ANNUAL REPORT
THE STORY 2013
Welcome
to free@last’s annual report 2013.We hope you enjoy reading about another year in the life of our service to the people of Nechells, Birmingham. Please feel free to contact us for more information or if you want to support us through prayer, finance or volunteering. Thank you.
VISION To improve the lives of the children and young people of Nechells.
MISSION free@last is committed to providing opportunities, activities, mentoring and support for children and young people in Nechells, and to further their interests by working with their families, other agencies and relevant professionals.
VALUES Giving opportunities to all young people in Nechells without distinction.
AIMS To engage children and young people in a range of developmental and progressive activities which provide opportunities for success and to broaden their horizons. To support children and young people through life’s challenges and difficulties. To support their families to provide the best possible environment for their children to grow, develop and flourish. To take a multi-agency approach to improving the lives of children and young people.
DIRECTORS REPORT There have been many changes in our country this past year and many things that significantly affect the people who we work with. A massive reduction in public spending and increased competition for charity fundraising has resulted in the closure of many local services; and subsequently increased the pressure on those of us who are managing to survive through these difficult times. The benefit system changes and increasing difficulties in securing long term employment has affected all of us, but those who live in poverty have to cope with these changes without the resources (financial and emotional) available to them. However, in this grim time of inner city life in 2013 we are continually blessed by God as He provides the necessary resources, relationships and support for us to continue offering services to the people of Nechells. Our business developments have enabled us to secure building core costs and become self-sustaining. Our relationships have continued to blossom and we are moving into a new era with new people joining our board and specialist committees in 2014. With the plans for our building also moving forward and the great team that we have, we know that the future is bright and free@last will continue to be at the heart of change for the people who live and work in Nechells. There is always room for you to join us and we are eternally grateful to those of you who are part of the bigger team and family of free@last. Thank you, JOHN STREET (Director)
TRUSTEES REPORT Dear friends, Once again I would like to thank you for your support, generosity and belief in our vision to improve the lives of the children and young people of Nechells. Although our staff team has reduced slightly over these past months we still have a very dedicated and caring team, which has been added to by an increased amount of volunteers. We extremely value the special place that volunteers play in our work and have overhauled our support structure and processes to make sure that all those who wish to commit their time to us can feel valued, supported and part of the team. We are also making progress in our plans for future growth and the building programme is pivotal to our presence and effectiveness in this, and we thank all those who continue to give their time and support to making this dream of a purpose built facility become a reality. We recently had a gathering of professionals and local residents to present our work to them in the hope that they would consider joining our mission. We were overwhelmed by the response and show of support from such a diverse range of people. As our strategic board and committees grows and our work becomes more effective we will continue to fulfil our vision and enable local people to be free@last; and there is always room for you if you want to join our journey. Best wishes always, WINSTON SERGENT (Chair of Trustees)
CHILDREN & YOUNG PEOPLE The heart and soul of free@last is focused on the children and young people in Nechells, with the aim of broadening their horizons through a wide variety of opportunities and unconditional support to help them through the difficulties and challenges they face. We are a needs led organisation that builds positive, meaningful relationships with the young people and through these relationships we are able to constantly adapt and develop our work to reflect the desires and dreams of those we are here to serve.
Youth Clubs At free@last we run several youth clubs to help give children aged from 5 to 18 an environment to be safe in, relax and have fun together whilst building confidence, new friendships and positive relationships with the staff. The clubs offer access to our other services as well as offsite trips and activities.
p@l Mentoring The p@l mentoring programme was started in 2010 to support children and young people with their personal, social
and educational development. The programme has continued to support and minimize the complex needs of 5 to 16 year olds, and also to support their families too. The main issues we deal with are anger, confidence and academic development. This year we have had 22 new referrals and to date 58 referrals. One of the main issues for recruiting has been families thinking we are connected to social services. We are currently working on how to overcome this. Although we haven’t yet reached the target for the project we continue to work hard to encourage the children who need this service to become involved. Some of the comments from children about their involvement in the project include “I’m beginning to feel confident about myself” and from parents “I feel the mentoring has brought me and my son closer again” and from referrers “it’s great that we can have a service that a school can use to support us in filling an important part of a young person’s life, their well-being.”
also had their own personal mentor, professionals from businesses, education, emergency services and the voluntary sector; who were able to help, guide and support them through the programme. The young leaders have now started working on their individual projects, ranging from running youth clubs to organising trips for other young people.
