We are already one third of the way through 2023 and we thought it is time for a governance update.
The Trustees have continued to work behind the scenes overseeing service delivery, monitoring compliance with our legal duties, manging risk, reviewing our policies and of course ensuring we have the financial resources needed and are spending them in the best interests of our service users. We have introduced some key performance indicators to help us monitor our impact and have started to collect some additional diversity data to ensure that we are meeting our duties to ensure equality, diversity and inclusion within the charity.
We have six Trustees including our newest appointment, Huw, who is taking over the treasurer role from Rachel. Rachel has supported the Board with robust financial monitoring and reporting over the past 5 years and we are grateful for her ongoing support and excellent handover to Huw.
Following some successful fundraising at the end of 2022 and early 2023 we have set a balanced budget for 2023 which supports the ongoing delivery of our existing services and provides some scope for expansion. At our team Away Day last September we heard the views and ideas of our employee and volunteer team and service users which encouraged us to look for continual improvement in our service offer and incremental additions to it.
Our ongoing review and development of our strategy has resulted in us amending our constitution, with Charity Commission approval, to extend the age range of the young people with Down Syndrome we can support, up to age 25. This aligns with our partnership with Hertfordshire Libraries and gives us scope for other future services as our young people get older.
Recent new services have included our EHCP Support service and Resources into Homes and we hope that these will further enable and empower parents to secure and provide the best possible support for their children.
The Trustees continue to look further ahead into 2024 and beyond to ensure we remain financially viable for the years to come and further fundraising and grant applications are an embedded part of our planning. We are also conscious that rising costs affect those using our services and we remain committed to keeping costs low and also ensuring free access to all of our services for those where cost is a barrier to them participating.
As ever we would love to hear from you if you have any questions, comments or feedback on any of our services. Please do message us or email us at info@dsachieve.org