BURY2GETHER CIC

Company limited by guarantee

Company Registration Number:
14222543 (England and Wales)

Unaudited statutory accounts for the year ended 31 August 2023

Period of accounts

Start date: 8 July 2022

End date: 31 August 2023

BURY2GETHER CIC

Contents of the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 August 2023

Balance sheet
Additional notes
Balance sheet notes
Community Interest Report

BURY2GETHER CIC

Balance sheet

As at 31 August 2023

Notes 14 months to 31 August 2023


£
Current assets
Cash at bank and in hand: 12,144
Total current assets: 12,144
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year: 3 ( 2,297 )
Net current assets (liabilities): 9,847
Total assets less current liabilities: 9,847
Total net assets (liabilities): 9,847
Members' funds
Profit and loss account: 9,847
Total members' funds: 9,847

The notes form part of these financial statements

BURY2GETHER CIC

Balance sheet statements

For the year ending 31 August 2023 the company was entitled to exemption under section 477 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small companies.

The members have not required the company to obtain an audit in accordance with section 476 of the Companies Act 2006.

The directors acknowledge their responsibilities for complying with the requirements of the Act with respect to accounting records and the preparation of accounts.

These accounts have been prepared and delivered in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies regime.

The directors have chosen not to file a copy of the company's profit and loss account.

This report was approved by the board of directors on 5 April 2024
and signed on behalf of the board by:

Name: Ms Rhiannon Walton
Status: Director

The notes form part of these financial statements

BURY2GETHER CIC

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 August 2023

  • 1. Accounting policies

    Basis of measurement and preparation

    These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the provisions of Section 1A (Small Entities) of Financial Reporting Standard 102

BURY2GETHER CIC

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 August 2023

  • 2. Employees

    14 months to 31 August 2023
    Average number of employees during the period 5

BURY2GETHER CIC

Notes to the Financial Statements

for the Period Ended 31 August 2023

3. Creditors: amounts falling due within one year note

14 months to 31 August 2023
£
Accruals and deferred income 2,297
Total 2,297

COMMUNITY INTEREST ANNUAL REPORT

BURY2GETHER CIC

Company Number: 14222543 (England and Wales)

