gains and losses other than those included above. All operations are continuing. The notes on pages 52-70 form part of these accounts.

49

Balance sheet at 31 March 2025

Note 2025 2024
£ £
Fixed assets
Tangible assets 4 2,337,987 2,577,586
Investment property 5
 664,094 664,094
Investments 6 5,880,399 6,140,904
8,882,480 9,382,584
Current assets
Debtors 7 2,171,695 2,795,749
Cash at bank and in hand 12 2,338,686 1,103,497
4,510,381 3,899,246
Liabilities
Amounts falling due within one year 8 2,012,002 1,956,530
Net current assets 2,498,379 1,942,716
Total assets less current liabilities 11,380,859 11,325,300
Liabilities
Amounts falling due greater than one year:
Bank loans 9 530,833 600,833
530,833 600,833
Total net assets 10,850,026 10,724,467
The funds of the charity 11
Restricted funds 966,364 991,757
Unrestricted funds:
General Reserve 9,423,315 9,266,507
Fixed Asset revaluation reserve 460,347 466,203
10,850,026 10,724,467

These Financial Statements were approved by the Board of Directors on 24[th] September 2025 and signed and authorised for issue on its behalf by:

Julie Cooke

Julie Cooke (Oct 7, 2025 10:35:42 GMT+1)

Julie Cooke

Chair

The notes on pages 52-70 form part of these accounts

Company registration number 00214077

50

Cash flow statement for the year ended 31 March 2025

2025
£
Cash flows from operating activities:
Net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities
1,059,763
Cash flows from investing activities:
Dividends, interest and rents from investments
202,679
Interest on bank loans
(45,471)
Proceeds from the sale of property, plant and equipment
122,500
Purchase of property plant and equipment
(34,282)
Net cash (used in)/provided by investing activities
245,426
Cash flows from financing activities:
Repayments of borrowing
(70,000)
Cash inflows from new borrowing
-
Net cash provided by (used in) financing activities
(70,000)
Change in cash and cash equivalents in the reporting period
1,235,189
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the reporting period
1,103,497
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the reporting period
2,338,686
Reconciliation of net income/(expenditure) to net cash flow from operating activities
Net income/(expenditure)for the reporting period (as per the SOFA)
125,559
Adjustments for:
Reversal of depreciation charge on sold property
(600)
Depreciation charges
154,481
Profit on sale of property
(2,500)
(Gains)/losses on investments
260,505
(Gains)/losses on revaluation of pension liability
-
Dividends, interest and rents from investments
(202,679)
Interest on bank loans
45,471
(Increase)/decrease in debtors
624,054
(Decrease)/increase in creditors
55,472
Net cash provided by/(used in) operating activities
1,059,763
Analysis of cash and cash equivalents
Cash in hand
2,338,686
2,338,686		 2024
£
(719,337)
196,597
(27,068)
-
(193,263)
(23,734)
(29,167)
700,000
670,833
(72,238)
1,175,735
1,103,497
856,983
-
180,670
-
(549,361)
(9,761)
(196,597)
27,068
(824,222)
(204,117)
(719,337)
1,103,497
1,103,497

51

Notes to the financial statements

1 Accounting policies

Basis of preparation

PSS (UK) is a company limited by guarantee, incorporated in England and Wales under the Companies Act 2006 and has no share capital. The address of the registered office is given on the company information page and the nature of the company’s operations and its principal activities are set out in the Report of the Trustees.

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) - 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 2019 (Charities SORP (FRS 102)), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102), the Companies Act 2006 and the Charities Act 2011.

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the historical cost convention, except that investments are stated at market value, and freehold land and buildings are carried at valuation.

The company has a £1 investment in a dormant subsidiary. Consolidated accounts have not been prepared on the grounds of materiality. The accounts therefore present information about the company only and not about its group.

The trustees confirm that the charity meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.

Going concern

The financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis, which principally assumes that the company will continue to receive grants and fees at a sustainable level.

A going concern paper was delivered to board June 2025 highlighting our favourable position in terms of reserves, our latest rolling three-year financial forecast and options for growth.

