Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
1
Family and Community Development West Lothian
Annual Report 2016-2017
2 Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
Chair’s Report
Margaret Graham
I am delighted to present the 2016/17 Annual Report of Family and Community Development West Lothian. This year has been a good one for the organisation. Financially it has had a year of stability but not complacency. However, ever mindful of the wider economic climate and the pressures on local government and other funding bodies, there remains a constant need to maintain sufficient funding to continue and expand the brilliant performance of the organisation. Once more this year our staff have successfully provided an excellent service to the communities they serve, continually striving to improve, innovate and impress our funders with what they achieve in enhancing the lives of individuals, families and communities. Raymond and all of the staff should once again be very proud of what they have achieved this year, so a big THANK YOU to them for all their hard work and commitment throughout the year. The continuing success of the organisation is also due to the support and good governance of the Board of Trustees, so thanks also to my colleagues on the Board for their work and expertise over the year, which has been invaluable and provided a huge support, in particular, to Raymond. To all our funders, West Lothian Council in particular, who continue to believe in Family and Community Development West Lothian, a big thank you for contributing to delivering our mission to give our children the best start in life.
3
CEO’s Report
Raymond Branton
All of Family and Community Development West Lothian’s services have one thing in common: working to change peoples’ outcomes for the better. Whether it is developing understanding through our family learning programme or building resilience in our early years activities; making memories for our children through play activities or supporting parents through difficult times; people and our relationships with them, are at the heart of what we do. 2016/17 has been another busy, successful year for all of our projects:
Broxburn Family Centre’s early years and out of school care services were both awarded inspection grades of all 6’s (excellent) again, keeping them in the top 2% nationally Our family learning programme has continued to make a real impact on parents’ and their children’s lives, developing knowledge and skills and increasing resilience Our wide range of play activities has continued to push the boundaries for children and win plaudits for leading the sector in best practice Our Play Works annual national conference excelled again, stimulating and inspiring everyone with our innovation and vibrancy The Dale Hub and community garden, in Armadale has established itself as a rock for local families, with family learning, early years, children’s groups, health activities and visiting agencies all popular and improving wellbeing
As always, the impact that every part of our organisation has is dependent on our staff and their relationships with and trust from, local families and their children. I am always proud to proclaim that we have the best! It is especially fulfilling that all of our services are delivering real impact and change for children and families, in such difficult times for charities, our communities and our public sector. This is a credit to all of our people – staff, trustees and volunteers, who continue to show genuine care, dedication and innovation in the face of these challenges.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
4
Introduction to services
At Family and Community Development West Lothian our goal is to give our children the best start in life. We believe that education is the key to helping people to help themselves. We aim to inspire children and their families and we are committed to offering everyone the opportunity to grow and develop – no matter what their background, circumstances or disadvantage. We are passionate about play and the resilience that this fosters. Respect underpins all our relationships and our sense of fun shines through everything that we do. All of our services demonstrate our ethos and contribute to the above goal. All of our services address current local and national, wellbeing and attainment priorities. Children’s high levels of inactivity are well reported, with sitting time as much as 12 hours a day for some and fewer than 1 in 5 children in Scotland are meeting the minimum daily guidelines of one hour of physical activity. Research shows that active play contributes to healthy children, is a powerful tool to increase their resilience and confidence, improve mental health and can close the attainment gap for our children affected by poverty. Our family learning programmes help to develop parents’ knowledge, understanding and skills to cope with life’s ups and downs and to improve the wellbeing outcomes for them and their children, especially in attachment, resilience and mental health. Research also shows that secure, high quality, affordable, childcare is essential to enable families to work and support the local economy – and we provide the best! All of our services’ achievements for the year are detailed on the following pages and we are very proud to share them with you.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
