fifth Edition

A few words from our CEO, Caroline Ridley.

I am really pleased to to be able to share several successes already in this new financial year with two new services – Workability in Brighton and Hove for people with physical and sensory impairments, and The Wild Mind Project which recently merged into Impact Initiatives. We are also setting up a second Stopover House in Worthing bringing our total housing to eleven properties.

We have welcomed three new trustees who bring specific skills and knowledge around equalities, diversity and inclusion, and in IT. We also look forward to welcoming Penny Telford in July as our new Head of Business Development who will bring a range of skills to the organisation, including in bid writing.

We unfortunately also have some sad news to share, that after more than fifteen years we are no longer able to provide the WASP After School Club. WASP has had financial challenges for many years, and these have hugely increased this year. We have worked with BHCC and the Head of the school and hope to transfer WASP to be run by the school as of this September.

Impact had an excellent turnout of both staff and trustees at our annual Staff Conference last week. We were privileged to witness an excellent presentation from Aspie Trainers who Impact support to deliver internal and external training. We also carried out our annual employee engagement survey which showed nobody disagreed with the statement ‘The charity treats everyone fairly, regardless of their different backgrounds’. And 99% of staff agreed with the statement ‘I enjoy my job’. We always have work to do to be the best employer we can be and will not become complacent however, we are very proud of these results.

As always, we are looking to the future and are developing work with other organisations to maximise and share our resources to bring the best possible services to people across Sussex.

Children, Young People & Families Round-Up

Head of CYPF – Jennifer Tulloch

We have appointed a Youth Team Lead within our Children & Young People’s Service. This is an exciting development and will enable us to progress our Participation and Youth programmes, establishing and building links with other partners to ensure a positive provision for young people.
We are excited to have taken on The Wild Mind Project which works with young people using nature as an underpinning theme. Our Youth Team Lead will also be managing our Wild Mind Programme

Impact Safety Net

The team continue to visit schools delivering workshops on Online Safety: ‘Choices and Responsibility’ as well as our 1:1 and small group intervention BRAVE – Building Resilience and Valuing Emotions. In the first quarter of the year, we worked with an incredible 1,891 children directly.

Impact WASP – Whitehawk After School Project

We are of course incredibly sad to see WASP go and are extremely proud of the outstanding support they offer as a service.
WASP very recently purchased basketballs and employed a coach to deliver basketball sessions to the children. The children have really enjoyed this and will continue playing throughout the Summer term.
The team are also continuing to gear up for another HAF – Holiday Activities and Food Programme as we will be running our summer play scheme during the holidays.

Impact Young People’s Centre

The Young People’s Centre continues to make improvements to accessibility at the Centre to make sure we can welcome all children and young people and be fully inclusive.
We held a ‘Drop In and Say Hello’ lunchtime session at the Young People’s Centre where we had good coffee, good snacks but most importantly great company. Seventeen colleagues dropped in from Allsorts Youth Project, Pathways to Independence as well as Impact Initiatives’ staff.

Youth Champions Programme

Youth Champions are ongoing with our next meeting scheduled this July. They will be looking at areas of the Young People’s Centre including how to make the spaces more ‘trauma informed’ for the delivery of our work.
Thursday Drop Ins are working well. We have a really good group dynamic and the young people attending respond well to the positive activities on offer.

Adults & Older People Round-Up

Head of Adults & Older People – Maxine Thomas

AGEING WELL

The Age of Engagement Conference on 13 June was very well attended with over 100 people signing up. We were pleased to receive so much excellent feedback. We also appreciate the recommendations of what didn’t work so well and are always looking to modify so everyone gets the most from the day. The Ageing Well Festival will be launched on 27 September with over 120 events, that aim to inspire older people to engagement in their communities. An exhibition of photos will be on display at our events but also at the Jubilee Library in early September, so keep an eye out.
The Single Point Of Contact team continues to be increasingly busy and we have recently started supporting people with benefit checks and completion of Attendance Allowance forms. Something that has been really well received by people using the service. Our Eating Well Support worker, has been busy doing outreach sessions, including a session with Speak Out for people with learning disabilities.
At the Hop50+, we are needing elastic walls as almost every activity is sold out and numbers are continually increasing. This has been made possible by the fundraising efforts of the team.

advocacy AND ASPIE TRAINERS

In Brighton and Hove the team closed a total of 181 cases last financial year, which is quite incredible with just 2 part-time advocates.
In West Sussex, our Henry Smith project supporting parents with a learning disability has again exceeded its targets supporting parents with a learning difficulty who face having their children removed.
Our new Oliver McGowan training service, delivered by Aspie Trainers, has been achieving great outcomes delivering close to 50 training sessions to staff in Hampshire.
Our work with the Brighton Autism Movement group is to be extended, originally a one year pilot. The group now has over 30 members, many of whom regularly attend the Autism Partnership Board, ensuring that the voice of autistic adults is heard by services in Brighton and Hove.
We were really excited to launch our new Money First Advocacy Service in May which focuses on providing advocacy support around money issues that people with disabilities may face.

Impact Workability

We were delighted to learn that the outstanding work the team carry out has been successful in it’s bid to continue it’s work for the next three years. Whilst there is less money we are keen to find ways to continue to support as many people as possible to achieve their work aspirations.
We have recently learned that a bid we submitted to extend our work to Brighton and Hove has also been successful.

housing ROUND-UP

HEAD OF housing – stevie graves

Stopover

We are setting up a house in Worthing which will be our 11th property. We are now looking at the potential of Stopover 12 in Brighton and Hove, and are in early conversations about this.
Staff have undertaken training around substance misuse delivered by Homeless Link. The next training session will be around motivational interviewing.
A Stopover 1 resident has become the first to be offered accommodation through Hyde Housing Association Jigsaw Scheme which allows Hyde supported housing tenants to bid on independent accommodation outside of the local authority Homemove Scheme.
Clarion Housing Association have scheduled internal and external decorations at Stopover 2 to include replacement of all windows.

Home Safety

In the third and final year of the current contract commissioners have expressed that they would want to renew the contract for a further three years in March 2025.

fundraising

If you haven’t already, please remember to support the YPC Youth Champions Project when you shop at the Co-op, and select them as your chosen charity as a Co-op member. For every £1 spent you’ll earn 2p for yourself and 2p for your chosen local community project. If you would like to become a Co-op member you can sign up here.
A reminder that Impact Initiatives is now set up on the Easy Fundraising platform. For those that have not heard of it, every time you shop a percentage of that purchase goes towards Impact Initiatives. There are lots of retailers involved: Sainsbury’s, Wilko, ScrewFix, M&S, Just Eat and many more. It is very quick and easy to set up an account using the following link https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/create-an-account/

Dates for your Diary

Ageing Well Festival on Friday 27 September through to Friday 11 October.

Training Dates

Introduction to Safeguarding and Child Protection Training live via Zoom on Thursday 11 July 2024, 9.00am-12.30pm.
Introduction to Safeguarding Adults at Risk live via Zoom on Tuesday 16 July, 9.30am-12.30pm.

Click below for our social channels

Thank you for your interest in Impact Initiatives. If you would like to give any feedback please contact our Communications & Marketing Officer Katharine.Grummett@impact-initiatives.org.uk

The Impact Informer 05