ANNUAL REPORT
THE STORY 2010
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.
OBJECTIVES Aim 1: To engage children and young people in a range of developmental and progressive activities which provide opportunities for success and to broaden their horizons. Objectives To run weekly youth club activities. To run weekly workshops for children to enjoy with their dads/father figures. To organise school holiday programmes. To encourage young people to be involved in the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme and to help them to complete each section of the award. To organise a range of adventure activity programmes including rock climbing, kayak/canoeing, mountain biking and archery. To run a sports programme that includes football, netball, table tennis and cricket.
Aim 2: To support children and young people through life’s challenges and difficulties. Objectives To identify the issues young people face and how to overcome these issues. To provide support, advice, guidance and signposting where appropriate for children and young people who are facing specific difficulties and challenges like, grief, homelessness, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, bullying, education, careers, relationships, sexual health etc. To provide appropriate staff and volunteers to mentor and support children in need. To develop specific programmes (with other agencies where appropriate) that address issues that are not being met by other statutory or third sector organisations in Nechells. To use the Common Assessment Framework for children who require multi-agency support. To meet the needs of the local schools who have children at risk of exclusion, through alternative education programme.
Aim 3: T o support children and young peoples’ families to provide the best possible environment for their children to grow, develop and flourish. Objectives To provide one to one and group support for mums and dads to enable and equip them to support their children through their growth and development from birth to adulthood. To provide support services for parents whose relationships are struggling/broken and having a negative impact on their children. To provide support, advice, guidance and signposting where appropriate for parents and other adults who are facing specific difficulties and challenges like, debt, unemployment, grief, homelessness, drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, etc. To provide positive opportunities for parents and children to spend quality time together and develop their learning, relationships and positive memories together.
Aim 4: To take a multi-agency approach to improving the lives of children and young people. Objectives To promote our services to both local people and other organisations. To network effectively with other agencies and professionals working in the area in order to rationalise service provision, avoid duplication and work in partnership. To attend multi-agency meetings and arrange 1 to 1 sessions with other professionals to explain our services. To produce effective resources that can be given to local people, professionals and funders to promote our services.
The start of our second decade has taken off
with a bang as we began by increasing our team of staff, volunteers and trustees – all of whom are proving to be great assets to free@last and Freax (our adventurous activity company). We now have a dedicated team of people to focus on all 3 areas of work – children & young people, families and advice & guidance; led by 3 excellent staff leaders. We also have a dedicated team developing Freax and have had our best year to date, working with over a 1000 children, young people and adults providing a wide variety of adventurous activities, team building and residential programmes. In our time of growth we have also agreed the purchase of a large 7000 sq ft building in Nechells, which will significantly enable us to be more effective at providing the right support and opportunities that our community needs. We hope to be in this new building by the next annual report! In this difficult time of economic decline God continues to bless free@last, confirming that this truly is a Godly vision and not a man made d ream. We thank God for His blessings and direction and we thank you for all your support and encouragement as you believe in our work and join in our journey. Thank you.
JOHN STREET (Director)
For many of you reading this column, I suspect like me that you can scarcely believe that another year has come and gone by so quickly. Firstly I would like to pay tribute to all the employees, volunteers, trustees and general supporters of the charity who have as always worked and contributed tremendously to the furtherance of the organisation, and more importantly it's aims and achievements within the community as outlined in this our annual report. Much like a child at birth although you may outwardly recognize the child's distinct identity it is still unclear as to what will become of the child in terms of its character. Over the past year I sense that like a new born we have continued to develop our distinct identity within the community, but also we have taken another step in exhibiting the charities character and passion to assist the individuals within the Nechells area, via the activities delivered by our employees, whom I consider to be nothing short of National Treasures. With that said given the current climate of uncertainty within our society, I believe that the work of the charity will be of even more vital importance during the coming year. As I have come to realise, over the last year the charity is not in the business of just delivering a ‘hand out’, but delivering a ‘hand up’ to those within the community who wish to be free@last. Thank you again for your continued support in 2010. Now lets get on with 2011.