Our regular, targeted work with parents with young children, aims to reduce social isolation, build confidence and capacity and extend knowledge and skills. This year we had 37 families registered and many more have benefited from our drop-in sessions. As in past years, our activities have evolved in response to changing needs and this year has seen us pilot a number of new ideas along with running our core programme. We have:
Widened the variety of our Playroom’s play sessions to include outdoor play, themed story play and playdays, making them easier for parents to access and more exciting and challenging for their children. Particularly popular are our new story play sessions, allowing the children to listen to a story then explore it through play, while their parents make friends over a cuppa. In response to gaps highlighted by Health Visiting staff, established a baby group, encouraging new parents to bring their babies along to dedicated play sessions supporting parent/child interaction. Developed an initial pilot session on toilet training with the Health Visiting team, to support families with children going into nursery. There are plans to extend this to include sessions on sleep and behaviour next year. Worked closely with partner agencies to recruit for and support Cooking by Numbers, Incredible Years, Women N2 Work and Numeracy courses. Built on previous year’s successes during the Range summer programme by creating an early years play zone in the playground for the full 4 weeks, which led to a large increase in the number of families with younger children attending the play sessions and a better quality of engagement with staff. Extended the early years play zone into our Range term-time drop in sessions on Friday afternoons, providing the ideal opportunity to build relationships with new families in a relaxed setting. Our term-time programme of Craft, First Aid, Cooking, New You and Parents’ groups have all contributed to our aims and form the basis of our long term relationships with families.
5
Family Learning Programme
“I wasn’t sure if she was ready to go to school after the summer, but I’ve seen such a difference in her confidence since doing this”
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
6
Family Centre’s Out of School Care
Our Out Of School Care Service provides after school and holiday childcare to working or learning families. It offers the best value, best quality provision around. Our Staff and children have been really busy this year making life long memories:
Our latest Care Inspectorate grades saw us receive 6’s (excellent) in all quality themes again, putting us in the top 2% of settings in the country and the only day care of children service in West Lothian to achieve this amazing recognition. We were congratulated in parliament by Neil Findlay highlighting our achievement. We are also proud to be the only provider who supports local families through our unique “Community Place”, which offers free childcare to families in need. Our Outdoor Friday sessions at the Range have continued this year between Easter and October, in order to promote outdoor active play, as have our Outdoor Adventures, all in-line with our Healthy Living Policy. We had a superb summer programme this year, including our Outdoor Out of School Care at our outdoors woodland site every Tuesday and Thursday and more of our staff team have been trained in leadership of our outdoor site. We restructured our booking options as a result of feedback received by parents/carers, which has proven to be very popular. The Family Centre has been revamped following consultation with the children and we now have an upstairs, as well as a Lego wall and a jump platform. This year’s Xmas trip was a party experience that included a Nerf gun war and soft play extravaganza at Yoyo in Bathgate. It is always great to have visits from old friends; children who have left not only the Family Centre but the country have come back to visit us this year and share their stories and memories.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
“Play was at the heart of all children’s experiences” The Care Inspectorate “I can’t rate Broxburn Family Centre highly enough for my son to be totally included” “The Family Centre is awesome” Joshua, aged 9
7
The Range Adventure Playground
The Range is firstly an awesome park that is open all year round to the local community. It provides children and families with a safe, challenging and maintained space to play. We are constantly striving to develop the space and make it even more exciting and playful for everybody who visits.
The Range is also a base for much of our play work with local children and their families. The summer holidays were once again a key event on The Range calendar. We continue to evolve and develop this programme into what must surely be the best summer play activities for children in the country…and it’s all free. “Wet Wednesday” continues to be our most popular day, with the park packed to bursting with children and their families who have lots of fun with water and everyone gets wet! “Manky Monday” is our marmite day – loved and hated in equal measures. We believe this day not only provides children with the freedom to get manky but also promotes messy play with parents. This summer programme also includes “Tinker Tuesday”, where we get technical, build and destroy things and “Fire Thursdays”, which includes outdoor cooking – always popular.
