Mum and Me
Scottish Charity Number SC048636
Trustees’ Annual Report and Accounts
For the year ended 31 August 2024
pg. 1
| Contents | |
|---|---|
| Information | p 3 |
| Trustees annual report | p 4-8 |
| Independent Examiners Report | p 9 |
| Accounts - | |
| Receipts and Payments Report | p 10 |
| Statement balances | p 10 |
| Notes | p 11 - 12 |
pg. 2
Mum and Me Trustees Report 2023/24
For the period ending August 2024.
Information
Current Trustees:
Registered Address St. Andrews Church 21 Hamilton Green Arbroath Angus DD11 1JG Scottish Charities number SC048636 Bankers Bank of Scotland
pg. 3
Mum and Me
Trustees Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 August 2024
Structure, Governance and Management
Constitution
Mum and Me is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO). It was registered in its current legal form on 21 August 2018. It has a two-tiered structure consisting of members and the Board of Trustees.
Since last year’s annual report, we have appointed two new committee members, and one other has resigned.
Objectives
Mum and Me’s purpose continues to be:
-
To advance education of mothers not only through learning new skills such as basic sewing, cooking and financial management of weekly budgets and by providing a creche for children whose mothers attend the group.
-
To relieve those in need through provision of an emotionally safe space for mothers aimed at improving the conditions and quality of life.
-
Education is further advanced by the attending of local schools to provide group work intervention focusing on nurture and respect.
Activities and achievements
We continue to run five groups each week, lasting either the morning or afternoon (Wed am, pm and Thursday am, pm and Friday am). We were successful in providing Mum and Me to 97 families an increase of 12 from last year. We continue to have a high demand for the group and have required to operate a waiting list of between 10-25.
There are Mums from all walks of life who have attended our group; however, many are referred with feelings of isolation due to a lack of support. During this reporting year 52% of our mums have been referred with isolation and 50% within our waiting list. These include military families, migrants, and those with high levels of Social Work input.
Data from Sept 2023 - August 2024
45% of mums experience mental health challenges, an increase of 5%
14% are from ethnic minorities, a decrease of 7%
6% of the mums have been or are currently open to Social Work
6% referred from Family Nurse Partnership
6% are in relationships where intimate partner violence features
pg. 4
3% have served a custodial sentence.
The above data demonstrates we continue to work with a diverse group of women with a variety of needs.
Following discussion with our mums, and reflection on data we have repeated and extended our programme from last year to improve maternal self-esteem and mental wellbeing. These include ways on managing feelings, beauty pamper sessions, challenging social media body stereotypes and sharing strengths and attributes. Mums disclosed difficult stories with each other and explored ways on how to boost their own and each other’s confidence and emotional wellbeing. We have also observed mums blossoming, becoming more confident in offering peer support to others. The sharing of personal experiences continues to lead to a gelling of relationships between mums and staff.
Following positive feedback from our mums we have continued to integrate many of our activities from last year into this year’s programme. Children are supported and encouraged to play with each other and establish friendships. Messy play, which included joint sessions with parent and child, remains well received. These include water play with paddling pools, painting days, food related messy play and trips to a local swimming pool and soft play. They were thoroughly enjoyed by both children and mums. Mums continue to comment they are grateful children are given these experiential opportunities and carry out messy play in their homes. Some children had never been swimming before due to their mum’s lack of confidence. Attending as a group gave them the confidence they previously lacked and enabled them to continue this activity independently. This year we included lunch afterwards allowing more time for the mums from different groups to mix and make friendships.
At the end of each session, we continued with story and song time. On a social and emotional level, it allows mums to focus on their children. Some mums struggle with this activity perhaps due to a lack of confidence in their reading ability or a lack of examples within their own lives.
Within each of the mum’s groups there continues to be a focus on parenting and life skills. This explores family’s needs and includes topics such as managing challenging toddler behaviour, normal child development, developmental red flags and ways to promote children's milestones. We observe positive changes in how mums interact with their children and the children making positive developmental progress.