WINSTON SERGENT (Chairman)
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 plethora of opportunities and unconditional support to help them through the difficulties they face on a daily basis. 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. A wide cross section of young people attend our clubs and activities, providing a good representation of the hugely diverse community in which we work. This year, with the appointment of our first Senior Youth Worker and an increase in the youth team (the strongest and most effective that we have ever had) we have begun the journey with many new youngsters whom have been met in the schools, out on the street and in other centres. It is a delight to have such a good, committed team of professionals giving so much for these children’s lives. At free@last we believe it is important for young people to have stability and routine, and we always aim to provide regularly, weekly activities as well as ad-hoc opportunities when they are presented to us. We have a clear structure and well defined aims in order for us to be more effective in helping children and young people develop better social and emotional skills. The core activity is our Tuesday night youth clubs which we run at the Nechells Regeneration Centre. The first one runs from 4:30 to 6pm which is for children in primary school years 1 to 6; and the Senior club runs from 6:30 to 8:30pm, which is for young people in secondary school years 7 to 11.
This is a traditional style youth club with activities like table tennis, computer games and a tuck shop – but also provides the opportunities for the youth team to build relationships and challenge behaviour!
As part of the Nechells Extended Services we deliver another youth club at The Pod, which is held every Thursday from 4.30pm to 6.30pm for primary school children in years 4 to 6. Again this is a similar style club where the children get involved with board games, game consoles, and art and craft activities, but we also provide opportunities for more reflection and discussion, particularly through the use of weekly art based diary’s. This year the children have been able to enjoy trips out to see the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, ten pin bowling and to Sutton Park Our youth activities owe a lot to the efforts of our Youth Team and to our volunteers who come along regularly to support and encourage the children and young people. It is fantastic that 2 of our youth workers have recently qualified for their NVQ Level 2 and 3 in Youth work. Well done Moz and Dawn.
Mentoring During the year we have revitalised our mentoring project and provide support, encouragement, challenge and direction to young people who are finding life at home and school a bit more difficult than their friends. It gives us the opportunity to work with some young people that we already have a relationship with as we liaise with them, their families and the school teachers. Outcomes have included helping them to make more regular and consistent positive choices about their behaviour and relationships, which is already impacting positively on their future.
Duke of Edinburgh The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (DofE) programme is a real adventure from beginning to end. The Duke of Edinburgh award is a challenging programme of activities which helps young people to learn new skills, help others, experience adventure and gain a great sense of achievement. Many of the opportunities offered by free@last for the scheme involve the young people in new and challenging activities which help them to push the boundaries of their comfort zone. We have had 7 young people this year work towards their bronze award. It has been a challenging year for these young people, some of them taking exams at school and others training hard to play for their school football team, so to see these young people on a regular basis has shown us the degree of commitment and self motivation they have when doing something that they value and enjoy. We successfully completed a practice expedition with all 7 young people navigating around Cannock Chase and making it back in time to cook dinner. The young people have been continuing to look after the community garden at St Josephs church as part of their voluntary service section and they have improved their archery skills for their physical section. In 2011 we are hoping to offer a wide range of volunteering opportunities to help the young people complete their service section of the award. We will be calling on local business and voluntary groups to offer young people the chance to gain new skills and grow in confidence.
NEET
(Not in Education Employment or Training)
free@last has created its ‘Money for Nothing’ programme aimed at aged 16-25’s helping and supporting young people in Nechells getting back into education training and employment through both formal and informal education. The Money for Nothing NEET programme has now been running for 6 months and as of 25th May 2010 free@last has become a recognised National Open College Network (NOCN) training centre which has enabled the charity to develop and run NOCN courses for young people. Counselling, mentoring, budgeting advice and one to one support are available throughout the entire course to ensure that the young people have the best possible chance to achieve meaningful long term employment education and training in a career that they have chosen for themselves.
After wide publicity the first course started on June 2nd 2010, since this time we have been able to work closely with 12 young people,
helping them to achieve their aspirations and continue to progress along their chosen career path. Most of these young people are now either in employment or education, and those that aren’t all have clear ideas on how they wish to progress in their future career goals.
Wales Residential In August we took 20, 11-16 year olds from the youth group on a week long holiday to Tresaith, Cardigan Bay. We were blessed with good weather and the young people really enjoyed themselves. The accommodation was situated five minutes away from the beach and so the young people were able to make the most of the sun, sea and sand, going sea canoeing, building sand castles or simply enjoying the sun. During the week the young people experienced ‘Oakwood’, Wales’s only theme park and whilst there they braved the parks top rides and everyone had a great day. We also took them to a laser shoot and paintballing day, a chance to get their own back on all the adults who’d been bossing them about all week. Everyone took part and fun was had by all although some staff came back with a few more bruises than they intended to! Over all, the holiday was a great success and a really good opportunity for some quality time with the young people and a chance for them to try out new experiences and make new friendships.