Our Finance Committee reviews the financial forecast quarterly. This includes sensitivity analysis reflecting best and worst-case scenarios. The latest projection for the period ending March 2026 and March 2027 show expected surpluses of £0.4m. Worst case scenario for March 2026 is forecasted as a surplus of £0.1m and March 2027 a deficit of (£0.1m).

Our management accounts to April 2025 are showing a surplus of £21k which is ahead of budget reflecting the prudent nature of our forecasting

52

Our reserves remain very strong, and our worst-case scenario can be fully covered. Our free reserves stand at £6.9m, which would cover our total costs net of carer payments for nine months.

The trustees consider that the going concern basis remains appropriate.

Income and expenditure

Service income represents the amount of grants and fees receivable for the year and is credited to incoming resources when the services have been completed.

Income from government and other grants, whether ‘capital’ or ‘revenue’ grants, is recognised when PSS:

Income received in advance of an event is deferred until the criteria for income recognition has been met.

Donations and legacies are recognised when receipt is probable and the value can be measured reliably.

Investment income is recognised when receivable for unrestricted services and in accordance with restrictions for restricted services.

Furlough income from the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme is recognised when receivable following a submission claim to HMRC.

The contribution of volunteers is not quantified in financial terms.

Expenditure is recognised on an accruals basis and is allocated between:

Any unexpended income on services which relates to grants or donations which must be expended in the following year is taken to creditors as 'Grants and donations received in advance’ and shown as deferred income. The outturns of other services, whose income exceeds expenditure or whose expenditure exceeds income, are taken to reserves.

53

Allocation of overheads

PSS has a significant degree of centralisation of services such as human resources, business development, communications, learning and development, finance, IT and quality and compliance.

The costs of these centralised services are allocated to individual services on the basis of actual service expenditure. This ensures a fair and transparent allocation of costs and is in line with accepted practices within the voluntary sector.

Fund accounting

Restricted funds are to be used for specific purposes laid down by the donor. Expenditure for those purposes is charged to the fund, together with a fair allocation of overheads and support costs.

Unrestricted funds are donations and other incoming resources received or generated for expenditure on the general objectives of the charity.

The fixed asset revaluation reserve contains revaluation gains recognised on property, plant and equipment currently held by the charity.

Investments

Investments are stated in the balance sheet at fair value. Unrealised gains and losses arising on the revaluation of investments are, together with the realised gains and losses arising on the sale of investments, shown in the statement of financial activities as net gains/(losses) on investments.

Tangible fixed assets

Properties, including land and buildings, are included at fair value as at the balance sheet date. A full valuation is attained from a qualified valuer, for each property at regular intervals, and specifically in any year were the trustees believe there has been a material change in value.

Revaluation gains or losses (which are not considered to be impairment losses) on assets held for the charity’s own use are included in the SOFA under the section for other recognised gains and losses.

Depreciation is calculated to write off the cost or valuation of tangible fixed assets, excluding land, less their residual values, on a straight-line basis over their estimated useful lives.

The following depreciation rates are used:

Furnishings and fittings 20%
Office equipment and minibuses 25%
Freehold property 2%
Leasehold property 2%

54

Property valuations are split as follows:

Land Building
Eleanor Rathbone House 25% 75%
Other property 75% 25%

The split for Eleanor Rathbone House has been used on the advice of the independent valuers, who deem the majority of the value to be in the building. The ‘other’ properties however are much older and are therefore deemed to hold the majority of their value in the land.

Service-based assets, and assets individually costing below £250 are written off fully in the year of acquisition.

Investment property

A portion of the leasehold property, Eleanor Rathbone House, is leased out to third parties and is therefore recognised as an investment property, as it meets the definition of a mixed-use property. Investment property is held at fair value as at the balance sheet date. The portion of the Eleanor Rathbone House held as investment property is one quarter of the total fair value, which represents the area of the property which the lessees occupy.

Leased equipment

Payments in respect of operating lease agreements (being agreements not giving rights approximating to ownership) have been charged to the Statement of Financial Activities on a straight-line basis.