Year Ending: 31 August 2023

Company activities and impact

BURY2GETHER CIC supports parent/carers who have children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), aged 0-25.BURY2GETHER is based at ‘Bury SEND Hub,’ a community centre, specially adapted for disabled families.The year 2022/23, the activities recorded are inline with BURY2GETHER’s aims; supporting parent/carers who have a child with SEND.BURY2GETHER’s primary focus is the delivery of Bury’s Department for Education approved parent/carer forum, with secondary aims also supporting the wellbeing and education of parent/carers.These grants can be broken down as follows:We received a grant from the DfE to support Bury’s parent/carer forum and we provided the following outputs:Staffing Costs - Office Manager role, approximately 12 hours a week, term-time. Outputs - Up to date documents, coordination of volunteers and events, development of the forum, management of social media, dissemination of strategic documents.Staffing Costs - Administration role, approximately 2 hours a week, term-time. Outputs including, calendar coordination for volunteers, responding to emails, disseminating emails and collating responses.Expenses - To ensure that we had representation for Strategic Meetings, we included expenses in our grant application, to cover mileage, childcare and travel expenses. This ensured our volunteers weren't out of pocket for their contributions.Remuneration - To ensure that we had representation for Strategic Meetings, we included Remuneration in our grant application, to cover 2 reps per meetings.Events - We organised a range of meetings for parent/carers led by the forum, LA and ICP. During the sessions there were presentations by services and opportunities to ask questions. The forum also held a celebration party to celebrate being awarded ‘The Queen's Award’ for voluntary service. This was an opportunity to gain good press and further parent/carer participation and awareness of the forum. We invited the local press, professional supporters/community groups that we work closely with, as well as local MPs and Councillors. This was an opportunity for the forum to hand out merchandise and advertisements. Drinks, refreshments and activities were provided at this celebratory event.Meetings - The grant helped to facilitate Steering Group/Forum Group meetings by offering refreshments.Infrastructure - To cover the running costs and lease of our building.Development of Information and Resources - This year we continued to create and distribute our own surveys to gather data. We also continued to produce our own email notifications.Web Development - We have continued to run a website with integrated membership forms and an up-to-date wide range of resources and information.Recruitment Drive - This year we have had a really successful recruitment drive. The enrolment of 7 new highly skilled recruits.We provided an end of year thank you and team building event for the volunteers and new recruit's. This consisted of a round of a team building escape room activity, followed by food and drinks.We purchased an 'Owl' to facilitate mixed virtual and in person meetings for wider parent/carers (video technology for conferences). We were struggling to facilitate mixed in person and virtual meetings. This was something parent/carers had asked us to address and we believe the Owl is the best technology to continue to facilitate this.We purchased £800 worth of Invisible Disabilities (Sunflower) Lanyards with various disabilities and needs. Approximately 100 pieces of merchandise were purchased, this was to replenish our stocks after handing out a large amount following our SEND event last year to new recruits.We purchased 'Board Maker' with a licence. Board Maker is the communication system that is used by SALT, in Bury. This system was not directly available to parent/carers nor available in the community before. Many of our SEND families have child/young people with communication and language difficulties and use symbols to communicate. This requires technology to access the appropriate symbols online and be able to print and laminate them. Not having the equipment to do this can significantly impact the pace that these families can progress with speech and language development. Parents in Bury reported that because the system wasn't readily available, they were purchasing other 'non' standardised systems. Parents reported that they have used trial and error buying several systems over their child's journey. We strongly believe that to encourage parent/carers to participate, you need to offer them something positive and supportive in return. Purchasing this system also encouraged parents to attend our coffee mornings where they can use our Board Maker system during the sessions to print and laminate symbols to aid their child's communication development.We set up a printing station and resource library. Many of our parent/carers/families are on low incomes. As a result, we often hear from families who have little technology to complete the admin tasks associated with caring for a Child or young person with SEND. For example, printing and accessing benefits forms and guidance, printing and accessing medical reports, emailing and researching. At our centre, we now offer parent/carers the option of using our equipment and resources to assist them with this.We facilitated IPSEA course level 2 for 25 parent/carers. This gave parent/carers knowledge on Inclusion, EHCP duties, Annual reviews, Transport, Mental Capacity, Health and Social Care, and Mediation. All of these topics are regular queries and points raised at our sessions and events. The outcomes from our DfE parent/carer forum grant are as follows:Staffing Costs - This benefitted the forum as resulted in an organised, well structured forum, which gave our parent/carer reps confidence.Expenses - Reps felt valued for their time and expertise, thus, making them feel appreciated.Remuneration - Reps felt valued for their time and expertise. This made them feel appreciated.Event - National Conference - A rep attended the conference, which built confidence, and enabled the reps to bring new ideas back to the forum. Reps felt more empowered and engaged.Events - Regular parent/carer meetings with services allow more parents to understand what is available to help them. Regular question and answer sessions with parents helped to drive service improvement. The Queen's Award party positively impacted the forum by way of networking with councillors and more positive media publicity, helping us to gain momentum in a politically led Local Authority. Events held in the community centre helped with continuity and provided a safe and familiar space for parent/carers and professionals.Meetings - Steering Group meetings - Representatives felt welcomed and valued by having regular Steering Group meetings with refreshments.Infrastructure - The grant ensured that infrastructure was in place to run a successful forum. This ensures that we have a professional presence that builds trust with parents and professionals. BURY2GETHER, having a new building, allows the volunteers to feel comfortable and confident and allows us to welcome parent/carers and professionals appropriately.Development of Information and Resources - Surveys and Newsletters - Parent/Carers felt engaged and were able to understand what the forum has raised on their behalf. This builds confidence and trust. The forum felt confident that it's representing its members accurately by documenting our work in our Action Plan/Communication Plan.Web Development - A well run and professional website has helped keep parent/carers informed. The forum has expanded its expertise further and has a greater understanding of different communities by increasing our diversity, ensuring a more representative forum. This has helped the forum to maintain its professional reputation, which has assured and encouraged new recruits to join our Elected Forum Group. Potential new recruits have felt properly welcomed. We have successfully recruited our targeted forum group members from complex care parents, post 16 and early years parents.Team building - This helped us show appreciation to our hardworking volunteers. In turn, they felt valued and more likely to continue to support and engage with the forum. The team building event helped our volunteers get to know each other, realise each other's strengths, improve communication and build trust and friendships.Printing resource library: Parent/carers having the opportunity to print resources during our coffee mornings and events has provided new opportunities to engage with new parent/carers whom we wouldn't typically engage with.The forum is based in Radcliffe which is the most deprived area in Bury. This has not only relieved anxieties around finding suitable places to carry out these tasks, it has also improved parent/carers knowledge and quality of applications that they make on behalf of their child/young person. It has also engaged and reached more SEND families, including those from harder to reach societies. This has encouraged a much more representative participation cohort.IPSEA: This training has engaged and supported our SEND community with knowledge and confidence in challenging these issues and ensuring their child/ young person has quality care and support in Education, Health and Social Care. It has allowed the forum to reach wider parent/carers and those in harder to reach societies.Invisible disabilities lanyards - Handing out free Invisible Disabilities Lanyards to new members has ensured parent/carers felt welcomed and has encouraged them to sign up as a