Nechells Young Leaders Working with a small group of young people aged 15 to 18 we have delivered a new 12 month programme to enable and equip them to fulfil a leadership role within a variety of arenas within their own community, including free@last. Over the past year the young leaders have had the opportunity to work with the Police, Fire Service, large and small businesses and even visit the local council house. At the end of their training the group went to Bulgaria to work with 2 organisations supporting the Roma community in Stara Zagora. Funding was raised by Birmingham City University Business School students, local businesses and 3 local funders to achieve this amazing experience. Each young leader
As a pilot project we have been externally evaluated, which has shown that this is an excellent project that should be replicated as it will provide many other young people with the opportunity to learn skills in leadership.
Duke of Edinburgh Award Since the year 2012 we have had 24 people sign up to do their Duke of Edinburgh. We’ve had 9 people sign up to do their gold Duke of Edinburgh, 5 to do silver and 10 for Bronze. Our very own Adrian completed his gold award this year and went to meet the Duke himself. We have successfully signed up a new bronze group with a team of 5 young people for the up and coming year 2014, and we hope to give them a good experience with us and hopefully see them all the way through to their gold award.
new application form, induction procedure and safeguarding checklist has been developed together with a new volunteer handbook, volunteer agreement and confidentiality policy. Training for all staff regarding the volunteer policies & procedures will enable a recruitment drive for new volunteers during the early part of 2014.
FAMILIES
The middle of this last year saw the end of our Lottery funded workshops, which have been running for over 4 years. For the first time in our history we do not have available funding for dedicated DDIT! work, although we continue to provide advice, guidance and support to dads within our core services. A handful of dads have also received advice and signposting to additional services.
Volunteering Following an Awards for All grant we have overhauled our volunteer structure and framework for volunteering, including all policies and procedures. free@last now has a generic volunteer role description that focuses on personal qualities as well as skills and following discussions with volunteers and staff a
Over this past year we were able to secure a 12 month grant from Scottish Power Energy Peoples’ Trust and have secured a further 4 years of funding from BLF Reaching Communities, taking us up to 2017. We have continued to provide a specialist service that helps local people with their debt and benefit. Our experience shows us that a supportive, understanding and approachable service is needed to enable people with financial difficulties to feel relaxed and comfortable speaking about these difficult subjects. We provide a positive influence to our clients in their money management and benefits entitlement awareness. Over the past year we have dealt with 652 debt & benefit cases (128 more than the previous year) with a financial value of £2,443,513. Since the project began we have dealt with debt and benefit cases valuing over £10 million.
As well as providing advice and support for those in financial hardships we have been given the opportunity to distribute a variety of toiletries to our service users . These items have been donated by Sysco and provide each person with about 2 weeks supplies of toiletries, which they collect from our office on a fortnightly basis.
However, we are continually blessed by meeting people who believe in our work and have become involved in our building plans and development. The Erdington Rotary Club continues to raise funds to support our work and has recently enabled us to create a youth area in the front upstairs offices. This will provide a small chill out area which can be accessed from the car park and self-contained by the youth workers, providing a warm, friendly and safe space for young people.
The Norton Centre
Our design team has increased and joining our longstanding architects and quantity surveyor, we now have a consulting contractor and a Structural Engineer. All of these men continue to give their time and energy freely. We are forever grateful for their support and generosity.
Two years on from the purchase of our building we are still a long way off from converting the old garage site into a multi-purpose youth and family centre.
We have had 2 groups of young people from The Challenge come and paint and graffiti the main hall, with paint provided by Dulux. It looks great now.
BUSINESSES
Freax Adventures have again had a very busy year with many new developments which has allowed the company to continue to grow, including new partnerships with schools and colleges from Birmingham and London. We have increased our Prince’s Trust Residential provision to work with Central Eltham Youth Project, Lambeth and Newham colleges from London and Young Gloucestershire, as well as continuing with Birmingham Metropolitan College and Solihull colleges. It was good to see this year many repeat bookings from the previous year with large bookings from several secondary schools from different parts of the country using Quinta Hall as their residential base. We again worked with Stockland Green School on their Transition programme for their future year 7 students and have continued to deliver onsite camping experiences for primary schools. We have also continued to deliver enterprise and whole year groups activity days for Heartlands
Academy, sometimes working with, over 160 students at once. Freax Adventures has become an Approved Activity Provider for the Duke of Edinburgh’s award scheme and have been working with Waverly Studio College, Waverly School, Aston Manor Academy, City United and Holte School bringing the number of young people we are currently working with to over 200. This is the first year we have worked with Living Social and Groupon to deliver activities at Southfields Farm in Coleshill, which has kept Freax busy during school holidays and for weekend bookings.