Financial instruments

Financial assets and financial liabilities are recognised when PSS (UK) becomes a party to the contractual provisions of the instrument. All financial assets and liabilities are initially measured at transaction price (including transaction costs). PSS (UK) only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value.

Debtors

Trade and other debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due after any trade discount offered. Prepayments are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due.

Creditors and provisions

Creditors and provisions are recognised where PSS (UK) has a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due.

55

Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and in hand includes cash and short-term, highly-liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or the opening of the deposit or similar account.

Pension costs and other post-retirement benefits

PSS participated in the Growth Plan scheme, a multi-employer defined contribution pension scheme managed by TPT Retirement Solutions (TPT), until 30[th] September 2020. From the 1st October 2020, PSS moved to The People’s Pension.

During the year 2023/24 PSS executed a deed of prepayment to record the fact that PSS, as a departing employer of the Pension Trust Growth Plan, agreed to pay £718,097 on account to the trustees, representing the reasonable pre-estimate of the amount of the debt due by PSS in relation to the Growth Plan multi-employer scheme. The amount was settled in full by the year end.

Termination benefits

Termination benefits are employee benefits payable as a result of either the charity’s decision to terminate an employee’s employment; or an employee’s decision to accept voluntary redundancy in exchange for those benefits.

Taxation and Deferred Tax

The charity is exempt from tax on income and gains falling within section 505 of the Taxes Act 1988 or section 252 of the Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992 to the extent that these are applied to its charitable objects.

Judgements in applying accounting policies and key sources of estimation uncertainty

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are required to make estimates and judgements. The matters considered below are considered to be the most important in understanding the judgements that are involved in preparing the financial statements and the uncertainties that could impact the amounts reported in the results of operations, financial position and cash flows.

Valuation of freehold and long-leasehold property

To determine the fair value, advice is taken from independent qualified valuers. In this context, judgement is exercised in a number of areas, including local market conditions and investor demand.

Classification of leases

Whether leases entered into by PSS (UK), as lessee, is operating leases or finance leases. These decisions depend on an assessment of whether the risks and rewards of ownership have been transferred from the lessor to the lessee on a lease-by-lease basis.

56

Other key sources of estimation uncertainty

57

2 Incoming resources

2
Incoming resources
Analysis of income:
Grants:
Ministry of Justice
Liverpool City Council
Children in Need
Merseyside Police
Department of Health & Social Care
National Lottery Community Fund :Reaching Communities/Partnerships
Other
Total Grant Income
Fees for charitable services provided
Donations from trusts and individuals
Investment Income
Sundry Income
Total Income
Movements in deferred income
Grant income deferred at 1.4.2024
Grants receivable in the year
Grant income deferred at 31.3.2025
Grant income recognised for the year
Donation income deferred at 1.4.2024
Donations received in the year
Donation income deferred at 31.3.2025
Donation income recognised for the year
Fee income deferred at 1.4.2024
Fee income receivable in the year
Fee income deferred at 31.3.2025
Fee income recognised in the year		 Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
£
£
£
£
£
£
- -
--
-
-
- 497,505
497,505-
400,004
400,004
- 40,539
40,539-
37,748
37,748
- 20,000
20,000-
59,663
59,663
- -
--
8,121
8,121
-
22,852
22,852
- -
--
1,000
1,000
2025
2024
- 580,896580,896
-
506,536
506,536
22,814,863 -
22,814,863
20,193,924 -
20,193,924
21,071
-
21,071
7,114
150
7,264
170,746
31,933202,679
165,063
31,534
196,597
221,932
-221,932
219,105
-
219,105
23,228,612 612,829
23,841,441
20,585,206 538,220
21,123,426
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
Unrestricted
Restricted
Total
£
£
£
£
£
£
-
0
0
-
48,352
48,352
-
580,896
580,896
-
458,184
458,184
- - -
-
0
0
2024
2025
-
580,896
580,896
-
506,536
506,536
- - -
-
-
-
21,071 -
21,071
7,114
150
7,264
- - -
-
-
-
21,071 -
21,071
7,114
150
7,264
479,462
-
479,462
248,083
-
248,083
22,849,733
-
22,849,733
20,425,303
-
20,425,303
(514,332)
-
(514,332)
(479,462)
-
(479,462)
22,814,863 -
22,814,863
20,193,924
-
20,193,924

During the year, £Nil (2024: £8,121) in grants from government departments was received. The prior year grant from the Ministry of Justice was to fund our Prisoners’ Families service and the grant from the Department of Health and Social Care funded our Parent-Baby Service’s work.

