Annual Report and Financial Statements for 2020

We have released our Trustees’ Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ending December 31st 2020.

The following introduction to the report was written by Ann Santry our Chair of Trustees and Sally Byng, our Chief Executive.

“The events of 2020 have impacted fundamentally on all aspects of life in the UK. The Trust sought to play as helpful a role as possible in mitigating the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the lives of disabled people and people with mental health challenges across Gloucestershire. As has been widely reported however, the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on disabled people and people with mental health challenges, so it has been important for the Trust to be flexible and responsive throughout the year.

This report demonstrates how the Trust increased its expenditure on grants, making more funds available, and played a key role in convening funders, voluntary sector organisations and statutory sector agencies to identify how to enable swift and appropriate support to disabled people and people with mental health challenges, in community settings and through specialist services.

The clear long-term impacts of the pandemic prompted the Trustees to bring forward the strategic review, scheduled for 2021, to be undertaken in 2020, and in September the Board approved a revision of the strategy. The Trust’s strategic goals remain the same but the means of meeting them will be evolving, with a new underpinning theory of change, which is described briefly in this report.

We would like to thank many people for their support during this difficult year: the many voluntary and community sector organisations across Gloucestershire who have worked tirelessly and with ingenuity and passion to continue to provide support to disabled people and people with mental health challenges; the decision and policy makers and planners who have been willing to consider and respond flexibly to the findings and recommendations from our research; our colleagues in the other Charitable Trusts and Foundations in the county who have supported the effort to get funds where they have been needed swiftly and efficiently; Barnwood’s Trustees who willingly gave up much more time to meet to consider our response to the pandemic and then to develop the thinking behind the revised strategy; and finally Barnwood’s staff who have worked hard, consistently and imaginatively to rise to the challenges presented.”