Our term-time programme of after school and evening activities at the Range evolved slightly this year, as we look to ensure we are targeting our play with as many children as possible, as we work towards contributing to improved outcomes for them. This is a mix of groups and drop-in sessions and we are also working more closely than ever with both our local primary schools. Finally, we would like to thank Hopscotch for providing us with a residential 4-day break for 12 of our children. This continues to be a life changing opportunity that allows our children to take part in activities like canoeing, high wire assault course and a visit to the Sea Life Centre. On this particular holiday, we took part in filming with the STV Children’s Appeal, who help the work of local charities. The children loved being on the television! This holiday is always a highlight for the children involved and one that leaves them with lasting memories.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
8
Training Team
Our Training Team deliver a range of workforce development opportunities, from short courses and workshops to SVQ and PDA qualifications. We are an accredited SQA Centre. The total number of people we inspired this year was 361!
Our annual conference, “Play Works 5” had the theme “At the Movies” this year. Everyone dressed up and our closing game show was the “PLOSCARS”. The keynote speaker was Sue Palmer, literacy specialist and Chair of Upstart Scotland, on ‘How Play works for Literacy’. The workshops were provided by 4 of our own staff, along with guests, Jeanne McLaughlin & Suzy Blair who are Play Therapists @With Kids, Jude Moir a primary school teacher promoting the use of technology for developing creativity and Marion Kenny, renowned storyteller. We had a blast, as always. In partnership with ‘West Lothian College’ we delivered 5 units from the Childhood Practice Support Worker qualification and also supported students by assessing their SVQ units which are part of the HND Childhood Practice qualification. We also took students to our outdoor site, where they learned about the benefits of risky play and providing different play types outdoors: promoting various curriculum frameworks; Curriculum for Excellence, The Play Strategy for Scotland, Getting It Right For Every Child and Building the Ambition. We also delivered CPD training for West Lothian’s “Voluntary & Childcare Organisations Training Calendar” on Child Protection, GIRFEC, Managing Risk in Play and Light my Fire. We recently started our own Modern Apprenticeship programme, supported by Skills Development Scotland. We have employed 5 Modern Apprentices within our OOSC programmes and during their 18 month contract they will complete a Practitioner qualification in “Social Services (Children and Young People)” at SCQF Level 7, enabling them to meet the registration requirements for the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC).
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
“I’ve never been to a conference that was such fun!!! Really impressed by the efforts of all the staff!! Well done :)”
9
Armadale Projects
We have been operating a range of services in the Dale Hub in Armadale for over 3 years now and our service has flourished during this time. Our aim is to support children and their families in the Armadale area, using the ethos and approaches that were established in Broxburn. To facilitate this we have established the Hub building, which is surrounded by a community garden and there is a community flat – Mayfield House, a short walk away.
We have 60 adults and 87 children and young people registered for groups and activities. Our most popular adult group is Peace for Parents and we have 2 sessions in the Hub and one in the Craig Inn in Blackridge. There is also the Health Group in the Hub, the Children’s Club and Youth Group. We have had use of the minibus during the school holidays this year and have taken full advantage by taking the children out to the Helix, the Falkirk Wheel, Beecraigs, Polkemmet, Muiravonside and Almondell & Calderwood country parks. We also spent the Playday in August at Summerlee Heritage Centre in Coatbridge. We held our annual residential in October at the Scout Camp outside Torphichen with outdoor activities and swimming at Xcite, Bathgate. All of these groups and activities are focused on building people’s knowledge, confidence and resilience and sometimes supporting people through difficult periods in their lives. In the community house we support the local community group the Sunny Dale Association, who hold their meetings and Craft Group regularly. Mayfield House is also used for social work contact visits and a lip reading group. The community house has also had a makeover by Council, with the roughcasting, roof, windows and door all being renewed. The community garden is well established now and there have been great crops of fruit and veg. Willie, our Development Worker and the Dale Food Group, our local gardening group, are kept busy and we now have a tool lending scheme for garden equipment and tools, as well as a cycle lending project to promote wellbeing in the community. We lead bike rides for people who aren’t confident about going out on their own and these have proved to be popular. We held a plant sale in June and a Winter Wonderland in December, with Santa and Mrs Claus the stars of the day.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
10
go2play
This year we were delighted to receive funding from Inspiring Scotland’s go2play fund to deliver outdoor adventure play to local schools and nurseries.