Fee income deferred consists of income for contracts which extend beyond the financial year end.

58

Incoming resources continued

Families & Communities
Shared Lives UK
Other
Income from investment & unit trusts
Investment income includes:
Interest on deposit funds		 Unrestricted
£
4,418,191
18,448,487
361,934		 Restricted
£
590,486
-
22,343
2025		 Total
£
5,008,677
18,448,487
384,277		 Unrestricted
£
5,671,849
14,639,524
273,833		 Restricted
£
538220
-
-
2024		 Total
£
6,210,069
14,639,524
273,833
23,228,612 612,829 23,841,441 20,585,206 538,220 21,123,426
Unrestricted
£
164,675
28,415		 Restricted
£
9,590
-
2025		 Total
£
174,265
28,415		 Unrestricted
£
(31,534)
172,084		 Restricted
£
31,534
-
2024		 Total
£
0
172,084
193,090 9,590 202,680 140,550 31,534 172,084

3 Expenditure

Families & Communities
Shared Lives UK
Other
Costs of generating vol. income		 £
£
£
£
£
£
£
£
Direct Costs
Support
Costs
Governance
Costs
Total
Direct Costs
Support
Costs
Governance
Costs
Total
4,431 ,028 400,073
20,943
4,852,044
5,433,1 02 532,1 1 4
25,893
5,991 ,1 09
1 6,447,497
1 ,498,559 77,797
18,023,853
1 2,989,1 71 1 ,278,621
61 ,930
1 4,329,722
581 ,1 92
-
-
581,192
494,204
- - 494,204
788
-
-
788
769
- - 769
2025
2024
Restated
21,460,505
1,898,632
98,740
23,457,877
1 8,91 7,246
1 ,81 0,735
87,823
20,81 5,804

Expenditure on charitable activities is the cost of providing charitable services, including staff costs, and elements of service managed centrally. Governance costs relate to the costs of compliance with statutory requirements, including the external audit. The portfolios listed above allocate expenditure on charitable activities based on the operations of the charity.

59

Expenditure continued

Governance Costs
Statutory audit fees
Other fees to internal auditors
Management & Administration Salaries
Legal & professional costs
The following amounts are included in expenditure:
Depreciation: tangible fixed assets, owned
Operating Lease rentals:
Land & Building
Other
Auditors Remuneration - Audit Services
Staff costs
Salaries
Social Security costs
Other pension costs
Average no. of employees
Analysis:
Charitable activities
Governance
The emoluments of higher paid employees fell within the following
ranges:
£70,001 - £80,000
£80,001 - £90,000
£90,001 - £100,000		 2025
2024
£
£
28,967
26,334
26,584
17,947
43,189
42,856
- 686
98,740
87,823
2025
2024
£
£
154,481
180,670
92,531
134,096
13,636
12,216
28,967
26,334
2025
2024
£
£
4,986,747
5,289,630
425,609
427,833
259,542
453,237
5,671,898
6,170,700
216
241
214
239
2
2
216
241
2025
2024
No.
No.
1
2
1
-
-
1
2
3

60

Expenditure continued

The key management personnel comprise of the chief executive officer, director of operations and director of finance and people. The total gross salaries and employer pension contributions of the key management were £306,453 (2024: £345,762). During the year 2 higher-paid employees (2024: 3) participated in the defined contribution pension scheme. Employer’s pension contributions for higher paid staff were £35,315 (2024: £74,700).

The total paid during the year on redundancy and termination payments was £Nil (2024: £11,289).