Many families who come to Mum and Me also attend other local based groups for parents and children. The increase in attendance at these has been facilitated in part by friendship groups and an increase in maternal confidence initially developed within Mum and Me. We have seen a deepening of friendships with mums meeting up socially outside group time.
We continue to offer our “Mum without Me group” which runs fortnightly on a Thursday evening at a local restaurant. Following maternal consultation, we also provide Mum without Me within group time. We currently have 14 women who attend.
pg. 5
We continue to liaise with other professionals and welcome them coming along to our sessions. Examples include Health Visitors attending to observe children or meet with mums and Family Nurses visiting to introduce families to the group. There is also regular communication with professionals from Social Work who work with some of our families. For the third year running we have worked with the Youth Philanthropy Initiative for our local secondary school. Another secondary school approached us to offer an opportunity for students undertaking childcare studies to be able to visit our group. These activities not only publicise our group but capitalises joint working and builds local community capacity.
Provision of lunches continued up until April 2024 with all the benefits we outlined in previous reports such as teaching mums new skills and recipes on a budget, building self-esteem and offering advice on children's fussy eating. The increase in mums and children from April 2024 means we cannot provide lunches. The room we had access to previously is being used by another service. We still cook within group time with the project providing all the ingredients. The mums take the food home. As a group we felt it was still important to provide a time for everyone to come together, therefore, extended the beginning of group time by 15 minutes. Mums, children, workers and volunteers now all sit together during this time and enjoy a healthy snack, coffee and chat. The mums feel they are still learning new skills and recipes and have informal time to develop friendships.
At the beginning of each year, we continue to ask mums what they want to achieve in the way of practical skills. This year we have made busy bags, learn to knit, and crochet, family and friends recognition books, cross stitching, made Halloween, Easter and Christmas decorations.
Our greatest challenge as a group this year is having a waiting list. When women are referred the need is there at the time and having to wait for a place is not ideal. We reflected on ways to increase our service provision and reduce our waiting list. This coincided with a member of staff intimating a reduction in her working hours in preparation for her intention to retire.
This offered an opportunity to begin succession planning and staff assuming responsibility prior to our substantive staff member retiring. This allowed for a smoother transition for our staff moving into different roles. Following the success of our creche assistant posts last year we decided to employ another 2 creche workers 5 hours/week. Both of whom have been mums who attended the group, became volunteers and are now employed. We are proud to have grown and developed our own talent. We can now offer 75 family spaces/week reducing our waiting list without needing additional funding.
Our staffing now consists of 2 senior Family Support Workers, 2 creche workers and 2 creche assistants and 13 volunteers. Managing a large team as well as keeping abreast of HR and Health and Safety legislation can be challenging. The committee agreed having professional support would enhance the clinical governance of the charity. As a result, we have engaged Peninsula Business Services for one year. The benefits include
pg. 6
implementation of e-learning for staff and updating of guidelines, policies and risk assessments. This service along with an increase in rent has come with a financial cost. We now have nominated fundraisers within the charity which is supporting access to further funding applications and arranging fund raising events.
In summary, we continue to develop our charity consulting with parents, staff and volunteers to make positive adaptions. We can evidence ongoing improvements of maternal wellbeing and reduction in their isolation. We observe positive parenting strategies and children thriving. We will endeavour to continue to see growth in the wellbeing of mothers and the parenting of their children contributing to a diverse and inclusive community.
Our balance from 31/08/24 £7897.10. This includes back dated pay for one of our employees and means we have no outstanding liabilities. The staff member worked in the Charity prior to full funding being in place and early funding was restricted. We have over time gathered in and raised unrestricted funds to enable payment. Whilst the staff were not financially remunerated, our statutory obligations for those hours such as National Insurance, Income Tax and NEST pension at the time were paid.
The trustees are continuing to pursue additional funding to sustain the project, however so far, we have received the following grants and donations:
-
The Robertson Trust - £11,000
-
The National Lottery Community Fund - £31,836
-
Colin Grant Charitable Trust - £2,000
-
Aberbrothock Skea - £2,500
-
Donations of £1,676.50 which includes £100 from Arbroath Flower Club
We have successfully undertaken the following fund raising
-
Balloon race - £280
-
Craft Fayre - £1,811
-
Quiz night - £589
-
Parent subscriptions - £819.50
Plans for the future
This will be discussed at the AGM and further Trustee’s meetings.
