Nottingham Women s Centre

Transcription

1 Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan January

2 Contents About Nottingham Women s Centre page 3 Our Vision, Mission and Values page 4 The Scope of this Business Plan page 6 Strategic Aims page 7 Strategic Objectives page 7 Key Management Activities page 8 Key Dependencies page 9 Performance Measures page 10 Appendix 1: in Numbers page 12 Appendix 2: Summary of Annual Accounts page 13 Appendix 3: Staffing Structure page 14 Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

3 About Nottingham Women s Centre Nottingham Women s Centre is run by women, for women. We aim to help women to achieve their potential, become stronger and more independent, and we provide a safe and supportive environment in which women can do this. We help women build self-confidence and independence by enabling them to address and resolve issues in their lives. We run a regular programme of training courses and other support services from within the Centre and we are host to other key local women s organisations, Women s Aid Integrated Services and Nottingham Rape Crisis Centre, making us a one-stop shop for women in Nottinghamshire. Our History Nottingham Women s Centre can trace its beginnings to 1971, making it one of the oldest of its kind in the UK. We were established during the second wave of feminism in the seventies, when the first ever National Women s Liberation Conference brought together a number of disparate actions into an actual movement. The movement created a series of demands around free childcare; equal pay, education and job opportunities; free contraception and abortion rights; an end to discrimination against lesbians; and an end to male violence against women. Women s Centres started springing up across the country, with the recognition and understanding that women needed a safe place to selforganise to work on these demands. Our work was initially linked to these demands and has developed and evolved over time to meet the changing needs of women. From small beginnings, in 1987 we moved to our current home, 30 Chaucer Street, a four storey Victorian building in the city centre of Nottingham. Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

4 Our Vision Our vision is a world where women take their rightful place in a just and fair society, free from inequality, violence and oppression. Our Mission To enable women in Nottinghamshire to reach their full potential, have their voices heard and overcome barriers to creating a better future for themselves and their children. Our Values We are feminist, working towards transformational and substantive political, economic and social equality for women; in all of our activities, we will raise awareness of the inequalities experienced by women in society and provide interventions to redress the balance; we are inclusive, accessible, welcoming and providing services to all women, regardless of age, race, disability, religion and belief, lesbian, bisexual or transgender identity, or any other irrelevant factor; we are responsive, listening to the needs of women and their children and targeting services and resources to meet the needs of the women who need us the most; we believe in person-centred solutions, recognising that each woman has unique needs and a unique background, and we tailor our services as a result; we are partners, recognising that more is achieved through collaboration and co-operation than competition; we will work with other organisations which share our values to achieve more for women and children; we are stewards, taking great care of the resources entrusted to us by others, whether this is money, time or trust, and we are open and transparent in our reporting; we listen, learn and adapt, involving our stakeholders in what we do and how we do it; we seek feedback and say sorry and put things right if something has gone wrong; we are professional, aiming for excellence in everything we do; we are positive, about the women and children we work with, about the opportunities we can create and the amazing things that we can achieve together. Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

5 Our Services Our current services comprise: A Nursery, registered with and rated Good by Ofsted, providing full-time care for children aged 6 months to 5 years; Renew, our Big Lottery Funded mental health project, supporting women through provision of counselling, group work and creative activities; Changes, our programme commissioned by Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland Community Rehabilitation Company, working with women with a history of offending; a Training, Advice and Support programme (TAS), which offers a wide programme of interventions to meet the needs of the women who use the Centre; TAS services include advice around benefits, housing, legal issues, support for women presenting in crisis, e.g. provision of food parcels, clothing and shower facilities, regular training courses, such as functional maths and English, English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL), Job Club, IT & Social Media, confidence building and self-esteem; a Volunteer Development Programme, providing opportunities for women to gain skills through a range of volunteer roles; the Communities of Identity Partnership, which we have been commissioned to lead by Nottingham City Council, brings together local organisations working with women and LGBT communities, to access funding opportunities, work in partnership and speak with a stronger local voice; a Women s Library, which holds a nationally significant archive of feminist writing and women s fiction and is an important resource for academics, as well as the women and children who use our services; Office Space, Training and Meeting Facilities for other women s groups and organisations, including our key partners Nottinghamshire Rape Crisis Centre and Women s Aid Integrated Services; plus community space accessible to individual women. plus a range of peripheral services and activities, including activism, through events such as International Women s Day, Black History Month and Reclaim the Night; Yoga, massage and therapies; our monthly Lesbian and Bisexual Cafe, our feminist book group, Radical Readers and our campaigning and lobbying activities, for example the work we are doing with local politicians to implement our Women s Manifesto. Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