No trustee or person with a family or business connected with a trustee received remuneration in the year from the charity. Expenses of £40 (2024: £879) were reimbursed to 1 (2024: 2) members of the trustees. Professional indemnity insurance that covers our trustees was paid during the year at a cost of £4,499 (2024: £4,499).

A liability is recognised for short-term compensated absence arising from employee entitlement to paid annual leave. The value of this provision is £54,251 (2024: £50,466).

During the year fees were paid to 566 (2024: 586) self-employed Shared Lives carers. These fees are categorised as charitable expenditure and are not considered when calculating staff costs.

61

4 Tangible fixed assets

Cost/valuation
Balance at 01.04.2024
Additions
Disposals
Gains/(losses) on revaluations
Transfers
Balance at 31.03.2025
Depreciation
Balance at 01.04.2024
Charge for year
On disposals
Written back
Balance at 31.03.2025
Net book amount
31.03.2025
31.03.2024		 Freehold
property
£
320,000
-
(120,000)
-
-		 Leasehold
property
£
1,995,905
-
-
-
-		 Furnishings
& fittings
£
301,046
-
-
-
-		 Office
Equipment
£
1,391,992
34,283
-
-
-		 Total
£
4,008,943
34,283
(120,000)
-
-
200,000 1,995,905 301,046 1,426,275 3,923,226
1,600
1,000
(600)
-		 33,667
29,939
-
-		 249,933
12,945
-
-		 1,146,158
110,597
-
-		 1,431,358
154,481
(600)
-
2,000 63,606 262,878 1,256,755 1,585,239
198,000 1,932,299 38,168 169,520 2,337,987
320,000 2,216,666 19,232 229,857 2,785,755

All tangible fixed assets were used for charitable purposes.

An external valuation of the leasehold property Eleanor Rathbone House was completed by Legat Owen on 23 May 2023. An external valuation of the freehold property 21 Aigburth Road was carried out by SK Real Estate on 24[th] July 2023. The trustees have deemed that these valuations are appropriate on 31 March 2025.

During the year, the freehold property at 16 Watford Road was sold at the market value of £122,500, with a gain on disposal of £2,500.

A long-term loan of £700,000 from Barclays plc is secured against Eleanor Rathbone House. The carrying value of the property is £2,660,000, of which £664,094 is allocated to investment property.

If the freehold and leasehold land and buildings had not been revalued,
they would have been included on the historical cost basis as follows:
Cost
Accumulated depreciation
Net book value		 2025
2024
£
£
1,726,563
1,743,563
192,826
167,828
1,533,737
1,575,735

62

5 Investment property

Balance at 01.04.2024
Additions
Transfers
Disposals
Gain/(loss) on revaluation
Balance at 31.03.2025		 2025
2024
£
£
664,094
443,333
-
-
-
220,761
-
-
-
-
664,094
664,094

Investment property is included on a fair value basis. An external revaluation was carried out by Legat Owen on 23 May 2023. The trustees have considered the valuations above as a fair reflection of the year end fair value.

6 Fixed asset investments

Listed investments:
Market value at 01.04.2024
Legacies
Additions
Disposals
Adjustment to market value
Market value at 31.03.2025
Analysis of quoted investments:
Fixed interest
Ordinary shares - UK
Ordinary shares - overseas
Alternatives
Other investments:
Deposit fund
Investment & Unit trusts		 Unrestricted
£
5,015,611
-
-
-
(212,769)		 Restricted
(LQV)
£
337,936
-
-
-
(14,336)		 Restricted
(LCWT)
£
787,357
-
-
-
(33,400)		 Total
£
6,140,904
-
-
-
(260,505)
4,802,842 323,600 753,957 5,880,399
-
-
-
-
-
4,802,842		 -
-
-
-
-
323,600		 -
-
-
-
-
753,957		 -
-
-
-
-
5,880,399
4,802,842 323,600 753,957 5,880,399

All the quoted fixed asset investments investment units with the COIF Charities Fund or deposits with the COIF Charities Deposit Fund.

The historic cost of listed investments at 31 March 2025 is £5,349,002 (2024: £5,349,002).

