July 2018 – June 2019 was a busy financial year for all of us at Foothold.

We saw some key changes to staff – welcoming Jane Petit as the new CEO and Beverley Archer as Office Manager and PA to CEO. Chair of the board Simon Hart stepped down and was replaced by Amanda Dowd. We’ve also seen the impact of the work we do every day.

Key take-aways

• We increased instances of support by 138
• We helped 992 people, some of whom accessed more than one service
• Formed a partnership with Anxiety UK
• Reviewed regular financial support packages which saw an uplift in use

Our impact

The number of people accessing services had increased by 9%. However, we realised that we had a limited understanding of what impact we’ve had on the lives of people who access our services. In April 2019 we set up a Survey Money questionnaire to ask people about their experiences. Most people said that the support they had made a difference to their daily lives – with 40% saying the difference it made was ‘a lot’.

Minimum income standard (MIS)

We have undertaken some modelling on the impact of our regular financial support on people’s standard of living using the Joseph Rowntree MIS as a proxy measure for achieving a socially inclusive lifestyle. Current levels of grants mean that beneficiaries still had less than 74% of the MIS with only 35% of beneficiaries reaching incomes at or above the MIS level. Following this, the Board agreed to increase the regular monthly grant above inflation increase of 28%. We’ll continue to review this model in our 2019-2022 strategy.

A new brand

To improve the impact and visibility we’ve worked with Shed research to understand what key concerns are affecting our audience. From there, we began to form an idea about how we could better reach people and how they want to feel after they’ve found support. The result is a new brand and an expansion on the services that we offer.

2018 – 2019

It has been a tremendous year of activity for the charity. We’ve been laying a lot of the groundwork needed for the ambitions of the 2019-2022 strategy. For more information, please read the annual report 2019.

If you have any comments or queries about the report, please get in touch with CEO Jane Petit on [email protected]