member. Parent/carers have felt incentivised to attend our open day/week and receive support and signposting. Purchasing lanyards in Hebrew and Islamic languages to give out at coffee mornings/events has helped to engage some of our parent/carers in harder to reach communities.Web development, the ‘Owl’ device for virtual calls: Due to caring responsibilities, jobs and disabilities, many of our parent/carers, who would like to be more involved with the forum, were unable to attend in person. We believe that some of these parent/carers would have been an asset to the forum and its development. In order to overcome this barrier, we felt that using technology, we have involved our valued parent/carers and reached more families in the community. The DfE grant for our parent/carer forum has furthered participation by:Events - Regular parent/carer meetings with services allow more parents to understand what is available to help them. Regular question and answer sessions with parents helped to drive service improvement.The Queen's Award party positively impacted the forum by way of networking with councillors and more positive media publicity, helping us to gain momentum in a politically led Local Authority.Events held in the community centre helped with continuity and provided a safe and familiar space for parent/carers and professionals.Infrastructure - The grant ensured that infrastructure was in place to run a successful forum. This ensures that we have a professional presence that builds trust with parents and professionals. BURY2GETHER, having a new building, allows the volunteers to feel comfortable and confident and allows us to welcome parent/carers and professionals appropriately.Development of Information and Resources - Surveys and Newsletters - Parent/Carers felt engaged and were able to understand what the forum has raised on their behalf. This builds confidence and trust. The forum felt confident that it's representing its members accurately by documenting our work in our Action Plan/Communication Plan.Web Development - A well run and professional website has helped keep parent/carers informed. Printing resource library: Parent/carers having the opportunity to print resources during our coffee mornings and events has provided new opportunities to engage with new parent/carers whom we wouldn't typically engage with.The forum is based in Radcliffe which is the most deprived area in Bury. This has not only relieved anxieties around finding suitable places to carry out these tasks, it has also improved parent/carers knowledge and quality of applications that they make on behalf of their child/young person. It has also engaged and reached more SEND families, including those from harder to reach societies. This has encouraged a much more representative participation cohort.IPSEA - This training has engaged and supported our SEND community with knowledge and confidence in challenging these issues and ensuring their child/ young person has quality care and support in Education, Health and Social Care. It has allowed the forum to reach wider parent/carers and those in harder to reach societies.Invisible disabilities lanyards - Handing out free Invisible Disabilities Lanyards to new members has ensured parent/carers felt welcomed and has encouraged them to sign up as a member. Parent/carers have felt incentivised to attend our open day/week and receive support and signposting. Purchasing lanyards in Hebrew and Islamic languages to give out at coffee mornings/events has helped to engage some of our parent/carers in harder to reach communities.Web development, the ‘Owl’ device for virtual calls - Due to caring responsibilities, jobs and disabilities, many of our parent/carers, who would like to be more involved with the forum, were unable to attend in person. We believe that some of these parent/carers would have been an asset to the forum and its development. In order to overcome this barrier, we felt that using technology, we have involved our valued parent/carers and reached more families in the community. The DfE grant for our parent/carer forum has built relationships with local services by:This year we jointly coordinated a SEND Marketplace day with Bury. Dozens of providers attended and the day was a great success.We attended the Jewish Federations own SEND Information day. This was helpful to build relationships with Jewish services and community groups.The DfE grant for our parent/carer forum has been involved in positive outcomes for service development by:Parents and the forum have pushed health for an Epilepsy Nurse for years. Bury was the only borough in Greater Manchester to not have an Epilepsy Nurse. Finally this year, this role is now being commissioned.This year Bury jointly coordinated a SEND Marketplace day with the forum. This was hugely successful in terms of parents; engagement and service engagement.Also this year we have been involved in the Autism In Schools project where we are influencing change within 3 Bury Schools. The DfE grant for our parent/carer forum has improved outcomes for parent carers by:Regular parent/carer meetings with services have allowed more parents to understand what is available to help them.Regular question and answer sessions with parents has helped to drive service improvement.Events held in the community centre have helped with continuity and provided a safe and familiar space for parent/carers and professionals.The grant has ensured that infrastructure was in place to run a successful forum. This ensures that we have a professional presence that builds trust with parents and professionals. BURY2GETHER, having a new building, allows the volunteers to feel comfortable and confident whilst being able to welcome parent/carers and professionals appropriately.By developing Information and resources, such as surveys and newsletters, Parent/carers have been more engaged and able to understand what the forum has raised on their behalf. This builds confidence and trust. The forum felt confident that it's representing its members accurately by continuing to document our work in our Action Plan/Communication Plan.A well run and professional website has helped keep parent/carers informed.By creating a printing resource library, parent/carers have had the opportunity to print resources during our coffee mornings and events and provided new opportunities to engage with other parent/carers whom they might not typically engage with.The forum is based in Radcliffe which is the most deprived area in Bury, this has not only relieved anxieties around finding suitable places to carry out these tasks, it has also improved parent/carers knowledge and quality of applications that they make on behalf of their child/young person. It has also engaged and reached more SEND families, including those from harder to reach societies. This has encouraged a much more representative participation cohort.The IPSEA training has engaged and supported our SEND community with knowledge and confidence in challenging these issues and ensuring their child/ young person has quality care and support in Education, Health and Social Care. It has allowed the forum to reach wider parent/carers and those in harder to reach societies.By handing out free Invisible Disabilities Lanyards to new members, this has ensured parent/carers felt welcomed and has encouraged them to sign up as a member. Parent/carers have felt incentivised to attend our open day/week and receive support and signposting. Purchasing lanyards in Hebrew and Islamic languages to give out at coffee mornings/events has helped to engage some of our parent/carers in harder to reach communities.Due to caring responsibilities, jobs and disabilities, many of our parent/carers, who would like to be more involved with the forum, were unable to attend in person. We believe that some of these parent/carers would have been an asset to the forum and its development. In order to overcome this barrier, we feel that by purchasing the ‘Owl’ (conference technology) and using technology, we have involved our valued parent/carers and reached more families in the community.Our greatest achievements via the DfE grant for our parent/carer forum were as follows:This year we jointly facilitated a Marketplace Day with Bury Council and Bury ICP. This was a huge success with dozens of stall holds and hundreds of parent/carers attending.Additionally we have coproduced with other SEND providers, an Early Years SEND session. This has been so successful that it has now been rolled out to every 2 weeks. This is a multi agency approach to early intervention, by providing an EY stay and play session with various services on hand to support and give advice. The forum is involved in a supportive peer - peer capacity and as a listening ear, finding out first hand how Early Years services are performing.This year we were also awarded the Queen's award for voluntary service.We are also incredibly proud of our Autism In Schools rolls out to 3 schools.Our activities have benefited the SEND parent/carers in Bury by:Reducing isolation.Providing opportunities for peer to peer support for parent/carers.Providing opportunities for parent/carers to make friendships.Providing volunteering opportunities to parent/carers.Supporting our volunteers with technology to enable them to support us better.Providing a welcoming and accessible environment for parent/carers and their children who have SEND.Educating parent/carers with our training offer.Helping to support accessibility in the community by providing the nationally recognised ‘Sunflower Lanyard’ products for invisible disabilities.Signposting to various services has been achieved.