63

The company has a £1 investment representing 100% of the issued ordinary share capital of PSS Commercial Services Limited incorporated in England. The subsidiary has been dormant throughout the year. Consolidated accounts have not been prepared on the grounds of materiality. The net assets of the company at the balance sheet date were £1.

7 Debtors: amounts due within one year

Trade Debtors
Provision for bad debts
Other Debtors
Prepayments & Accrued Income		 2025
2024
£
£
1,102,369
1,529,468
(69,385)
456
1,502
1,138,255
1,264,779
2,171,695
2,795,749

8 Creditors: amounts due within one year

Trade Creditors
Other Creditors
Accruals
Deferred Income
Other Taxes & Social Security
Pension Creditor
Bank loan		 2025
2024
£
£
440,720
394,692
93,567
193,459
741,886
696,192
514,332
479,462
106,608
86,344
44,889
36,381
70,000
70,000
2,012,002
1,956,530

Deferred income comprises of income received in advance of the delivery of the service, as contracted.

The movement in the period is as follows:

64

Opening deferred income
Amounts charged for the year
Amounts released in the year
Closing deferred income		 2025
2024
£
£
479,462
301,990
23,451,700
20,890,750
(23,416,830)
(20,713,278)
514,332
479,462

9 Creditors: amounts due greater than one year

Bank loan: due greater than a year 2025
2024
£
£
530,833
600,833
530,833
600,833

During the prior year, PSS completed the drawdown of a £700,000 loan, provided by Barclays. The loan is secured against the charity’s property Eleanor Rathbone House and has a term of five years, on a floating interest basis. At 31[st] March 2025, £600,833 was outstanding with £70,000 of this due within one year (see note 8).

10 Pension obligations

PSS left the Growth Plan as at 30th September 2020. TPT Retirement Solutions (TPT) provided an uncertified debt figure due of £1,932,063. PSS’s funding position calculated using an annuity buy-out basis. TPT advised that they were unable to certify the debt, due an ongoing court case relating to their potential non adherence to scheme rules.

In July 2023, TPT provided an updated debt on withdrawal figure for PSS of £718,097 as at 30 November 2022. During the 2023/24 PSS executed a deed of prepayment to record the fact that PSS, as a departing employer of the Pension Trust Growth Plan, paid £718,097 on account to the trustees, representing the reasonable pre-estimate of the amount of the debt due by PSS in relation to the Growth Plan multi-employer scheme. The amount was settled in full at the year end.

The trustee of the Growth Plan has stated that they are unable to certify the debt due to the ongoing court case regarding potential non-adherence to Plan rules. The court case ended March 2025 and we are awaiting the outcome. The impact on the cessation valuation, and for each employer, can vary. At this point, as the outcome of the court case is highly uncertain, no adjustment to our balance sheet provision has been made.

In relation to the current undertaking of a Scheme Benefits Review, the Scheme Actuary confirmed in August 2022 that the court case would affect the Plan and

65

associated liabilities. They estimated that PSS’s Section 75 debt will increase by around £200,000, should the court rule against the trustee. PSS has recognised a contingent liability for this amount.

As at 1 April 2024
Charged to SOFA
Paid
Revaluation movement
At 31 March 2025
The Pensions Trust Growth Plan		 2025
2024
-
679,053
-
-
-
(688,814)
-
9,761
-
-

66

11 Reserves

The income funds of the charity include restricted funds comprising of unexpended balances of donations and gains held on trust to be applied for specific purposes.

Movement in funds:

`
Restricted funds:
Child Welfare
Mountford Fund
Liverpool Queen Victoria
Other
Total restricted funds
General funds:
Fixed Asset Revaluation
General reserve
Total unrestricted funds
Total reserves		 Balance at
1.4.2024
£
601,876
9,660
378,718
1,503		 Incoming
resources
£
22,343
-
9,590
580,896		 Expenditure
& losses
Net
incoming/
(outgoing)
resources
£
£
0
22,343
-
-