The FFZ is an entertainment venue at Birmingham’s largest entertainment complex, Star City. We have 2 shooting ranges offering Archery, Crossbows, BB Guns and Slingshots; an arts & craft area; a soft play area and in the warmer months kayaking on the canal. The FFZ is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 12 till 8pm and throughout local school holidays, There have been some changes to staffing during the past few months, however the FFZ currently employs 6 regular and 3 sessional members of staff, 4 of whom are young people from Nechells. The FFZ has evolved significantly over the past 18 months and much of this has been through the hard work of staff and other organisations/businesses who have supported us along the way. Foresters Insurance Company have held several family days at our venue and a couple of volunteer days to help us paint and upgrade the unit. The ceiling was finally replaced in the entrance of the FFZ and a new 2 storey soft play area installed in the right hand entrance. This was purchased part from FFZ profits and part from the generosity of Erdington Rotary Club, which has meant our ‘temporary’ look inside has gone and we have our new permanent look. We are developing a dedicated party area and are expanding our range of party packages. In addition to this we are
launching a “My School” reward scheme where participating schools earn 10% cash back when their pupils purchase activities. We have also started working with a new Rotary Club in Solihull who are using their business skills and experience to help us increase our footfall and marketing of the Fun Zone.
This is now a registered business with one of the directors being a local lad Wayde, who is our graphic designer. Although we have already secured a small amount of business we will be moving forward at speed during 2014 to develop this business, beginning with a strong focus on design work.
FINANCE
free@last Supporters Our thanks go to the following for their support during 2012/2013 Awards For All Barrow Cadbury Trust BBC Children in Need Big Lottery Fund Birmingham City University Business School Business in the Community Candy Bubbles & Balloons Chamberlain Forum CHK Charities Limited Comic Relief Community Development Foundation Costco, Birmingham Cromwell School, Nechells David Symonds Associates (Structural Surveyors) David Wilson Partnership (Architects) Dorcas Housing Dulux Let’s Colour Erdington Rotary Club Foresters Four Acre Trust Frankton-Hill Ltd (Chartered Quantity Surveyors) Glendale Heartlands Academy, Nechells
Learning Curve Locke Williams Accountants Lloyds TSB Foundation Nechells Community Chest Nechells Community First Nechells POD Nechells Primary E-Act Academy, Nechells Print Design Team Quinta Hall Conference Centre, Oswestry Sandwell Lions Scottish Power Energy Peoples’ Trust Shaylor Group PLC Smurfit Kappa SSK Solihull Rotary Club Southfields Farm St Clement’s Academy, Nechells St James’ Place Foundation St Joseph’s School, Nechells St Matthew’s School, Nechells St Vincent’s School, Nechells Star City Entertainment Centre Sysco The Challenge Network The Norton Foundation West Midlands Police, Nechells West Midlands Fire Service, Aston
and all the individual friends and supporters of free@last Thank You
THE TEAM Director John Street Administrator Jan Street Youth Work Moznur Rahman Adrian Porter Dawn Russell Marian Hills Pat Short Naomi Spencer Families Work Stuart Radburn Lin Street Advice & Guidance Yousef Behfar Freax Adventures Aaron Stone Adam Male Daniel Reilly Shelima Begum Nick Roberts Lin Street Louis Deeley Stuart Goodwin
Family Fun Zone Stuart Radburn Abi Day Adam Street Luke Street Jacob Parris John Costello Jonah Street Free Spirit Media Wayde Raphael Trustees Winston Sergent – Chair André Wilkinson – Treasurer Jacquie Sergent – Secretary Anne Ebdon Ricardo Atlan
Websites www.freeatlast.st www.falsap.co.uk www.freaxadventures.co.uk www.familyfunzone.co.uk www.dadsdoittoo.co.uk
“I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full” John 10:10 Registered Charity number: 1101078 Private Limited Company number: 4723576
2 Cattells Grove Nechells Birmingham B7 5RA
( :0121 327 5959 7 :0121 327 8959 * :free@last1.org.uk www.freeatlast.st www.familyfunzone.co.uk www.freaxadventures.co.uk www.dadsdoittoo.co.uk