Families Since 1998 free@last’s Dads Do It Too! project has been providing support and training for dads and professionals. The service expanded in January 2009 with the introduction of a range of free workshops for dads and father figures to enjoy with their children. This was thanks to the successful securement of a four-year funding grant from the Big Lottery. The Workshops We have retained the three different themes: bike maintenance Showing how to strip down, repair and rebuild bicycles, learn cycling skills and join in bike rides with other dads and their children. Quizzes, video clips and diagrams have been developed to support learning in the bike maintenance workshops. multi media Introducing dads and their children to the many possibilities of digital photography and music editing, producing digital cds of sounds and pictures. Over half of the digital photography workshops are now held in places of interest around the city. We even had the opportunity to take photos on the Birmingham wheel while it was still on Broad Street. arts and gaming A mix of arts, crafts, competitions and gaming. Due to its popularity clay modeling is offered on more than one occasion during the craft workshops and following the enthusiasm of dads and children alike, a range of creative competitions have been introduced.
The end of 2009 had seen 24 dads and 30 children engage in the workshops. However both ourselves and the Big Lottery wanted to see a larger uptake of dads accessing this service so, following discussions with dads, their children and workshop facilitators we decided to rename the workshops and offer some as after school clubs. By mid –late 2010 we have seen an additional 46 dads and 72 children sign up to our workshops, a figure we hope to continue expanding.
The workshops have not only enabled dads to explore new activities with their children but also elements of their relationships. Some of our dads are single fathers, newly finding themselves in the role as main parent. The opportunity to meet other dads and discuss each other’s relationships with their child has been a naturally occurring activity during these workshops. For some being able to watch how other dads interacted with their child was an invaluable source of parenting tips; particularly useful for dads setting boundaries for the first time.
Dads Do It Too! and Children’s Centres During the last year we have continued our work with Bloomsbury Children’s Centre. Following the success of last year’s dad’s breakfast group we continued with the theme of food by organising dads and children’s gardening workshops at the centre’s allotment. The advantages in this were the allotment was new and provided a blank canvass and Bloomsbury had a member of staff with a wide knowledge of horticulture. Initially there was more digging than planting and “hard labour” may have proved too much for some, we did however end up with four dads who attended, with their children, come rain or shine. The finale to these workshops was to harvest our vegetables and cook them in the nursery for the staff and children to try. We are currently delivering a six weeks parent programme at Bloomsbury, focusing on communication and conflict resolution. Although open to both mums and dads, we have drawn on our knowledge and experience of what dads want to develop a programme that is practical and solution focused. Piloted earlier this year we now have an equal number of mums and dads attending.
Last year Dads Do It Too! expanded its work in children’s centre and began work at Featherstone Children’s Centre in Erdington. The brief? To involve dads and father figures in centre activities. A range of activities has been scheduled over the last year with varying degrees of success. Part of the process however, has been to become familiar with the demographics of the area; the age, background, interests and availability of the dads. Whereas gardening and activities during the week proved popular in Nechells, this proved not to be the case in Erdington. Weekends and school holidays drew the highest number of fathers coupled with activities like story telling and treasure hunts. We currently have a number of dads who have joined a local gym and we are in the process of delivering a range of one-off play based workshops.
Flying Start Dads Do It Too! has enjoyed a long and successful working relationship with Flying Start, (Birmingham) and this partnership allows us to deliver more of our one-to-one dad’s support. The last year has seen us supporting dads undergoing custody hearings, recovering from alcohol related problems or wishing to develop their literacy skills. As an organisation we have also been involved in their recent Buddying project - aimed at sharing good practice across children’s centres, hostels and private nurseries – our role in this being to raise the profile of involving fathers. We are currently working with Flying Start in supporting seven fathers at Heathfield Primary School Handsworth. This involves developing dad and child education based workshops and follows the several summer activities we held with the school, including a teddy bears picnic and ten-pin bowling.