(9,590)
-
(580,896)
-
(590,486)
22,343
(5,856)
(5,856)
(22,861,535)
367,077
(22,867,391)
361,221
(22,867,391)
361,221
(23,457,877)
383,564
2025		 Expenditure
& losses
Net
incoming/
(outgoing)
resources
£
£
0
22,343
-
-

(9,590)
-
(580,896)
-
(590,486)
22,343
(5,856)
(5,856)
(22,861,535)
367,077
(22,867,391)
361,221
(22,867,391)
361,221
(23,457,877)
383,564
2025		 Realised/
unrealised
gains/losses
& transfers
£
(33,400)
-
(14,336)
-
 Balance at
31.3.2025
£
590,819
9,660
364,382
1,503
966,364
460,347
9,423,315
9,883,662
9,883,662
10,850,026		 Balance at
1.4.2023
£
531,440
9,660
348,486
1,503		 Incoming
resources
£
22,064
-
9,470
506,686		 Expenditure
& losses
Net
incoming/
(outgoing)
resources
£
£
(22,064)
-

-
-
(9,470)
-
(506,686)
-
(538,220)
-

(10,184)
(10,184)
(20,267,400)
317,806
(20,277,584)
307,622
(20,277,584)
307,622
(20,815,804)
307,622
2024		 Expenditure
& losses
Net
incoming/
(outgoing)
resources
£
£
(22,064)
-

-
-
(9,470)
-
(506,686)
-
(538,220)
-

(10,184)
(10,184)
(20,267,400)
317,806
(20,277,584)
307,622
(20,277,584)
307,622
(20,815,804)
307,622
2024		 Realised/
unrealised
gains/losses
& transfers
£

70,436

-

30,232

-		 Balance at
31.3.2024
£
601,876

9,660
378,718

1,503
991,757 612,829 (590,486) 22,343 (47,736) 891,089 538,220 (538,220) -
100,668		 991,757
466,203
9,266,507		 -
23,228,612		 (5,856)
(22,861,535)		 (5,856)
367,077		 -
(210,269)		 476,387
8,509,769		 -
20,585,206
(10,184)
(20,267,400)		 (10,184)
317,806		 -
438,932
466,203
9,266,507
9,732,710 23,228,612 (22,867,391) 361,221 (210,269) 8,986,156 20,585,206 (20,277,584) 307,622 438,932 9,732,710
9,732,710 23,228,612 (22,867,391) 361,221 (210,269) 8,986,156 20,585,206 (20,277,584) 307,622 438,932 9,732,710
10,724,467 23,841,441 (23,457,877) 383,564 (258,005) 9,877,245 21,123,426 (20,815,804) 307,622 539,600 10,724,467

67

Reserves continued

Restricted funds
Child Welfare
Mountford Fund
Liverpool Queen Victoria		 Tangible
fixed
assets
£
-
-
-
-		 Investment
property
£
-
-
-
-		 Investments
at market
value
Bank
balances
£
£
753,957
1,107
-
-
323,599
-
-
-
1,077,556
1,107
-
-
4,802,843
2,337,579
-
-
4,802,843
2,337,579
5,880,399
2,338,686
2025		 Investments
at market
value
Bank
balances
£
£
753,957
1,107
-
-
323,599
-
-
-
1,077,556
1,107
-
-
4,802,843
2,337,579
-
-
4,802,843
2,337,579
5,880,399
2,338,686
2025		 Other
assets &
liabilities
£
(164,248)
9,660
40,786
1,503		 Total
£
590,816
9,660
364,385
1,503
966,364
460,347
9,423,315
-
9,883,662
10,850,026		 Tangible
fixed
assets
£
-
-
-
-		 Investment
property
£
-
-
-
-		 Investments
at market
value
Bank
balances
£
£
787,357
979
-
-
337,936
-
-
-
1,125,293
979
-
-
5,015,611
1,102,518
-
-
5,015,611
1,102,518
6,140,904
1,103,497
2024		 Investments
at market
value
Bank
balances
£
£
787,357
979
-
-
337,936
-
-
-
1,125,293
979
-
-
5,015,611
1,102,518
-
-
5,015,611
1,102,518
6,140,904
1,103,497
2024		 Other
assets &
liabilities
£
(186,463)
9,660
40,786
1,503		 Total
£
601,873
9,660
378,722
1,503
Other
Unrestricted funds
Fixed Asset reserve
General reserve
Designated funds		 - - 1,077,556 1,107 (112,299) - - 1,125,293 979 (134,514) 991,758
460,347
1,877,640
-		 -
664,094
-		 -
4,802,843
-		 -
2,337,579
-		 466,203
2,111,383
-		 -
664,094
-		 -
5,015,611
-		 -
1,102,518
-		 466,203
9,266,506
-
-
(258,841)
-		 -
372,900
-
2,337,987 664,094 4,802,843 2,337,579 (258,841) 2,577,586 664,094 5,015,611 1,102,518 372,900 9,732,709
2,337,987 664,094 5,880,399 2,338,686 (371,140) 2,577,586 664,094 6,140,904 1,103,497 238,386 10,724,467