This work involved liaising closely with Kirkhill Nursery and Primary, Bridgend Primary, Uphall Primary and Echline Primary, to identify groups of children who would really benefit from the opportunity. Each group of children and teaching staff had a 10 – 15 week block of outdoor play sessions at our woodland site and at venues like beaches and outdoor venues around their local area. All of this work helped us to prove that active play sessions can contribute to closing the attainment gap for children and increase their resilience and confidence. We saw notable improvements in children’s confidence, self esteem, self help skills, risk assessment skills, teamwork, social development, emotional regulation, motivation, resilience, decision making, behaviour management and conflict resolution, all of which has a positive impact on them.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
12
Simply Play
Simply Play: Scottish Charity No. SC041420 www.simplyplay.org
Simply Play is a subsidiary charity of Family and Community Development, which provides “high quality, accessible and affordable out of school care across West Lothian”. Over 2016/17 Simply Play has continued to grow and performance has again been good this year, despite the challenging economic climate. This has been our second year of being totally self-sufficient, as our support from West Lothian Council ended in March 2015. We did end with a deficit but our performance continues to improve as our business expands. Notable achievements this year include:
Improvements in Care Inspectorate gradings have continued to be delivered, with more services than ever being awarded 5s (“Very Good”) and East Calder securing the organisation’s first grade of 6 (“Excellent”) Customer feedback has been very good and confirmed that Simply Play is essential to many parents, who can go out to work in the knowledge that their children are being well cared for. It ensures the financial stability of families and contributes to the economic health of the communities it serves. It also ensures that the children experience high quality play, which contributes positively to their development. As always, the quality of our staff makes our service and we were delighted to see 4 of our Club Managers achieve their BA in Childhood Practice Our child centred approach and children’s Personal Development Plans have been held up by the Care Inspectorate as an example of best practice We have continued to offer our unique ‘Community Place’, providing free or subsidised childcare to support families in need/crisis. This has been such a valuable asset to many families across West Lothian.
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
13
Statistics
For 2016/17 FCDWL Annual Accounts click here» For 2016/17 Simply Play Annual Accounts click here»
Family and Community Development West Lothian Registered Office: 1-3 Henderson Place, Broxburn, EH52 6EY Company No. SC166084, Scottish Charity No. SC000843
Chart TitleClub Fees
Trading Activities
West Lothian Council
Lloyds TSB
Supporting Families Project
West Lothian College
Children in Need
The Big Lottery
The Robertson Trust
The Cattanach Trust
Growth Assistance Project
Go 2 Play
Other Small Grants
Donations
Interest
Chart Title
Staff Costs
OperatingCosts
Overheads
Income
Expenditure
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
14
Acknowledgements
Thanks to:
Access 2 Employment
Alcoholics Anonymous
Armadale Child-minders Association
Armadale Community Centre Management Committee
BBC Children in Need
Beechbrae, Blackridge
Big Lottery
Blackburn & Seafield Credit Union
Cattanach Trust
Citizens Advice Bureau
Craig Inn Management Committee, Blackridge
Dale Food Group
Girls Brigade, Armadale
Health Improvement Team
Hopetoun Estate
Inspiring Scotland
Kirkhill Primary School
Hopetoun Estate
Inspiring Scotland
Kirkhill Primary School
Lisa Barrie Photography
Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland
Pinewood School
Police Scotland
Robertson Trust
Scottish Government
Social Work Addictions Team
STV Children’s Appeal
Sunny Dale Association
West Lothian 50+ Network
West Lothian Drug and Alcohol Service
West Lothian College
West Lothian Council
WLC Community Benefits
WLC Family Learning
WLC Housing Our supporters:
Annual Report 2016-2017 www.fcdwl.org