Consultation with stakeholders

BURY2GETHER CIC’s stakeholders are parent/carers who have children with SEND, aged 0-25.BURY2GETHER collates feedback via our various online surveys and adjusts its activities accordingly. We also receive feedback verbally from events, meetings, workshops, coffee mornings, consultations and also via our emails. We also conducted a joint survey with Bury Council and Bury ICP.We continually adjust our provision, in accordance with user feedback.Examples are:- Parents told us about the problems they were having due to Bury not having an Epilepsy Nurse. To put into perspective, every other area of Greater Manchester had its own Epilepsy Nurse except Bury. BURY2GETHER have raised this issue continually with commissioners and finally this year, this role has now been commissioned.- Parents told us they often felt lost and confused about which services were available to them. This year we jointly coordinated a SEND Marketplace day with the Bury Council and ICP. This was hugely successful in terms of parents engagement and service engagement.- Parents have told us that more support for schools regarding SEND is needed. This year we launched the Autism In Schools project, where we are influencing change within 3 Bury Schools.- Parents tell us that it can feel like SEND services are designed around service needs, not the needs of the families, especially around Bury’s Neuropathway and its commissioned services. We have continued to raise this with our Strategic Health partners, citing lack of consultation, coproduction and strategic scrutiny and oversight. We have continued to improve our feedback mechanisms

Directors' remuneration

The total amount paid or receivable by directors in respect of qualifying services was £7,212.There were no other transactions or arrangements in connection with the remuneration of directors, or compensation for director’s loss of office, which require to be disclosed.

Transfer of assets

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration

This report was approved by the board of directors on
2 April 2024

And signed on behalf of the board by:
Name: Ms Rhiannon Walton
Status: Director