Purpose of funds

Restricted :

Our restricted funds are to be used for detailed purposes as specified by the original objectives of those funders detailed below:

68

12 Analysis of cash and cash equivalents

Cash in hand

2025 2024
£ £
2,338,686 1,103,497

13 Analysis of net debt

14
Financial commitments
Cash at bank and in hand
Bank loans
Not later than 1 year
Later than 1 year and not later than 5 years
 14
Financial commitments
Cash at bank and in hand
Bank loans
Not later than 1 year
Later than 1 year and not later than 5 years
 At 1 April
2024
Cash flows
At 31 March
2025
£
£
£
1,103,497
1,235,189
2,338,686
(670,833)
70,000
(600,833)
432,664
1,305,189
1,737,853
2025
2024
2025
2024
£
£
£
£
49,991
44,117
13,920
13,080
19,767
9,167
23,200
34,880
69,758
53,284
37,120
47,960
Land & Buildings
Other
69,758

14 Financial commitments

All financial commitments listed in the table above are funded by the charity’s income from charitable activities.

69

15 Related party transactions

There were no related party transactions in the year.

16 Financial instruments

Financial Assets
Cash at bank and in hand
Valuation
Investments
Valuation
Trade debtors
Valuation
Other debtors
Valuation
Accrued income
Valuation
Financial Liabilities
Trade creditors
Valuation
Other creditors
Valuation
Accruals
Valuation
Bank loans
Amortised cost
Method of
measurement		 2025
2024
£
£
2,338,686
1,103,497
5,880,399
6,140,904
1,032,984
1,529,468
456
1,502
1,041,284
1,106,790
10,293,809
9,882,161
440,720
394,692
93,567
193,459
741,886
696,192
600,833
670,833
1,877,006
1,955,176

70

PSS (UK) Annual Report

Final Audit Report

2025-10-16

Created: 2025-10-01 By: Mandy Howe (mandy.howe@pss.org.uk) Status: Signed Transaction ID: CBJCHBCAABAAIAT8ncoFuGHKlA3BdP937zDgHbcEdCpr

"PSS (UK) Annual Report" History

Document created by Mandy Howe (mandy.howe@pss.org.uk) 2025-10-01 - 1:48:47 PM GMT

Document emailed to Julie Cooke (julie8756@icloud.com) for signature 2025-10-01 - 1:48:56 PM GMT

Document emailed to Vicky Szulist (vicky.szulist@crowe.co.uk) for signature 2025-10-01 - 1:48:56 PM GMT

Email viewed by Julie Cooke (julie8756@icloud.com) 2025-10-07 - 9:35:16 AM GMT

Document e-signed by Julie Cooke (julie8756@icloud.com) Signature Date: 2025-10-07 - 9:35:42 AM GMT - Time Source: server

Email viewed by Vicky Szulist (vicky.szulist@crowe.co.uk) 2025-10-16 - 1:39:19 PM GMT

Document e-signed by Vicky Szulist (vicky.szulist@crowe.co.uk) Signature Date: 2025-10-16 - 1:40:17 PM GMT - Time Source: server

Agreement completed. 2025-10-16 - 1:40:17 PM GMT