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2024-03-31-annual-report

Dunluce Family Centre

Company Limited by Guarantee

Trustees' Annual Report (Incorporating the Director's Report)

Year ended 31 March 2024

The trustees, who are also the directors for the purposes of company law, present their report and the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 March 2024.

Reference and administrative details

Registered charity name Dunluce Family Centre Charity registration number XR60593 Company registration number NI 43417 Charity Commission registration number 105150 Principal office and registered 15 Shaw Court office Ballymagroarty Derry BT48 0PW

The trustees

Neil Hargan Francine Moran Caroline Hartop Brian McNeachtain Shauna O’Doherty

Company Secretary

Claire Duffy

Auditor McGroarty, McCafferty & Co Ltd Accountant and Tax Consultants 2 Carlisle Terrace Derry BT48 6JX

Structure, governance and management

The organisation is a charitable company limited by guarantee, incorporated and registered as a charity on 10 June 2002. The company was established under a Memorandum of Association which established the objects and powers of the charitable company and is governed under its Articles of Association. Every member of the Company undertakes to contribute to the assets of the Company, in the event of the same being, wound up while it is a member, or within one year after it ceases to be a member, for payment of the debts and liabilities of the Company contracted before it ceases to be a member, and of the costs, charges and expenses of winding up, and for the adjustment of the rights of the contributions among themselves, such amount as may be required not exceeding one pound.

Directors are appointed at the Annual General Meeting and hold office until the next AGM following their appointment.

Dunluce Family Centre

Company Limited by Guarantee

Trustees' Annual Report (Incorporating the Director's Report) (continued)

Year ended 31 March 2024

Structure, governance and management (continued)

New Board members are given an induction by the Chairman and Secretary covering the charity’s structure and how it operates, the Board meets once every month to receive reports from management and deal with strategic and policy matters.

Objectives and activities

The Advancement of Education: The direct benefits flowing from this purpose include the provision of programmes and facilities for the enhanced development and education of children up to the age of seventeen and the encouragement of parents and guardians to understand and provide for the needs of their children in order to promote the physiological, natural, social and other aspects of family children and young people’s education. These benefits will be demonstrated by recording the numbers of people who access our services and measuring these against the targets established our annual action plan. There is no harm that be discerned as flowing from this purpose. The beneficiaries are the people of the Ballymagroarty, Hazelbank, Coshquin, Glen, Rosemount and City area of Co Derry and its environs.

To achieve our purposes to advance education the Centre will work with the other voluntary, community, business and statutory organisations in the Outer West Neighbourhood Renewal Partnership/Foyleside DEA to deliver a range of programmes, services and facilities, including capacity building, classes, training, social events and a range of healthy life-style opportunities such as health awareness sessions, physical activity sessions.

Strategic report

The following sections for achievements and performance and financial review form the strategic report of the charity.

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Dunluce Family Centre

Company Limited by Guarantee

Trustees' Annual Report (Incorporating the Director's Report) (continued)

Year ended 31 March 2024

Achievements and performance

We are delighted to be presenting our 32[nd] Annual Report. Throughout the past year we have reviewed our ‘3 Year Strategic Plan’ in line with policy. We have worked in collaboration throughout the Outer West Neighbourhood Renewal areas and further afield. We are represented and participate in the following Boards, Taskforces and Forums:

Our focus was on the aims of our plan and how we could achieve these:

Aim 1: To provide programmes that meet the needs of families and children.

100 families were engaged in parenting skills/ development programmes by participating in the following programmes:

Lifestart ‘Growing Child’

The programme is a child-centred, evidence based, month-by-month guide for parents on how their child develops and grows from birth up to five years. It is uniquely designed to support parents create the best possible environment for their child to develop and is delivered to parents on a one-to-one basis in their own home.

The focus of the programme is on empowering parents, strengthening parent-child relationships through building good emotional attachment and helping to provide a high-quality home learning environment. It is outcomes focused and offers parents a unique opportunity to review their own parenting practice in light of their child’s individual developmental needs.

The programme consists of age-appropriate information on all aspects of child development and learning in the form of colourful monthly issues that include a variety of activities to help encourage that development.

This is a structured month-by-month curriculum of information, knowledge and practical learning activity for parents consisting of age-specific information on child development supported by art, story, music and movement resources tailored to suit each individual child and family.

The programme is delivered by trained Lifestart Family Visitors in the parent’s own home – the primary environment for early learning and development. Research has consistently shown that experiences in early life create a critical foundation for positive health and later learning and it is in early life that children acquire the competence and coping skills that affect their life trajectories.

By educating parents on how their children grow and learn the Lifestart ‘Growing Child’ programme helps parents to support their child’s physical, intellectual, emotional and social development and to ensure that their children are ‘school ready’ at an appropriate age and are able to take full advantage of preschool and formal learning.