6 The Scope of this Business Plan This business plan is an outline plan which describes our strategic aims, objectives and key deliverables for Our established strategic planning cycle is being influenced by some substantial pieces of work, and some large value funding applications, which will not be completed or whose outcomes will not be known until mid The Board has consequently decided that an interim plan should be produced now, with a more detailed plan following in mid-2016, when the full extent of investment and work streams is known. During 2015, the Board and Senior Team at Nottingham Women s Centre have undertaken a significant review of the organisation s financial and operating structure, within the framework of increasing the Centre s financial resilience and sustainability, and decreasing dependence on grant and trust income. As part of this review, standard management tools such as SWOT 1, PESTEL 2 and other diagnostic tools were used to frame our current operating environment and the internal factors which currently describe our activities. From this, a number of risks, opportunities, structural and physical barriers were identified, which are being used as the basis for continued strategic planning and our strategic objectives, outlined below. 1 A tool to review the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats facing an organisation 2 A tool to help frame the operating environment of an organisation through examining the Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal factors which may apply Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

7 Strategic Aims To work to address and counter the social exclusion of women in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, and their children; to deliver a programme of work that is relevant to women and their needs; to provide a safe, accessible, supportive environment that is reflective of all facets of diversity amongst women living locally and encourages engagement and participation from all women; to sustain the Women s Centre and provision of services, for as long as it is needed, through an appropriate mix of income generation; to contribute to the health and wellbeing of women in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire; to encourage and build the confidence of women to participate in all levels of society; to encourage and enable women in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire to have a voice and to influence local and national decisions; to increase the employability of women through increasing their confidence and skills base and providing routes into volunteering and employment. Strategic Objectives To explore and establish social enterprises which respond to identified need, to provide potential pathways to employment for women and contribute to the sustainability of Nottingham Women s Centre and its services; to fully scope and deliver expanded childcare provision, targeted in geographical areas which offer maximum opportunity for growth and investment; to design and deliver an impact measurement system in order to better demonstrate the value and impact our services have, to inform service development and marketing activity and to target and attract investment and meet women s needs; Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

8 to review the financial, access, space and other constraints within the current building and determine what action should be taken to mitigate these; to review membership of the Board of Trustees to ensure that Trustees offer the necessary mix of skills and representation, and recruit new members as necessary; to build on and expand current consultation methods to ensure that all stakeholders are involved and engaged in the work that we do; to review our owned marketing channels and media and update and expand them as necessary in order to maximise reach and engagement by all stakeholders; to modernise our services to meet needs of women today, including the IT we use for accessing and delivering services; to invest time in developing our quality, through gaining new quality assurance marks such as PQASSO 3 and Investing in Volunteers. Key Management Activities By December 2015, sign off the interim business plan; by 31 March 2016, to work with the consultants attached to the Childhood Investment Readiness Fund investment stream to produce a 3 year plan for childcare services; by 31 March 2016, to have reviewed local strategic groups and fora and identified key structures for targeted representation by the Centre Manager, or other staff members as appropriate; by 31 March 2016, to have completed a skills audit of current board members, produced revised job descriptions for key roles, and begun a recruitment process to fill identified gaps; by 31 May 2016, to have identified a potential mentoring supplier to assist in the production of a 3 year plan for the development of the marketing function, premises review and social enterprises (NB this activity will be unnecessary if the application to the Local Sustainability Fund is successful, the outcome of which will be known in March 2016); 3 Practical Quality Assurance for Small Organisations, a quality mark specifically designed for charities Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