We plan to do more of what we are already doing because of the evaluative staff observations, ongoing positive feedback from mums, their family members, volunteers and professionals especially around reducing isolation and promoting mental wellbeing.
We continue to seek opportunities to raise funds alongside our Mum and Me families, committee members and volunteers. From August 2024 we plan develop two sub committees one to fund raise and the other to complete funding applications.
pg. 7
We plan to implement and update our HR and Health and Safety policies/procedures making our charities clinical governance more robust. We hope to commence implementation of reserves to protect and safeguard our charity assets.
Our private Facebook page is a positive way we share information and provide professional, and peer support out with groups. From September 2024 we will enrol mums on our Facebook page when they are offered a space rather than their first day, they attend group. Our hope is mums will feel they have a better understanding of what we offer and the kinds of peer and professional support available. This in turn will increase our maternal enrolment into our group. At the end of next year, we plan to evaluate this change.
Now our charity is expanding we are considering applying for further funding to employ a part time administrator to alleviate some of the administrative tasks from staff and the committee and increase our creche worker hours.
Ongoing evaluation and adaptions to our service is important to us. With support from mums, staff, volunteers and the management committee this will continue.
Date: 14/01/25
pg. 8
Independent examiners report
l•depeNdeo1 Emmlner's Report to ibe Trustees of & le
I th¢ 'ty for yw ¢odAI 31 Ay• 2024"
The clty c1&[ the r
Mum and Me Accounts for the year ended 31 August 2024 Recei ts and Pa ments Account for the ear ended 31 Au ust 2024 Unrestricted Restricted Period Ended 31108123 Notes Funds Funds Total Receipts Subs and Donations Grants Receipts from Fund Raising Activities 2.496.00 2.496.00 47,336.00 47,336.00 6.453.36 54,428.80 3,404.76 3,404.76 5,587.95 Total Receipts 5 900.76 47 336.00 53 236.76 66 470.11 Payments Expenses for Fund Raising Activities Payments relating directly to charitable aclivits.es Remuneration Costs 1,955.67 1,955.67 2.375.67 971.46 9,026.28 971.46 47.446.78 56,473.06 3,833.52 57.938.64 Total Payments 11.953.41 47,446.78 59,400.19 64.147.83 Su lusl Deficit for ear 052.65 -110.78 ,163.43 -2,322.28 The Notes on page 10 fomi an integral part ofthese accounts. statement of Balances as 31 Au ust 2024 Fund Balances Unrestricted Restricted Period Ended 31108123 Funds Funds Total Cash and Bank Balance5 Balanee 1 September 2023 SurplusllDefiettl for year Transfers in year (net) Balances 31 Au ust 2024 13949.75 110.78 14060.53 16,382.81 -2,322.28 4,052.65 -110.78 4,163.43 7 897.10 0.00 7,897.10 14.060.53 P&10
Mum and Me
Accounts for the year ended 31 August 2024
Notes
1. Subs and Donations
Subs and Donations are mainly from individuals but include
| The Rotary Club of | |
|---|---|
| Arbroath | |
| Provincial Grand Lodge | |
| of Forfarshire Charity |
500 |
| Fund |
600 |
2. Grants Received - Restricted
The following Grants were received for the purposes of the Trust
| The National Lottery | |
| Community Fund | 31,836 |
| The Robertson Trust | 11,000 |
| Colin Grant Charitable | |
| Trust, Thorntons | 2,000 |
| Aberbrothock Skea | |
| Charitable Trust, | |
| Thorntons | 2,500 |
3. Payments relating to
| Charitable Activities Wages and Pensions Gifts Resources and equipment |
UnrestrictedRestricted Funds Funds Total |
|---|---|
| 9,026.28 47,446.78 56,473.06 0 971.46 971.46 |
|
| 9,997.74 47,446.78 57,444.52 |
Liabilities at the year end.
No liabilities
Approved by the Trustees and signed on their behalf:
pg. 11
Date 14101125 pg. 12