Debt & Welfare Benefit Advice & Support Thanks to the Severn Trent Trust Fund we have continued to provide a specialised service that helps local people with their debt and benefit enquiries. Our experience show us that a supportive, understanding and approachable service is needed to enable people with financial difficulties to feel relaxed and comfortable speaking about these, often taboo, subjects. We provide a positive influence to our clients in their money management and benefits entitlements awareness. Over the past year we have dealt with 222 benefit cases and 98 debt cases, with a financial value of £1,420,123.99. To date we have been 100% successful in helping clients in claiming their benefit, dealing with their debts and managing their money. We have had positive feedback from our clients showing peoples’ satisfaction of our service. 73% of our clients were local residents and 27% were referred to us from service users of local organisations. Since the project began in 2008 we have dealt with 489 benefit cases and 260 debt cases valuing £3,343,018.91.
The figures above reflect not only the struggles of a global recession but of the economic difficulties of living in one of our inner city communities. This is a much needed service which has become part of our core work and will continue to enable many children, young people and families to improve their standards of living through improved economic circumstances.
Employment Advice During this past year we ran a 6 months project to support as many people as possible to find employment. Before we could help people with writing their CV’s, practicing interview techniques or applying for jobs we first had to discover who, in our community, actually wanted help looking for work. We recruited a local lady as an outreach worker and during the bitterly cold winter months she knocked on 1,176 doors in Nechells, calling back to 650 of these until someone finally opened the door and spoke with her! Out of all these people only 36 said that they would like help with finding work, and only 10 of these actually turned up to our office to meet with the employment adviser. Our adviser did see another 109 people during the 6 months, who were referred by other agencies or who were already involved with free@last. We tried holding surgeries at other venues but even this didn’t seem to answer the question as to why so few people wanted help to work when our C onstituency has the highest unemployment figures in the UK.
During this project we discovered that: OUTREACH Many people have low ambition with a widespread desire not to work. Many people are not interested in working because of their reliance on benefits, specifically housing benefit or disability allowance. Whilst most people were friendly during the cold-calling process, we did encounter a lot of suspicion, especially people assuming we were from the benefits agencies checking up on them. Many were too afraid to open the door despite being aware of our presence. ADVICE Most of the people seen did show a genuine desire to get back into work and engaged with the process enthusiastically. The most common enquiry from women was for childcare or cleaning jobs The most in-demand jobs or training for men was for fork-lift truck licenses, driving qualifications and warehouse work. Most clients have no access to email and many who owned mobile phones didn’t have the credit to make outgoing calls. There is a great deal of dissatisfaction with services provided by job centres and the way that clients are treated. Little seems to be done to increase the confidence of job-seekers and many opportunities for training, re-skilling and advice are not being offered. By far the most efficient referral/engagement strategy has been through working alongside the debt and benefit advisor. This works both ways as clients’ problems can be helped or solved through finding work and many of the people who have been seen who need to find work have problems with debt. There are no shortages of jobs in the Nechells area. Although the current recession and the closing of Rover have had a definite knock-on effect on light industrial jobs round here, daily searches of current vacancies show that there are still many vacancies here and in neighbouring Saltley and Erdington. Salaries would seem to be down though with many offering the basic minimum wage. Although it is unrealistic to expect a short term project such as this to have a massive impact on the area’s joblessness, the ones who have been helped back into work or onto training schemes would probably still be stuck in a rut without it.
We will endeavour to find financial support for this project to start again.
Businesses There is a constant pressure for voluntary organisations to raise their own money through social enterprise, rather than being completely dependent on trust funding or commissioning. free@last have always enjoyed the relationships it has with funders and continues to develop these, but we also recognise our responsibilities in helping to alleviate the strain and pressure on diminishing resources that are needed by so many others. Running businesses is never an easy path to follow and our 2 existing companies – Freax Limited and FAL Training Limited, are no exception. FAL Training provides support and training for workers and managers who wish to develop and deliver services for fathers. Over the past 5 years this was our most successful business but we have seen the decline in services to fathers as Government and managerial decisions to cut funding for organisations who deliver parenting support has meant that dads have become less of a priority than mum’s or children. With these funding restrictions and limited marketing of this business it has been a very quiet year for our training business. Take a look at our website www.dadsdoittoo.co.uk
Freax, on the other hand, has taken off this year and is currently our most successful business to date. We were blessed with a grant from BeBirmingham’s Social Enterprise Fund and with the addition of 3 young employee’s funded through the Future Jobs Fund we have been able to promote and market this business to schools, youth groups, colleges and businesses. We have run climbing and bike sessions at fun days, delivered bushcraft, archery, orienteering, camping experiences, circus skills, bike skills and climbing on several school sites, Prince’s Trust Residentials, youth group weekends away and team building at various venues – from 6 year olds to adults. Freax has definitely become an exciting alternative for adventurous activity provision in the West Midlands – and further afield. Take a look at our video based website www.freax.co.uk and see for yourself.