9 by 30 June 2016, to have completed a staff skills audit and review of the organisational structure to ensure that it is fit to deliver against known income and investment and the key priorities outlined in the strategic plan; by 30 June 2016, to have used staff working groups and professional support as necessary to have reviewed the tools, data and other assets required to design and embed an impact measurement process, identifying gaps and additional requirements; by 31 July 2016, to have revised the business plan, updated to include work completed to date and the strategies, mitigations and activities planned, including full Income Generation, Marketing & Communication and Volunteering Strategies; by 30 September 2016, to have designed and launched the impact measurement system; by 30 September 2016, to have reviewed and redesigned the management information and reporting system in line with the new impact measurement framework; by 30 September 2016, to have reviewed financial structures, including full cost recovery, to meet the needs of known investment and planned bids, and made any necessary revisions to the QuickBooks accounting system and other accounting tools; by December , to have scoped the PQASSO (or identified alternative) quality assurance system and be ready for application; by 31 December 2016, to have reviewed financial structures and embedded full cost recovery. Key Dependencies The continued success of Nottingham Women s Centre is dependent on various key factors: we can and will exist only for as long as there is a need for our services, and for as long as women seek those services and rate them as being good quality and appropriate; alongside this, we can only operate if we are able to sell our services, through commissioning or to individuals, for example to parents buying childcare services, or people using their personal budget to buy mental health support. It is consequently vitally important that we are able to express our core Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

10 narrative in the right way to attract users and investors, and that we market our services across the correct channels and with the right audience. That is why the further development of our marketing function has been identified as a key activity in the coming year, as has reviewing our representation on local strategic groups. Our continued success is also dependent on the Board of Trustees and staff teams being fit for purpose, comprising the right skills, structure and understanding of their roles do to business; in the case of the staff team, structure, remuneration and succession planning are also key to ensuring that we attract, retain, manage and utilise the right staff to deliver against this business plan and the requirements and expectations of customers and investors. Our use of IT and how women are able to access information about us, and our services, is a key factor in how successful we will be in the years to come. The full operation of our services is dependent on the goodwill of our volunteers, whose services we estimate to save us at least 60,000 per annum against equivalent paid time. We aim to receive Investing in Volunteers accreditation in Finally, we can and will only continue to be successful if we are able to meet the needs of our users, tenants, staff and visitors through running our services from premises that are fit for purpose and economically viable. A number of risks, financial and practical, have been identified within our current premises and that is why a premises review will form a large part of work in the coming year. How we will Measure Performance By the end of 2016, we will have designed and launched an impact measurement system and agreed measurements, which may include: the number of women accessing services; the number of women who access our services but would otherwise not access mainstream services; the number of volunteers recruited; the number of members recruited; the number of women into work, education or other courses; demonstration of our cost saving to mainstream services; enhanced well-being for women, across health, economic and social measures. Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

11 Other measures we will report against in 2016 include: performance against EYFS outcomes for children in our nursery; maintaining our Ofsted Good rating; the number of courses run and completed; production of a 3 year business plan for our Childcare services; a PQASSO or other quality assurance application; production of a detailed Business Plan; the number of events we run for women and other stakeholders; meeting targets and Delivering on outputs for individual projects; the number of volunteering opportunities or work placements we broker for our service users. Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

12 Appendix in Numbers Nottingham Women s Centre had footfall of 10,163 visitors during Of these visits, 7,998 were for our services and 2,165 were for services provided by our tenant organisations, Women s Aid Integrated Services and Nottinghamshire Rape Crisis Centre. Around 40 women visit the centre every day and the demand for our services has risen by 16% compared to the previous year. Our Communities of Identity Partnership, has provided funding and/or support for 21 different groups and worked with 1,729 people during the year. We worked with a total of 307 women through our RENEW project, including providing 639 hours of 1:1 counselling to 62 of those women. Our TAS team worked with 721 women throughout the year, most of whom engaged with us for support for at least two issues affecting their lives, including housing, employment and finance issues. Our Welfare Rights Advisor raised over 14,000 in hardship grants to women facing immediate crisis. We also gave out an increasing number of food parcels, reflecting the increased pressure on women today. Our Changes Programme continued to support female ex-offenders and women at risk of offending, both in Nottingham City and Mansfield, working with 143 women in the year. We worked with 94 different children in our nursery, across an age range of 6 months to 5 years. We supported 77 women to volunteer with us at an estimated value of 60,000 compared to equivalent paid hours. Volunteers categorised 2,255 books in our women s library - all of which can now be browsed via our online catalogue and at the Centre. The number of views of our website was up by 18% to approximately 64,000 views and our reach on social media continued to grow, with our number of followers increasing by 51%. 39 women carried out fundraising activities as part of our Year of Adventure including skydiving and a firewalk raising close to 8,000. Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

13 Appendix 2 Summary of annual accounts Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan

14 Appendix 3 Staff structure at December 2015 Nottingham Women s Centre Outline Business Plan