barnabas-northumberland.org.uk

Its been incredibly busy at Barnabas, Our business plan has been revised to aid our volunteers with Fundraising.
My weekly activities begin on Mondays with staff meeting except this week I attended a Housing Panel with colleagues from Children’s Services, Housing and other Supported Housing providers. This is an opportunity to address the move on needs of some of the most vulnerable young people in Northumberland. When I got back to the office I was briefed about complaints over the weekend regarding our Supported Housing In Pegswood. We are very sensitive to community concerns about our projects. On this occasion our residents have been playing music too loud, disturbing neighbours and their guests have been littering the local environment. Monday evenings I support our youth workers with our youth session. I enjoy talking with the teenagers and seeing them get into developing project of interest to them. Attendance is relatively high at the moment but this raises issues about our limited space. We are hoping to raise funds this year to develop some of our unused space. This will make a massive difference for youth workers and young people by enabling different activities to be delivered with smaller groups. I am oncall this week. I responded to a complaint from a neighbour about noise at our Pegswood Project at 1.15am. When I got there it was quiet but I posted a warning to our resident.
Yesterday Morning, I had a meeting with the Chief Executive of Northumberland Clubs for Young People. We agreed to work together to develop more after school clubs. NCYP also have some opportunities for our young people to attend leadership courses. I spent much of the rest of the day drafting a vision statement to share with partners interested in widening access to Stobhill Youth centre. Today Wednesday I have met with The North East Regional Homelessness Coordinator, a Colleague from Barnardos and a colleague from the housing Department. Barnabas Safe & Sound is keen to support a regional research project which will enable us to identify gaps in provision and service levels for young people experiencing housing crisis in Northumberland. This was followed by a meeting at our local High School with the coordinator for RE & PHSE. I have been invited to put together a lesson to be delivered to everyone in year 10. The focus is on broadening their understanding of charities in society. I was encouraged by the response to my draft lesson plan and I received excellent feedback to improve the plan. We agreed some improvements and will give the lesson a trial run before the summer. It will then be rolled out to the whole year from September.
I then met with our Finance Officer to review Management Accounts for February. One month from the year end and we are set to finish the year with a slight surplus thanks to a combination of tightening the financial controls, and gaining a grant for project work next year. February had a higher level of voids than usual due to some successful move ons. Less income from rents though. We identified that we will need to raise £1,500 for renewing household items next year. We will also probably need about £4,800 to replace worn out furniture. (Nice bite size funding applications for next year.)
Finally I helped settle in a new resident into our crash pad but not before cleaning the toilet and oven. (our Crash Pad Project worker has been busy moving our two previous residents out. Tonight I will do a spot check on our Pegswood project where we have been receiving complaints.