Staff have been up skilled by participating in a number of training courses:

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Lifestart ‘At Home In School’ programme

An innovative approach to the home/school transition by providing Lifestart’s ‘At Home in Schoo’l programme to local parents in partnership with schools, playgroups and nurseries. We have worked in collaboration with 6 local Nurseries and Primary Schools.

The programme promotes parents’ involvement in early formal education and enhance the home learning environment which research has shown is the key element in children’s success throughout their educational career. (Melhuish, 2001) of which 50 families availed of.

Lifestart ‘Parent Education’ programme

Is a centre-based OCN accredited/ non-accredited programme which can also be delivered in topics:

Aim 2: To provide services that meets the needs of parents and children.

Outer West Family Support Hub

The importance of hubs has been recognised by Government and Hubs are one of the ‘signature projects’ being supported through the ‘Delivering Social Change Initiative’.

The Northern Ireland Children and Young People’s Plan 2011-2014 has identified the need for a network of Family Support Hubs in all the Outcomes Group areas.

373 adults and 387 young people were supported through the Hub during this period. The families have been supported with a range of support from:

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The objectives of the Family Support Hub are:

The concept of a ‘Family Support Hub’ is of an easily recognisable, non-stigmatised brand or flagship for Family Support at local level.

Hubs are coalitions of statutory, community and voluntary agencies which provide early intervention services locally:

Target group:

This approach is targeted at families with early on-set of problems. These would be families at Level 2 of the North of Ireland Family Support Model. Level 2 represents support for children who are vulnerable, through an assessment of need. Services are targeted to individual children, with parental support, and are provided in both statutory and voluntary settings. The target group will include families with children across the age range from 5-17.

Aim 3: To ensure community ownership and that services are community led.

Community Education

We worked in collaboration with the Lifestart Foundation Office to roll out a number of ‘Shaping Ourselves and Our Children’ course.

Aim 4: To have a sustainable and secure organisation.

Childcare facilities

We are a registered childcare facility, which we run as a social economy. We opened our doors again in July 2021 and 30 children utilised our Centre, through a Summer Scheme and Creche.

Aim 5: To promote and market Dunluce Family Centre.

We continue to promote the Centre through social media and Open Days.

Aim 6: To embed methods of best practice within the organisation.

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We held ‘Hub Referral’ agency meetings via Neighbourhood Renewal Taskforces. We need to ensure that families and young people were getting the support needed. Agencies working with families and children met frequently. Agencies consisted of Family Support Worker, Community Restorative Justice, local Youth Workers, Ballymagroarty Hazelbank Youth Outreach Co-ordinator alongside ‘Families and Children Together’ worker.

These meetings were effective as it stopped duplication of resources and plans of actions were put in place for families and young people to best support them move from the possibility of moving into a Hardiker Level 3.

Financial review

The principal funding sources for the charity are currently by way of grants and donations. The main funders/ donors for the year were:

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Dunluce Family Centre

Company Limited by Guarantee

Trustees' Annual Report (Incorporating the Director's Report) (continued)

Year ended 31 March 2024

Plans for future periods

Our plans are to provide a wraparound family support service for the families in the Outer West Neighbourhood Renewal areas, from early intervention to prevention. We want to embed our mentoring service alongside the Family Support Hub.

We want to provide affordable childcare to families 5 mornings and 5 afternoons a week, as a social economy model.

We want every child to have the best start in life, by sustaining Lifestart ‘Growing Child’ and Lifestart ‘At Home In School’ programmes. Our aim is to embed Lifestart into the crèche and the crèche into Lifestart programmes. Children transitioning from the crèche to Nursery are given the knowledge and skills of what a day in the classroom is like. We want their parents to be part of their child’s school day by providing them with the knowledge and skills through Lifestart to equip them to be their child’s first educator and teacher, within the home setting.

We will continue to research funding to provide an extension to our building, which will widen our menu of services. We want to provide a ‘Parent Toddler’ group and an ‘After Schools/ Summer Scheme for children four years and upwards.

We will continue to work in partnership with training providers to ensure residents are being up skilled and provide student placements for residents in further and higher education.

Trustees' responsibilities statement

The trustees, who are also directors for the purposes of company law, are responsible for preparing the trustees' report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires the charity trustees to prepare financial statements for each year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charitable company and the incoming resources and application of resources, including the income and expenditure, 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 with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

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Dunluce Family Centre

Company Limited by Guarantee

Trustees' Annual Report (Incorporating the Director's Report) (continued)

Year ended 31 March 2024

Auditor

Each of the persons who is a trustee at the date of approval of this report confirms that:

The auditor is deemed to have been re-appointed in accordance with section 487 of the Companies Act 2006.

This report is approved and authorised for issue by the board on 22 October 2024 and signed on its behalf by:

Director Director

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