Finance Income Grant Making Trusts £204766 Statutory Funds £69376 General & Gift Aid Donations £5550 Building Fund £7429 Bank Interest £45 Freax Donation £3100 TOTAL
£290266
Expenditure Salaries & N.I.
£136065
Capital Purchases
£4406
General Running Costs
£27306
Professional Fees
£3700
Project Costs
£38744
TOTAL
£210221
The Norton Centre In order to meet the needs of the people we serve, the sustainability of our existing services and the growth of new services to the children and young people of Nechells we need to purchase our own building and stop being reliant on other venues that do not fully meet the needs of young people. We have spent many years trying to identify the most appropriate and effective venue for delivering our services to the local community and we have always recognised that our existing property is the most ideal, as long as we could own the whole site. It is therefore a Godly intervention that last summer our landlord offered us the opportunity to purchase the full site from him. The Norton Foundation has chosen to join with free@last’s purpose and mission in Nechells and have given us £100,000 towards purchasing this building, along with £20,000 from the Trusthouse Charitable Foundation. With the purchase of this building we will not only be able to provide a purpose driven youth centre that meets the needs of the children in our community, but we will also be able to increase the access and amount of other opportunities available in our neighbourhood. We will have a more prominent presence in our community, as
we will be on the main road rather than tucked away down a side street.
Existing and new services will be developed to meet more needs of the children in our area, particularly those with the greatest needs, including an alterative education provision for local primary and secondary young people; an increased provision of physical/healthy lifestyle choices including indoor climbing, archery, fitness sessions, table tennis club and exercise bikes. We will also develop a multi-media suite which will enable our local young adults to run a music/recording studio and a graphics suite, enabling other local children and young people to follow the same creative journeys that they themselves have followed.
If you would like to be involved with the development of our building please get in touch with John Street.
free@last Supporters Our thanks go to the following for your support during 2009/2010 Barrow Cadbury Trust Four Acre Trust The Tudor Trust Big Lottery Fund Severn Trent Trust Fund Birmingham Community Foundation – 3g Comms Birmingham Community Foundation Nechells & Overseas Fund Birmingham Council - Voluntary Advice Agency Support Team Trustees of EH Smith Charitable Foundation Andy Fanshaw Memorial Fund Holte & Bracebridge Charity William A Cadbury Charitable Trust Nechells Regeneration Project Flying Start, Birmingham Bloomsbury Children’s Centre Featherstone Children’s Centre Nechells POD Be Birmingham Future Jobs Fund Be Birmingham Social Enterprise Fund Cromwell School, Nechells St. Vincent’s School, Nechells Heartlands Academy, Nechells St. Joseph’s Church, Nechells St. Mathews School, Nechells Nechells Junior and Infant School, Nechells Key Birmingham Peakhouse Pantry John Morse-Brown Ben Llewlyn - Slib Design
and all the individual friends and supporters of free@last
The team Director John Street Administrator Jan Street Advice & Guidance Yousef Behfar Freax Adam Male Craig O’Dell Shelima Begum Design Wayde Raphael Trustees Winston Sergent – Chair Andre Wilkinson – Treasurer Jacquie Sergent – Secretary Anne Ebdon Sarah Simmons Ricardo Atlan
Youth Work Abi Delaney Alex Young Moznur Rahman Rachel Turley Rebecca Turley Danielle Akers Julie Pattinson Lin Street Dawn Russell Families Work Stuart Radburn Helen Twohey Craig O’Dell Karen Statham Joy Jesson Neil Horan Lin Street Adrian Porter Jason Ford
“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.freax.co.uk www.dadsdoittoo.co.uk