Annual Review
2023-2024
Being supported by a food bank and now volunteering for that same food bank, has helped my mental health immensely. We are like a family here I love being a volunteer.
ALICE HAWKINS COMMUNITY PROJECTS - VOLUNTEER
Welcome
Linda Jones Chair of VAL Trustee Board
This has been a year of significant change for Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL). In May 2023 we saw the close of the Building Better Opportunities projects. Whilst both the GREAT and YES projects had stopped working with participants, we still had to ensure that all compliance measures and archiving of documentation had been finalised in accordance with the European Social Fund and The National Lottery terms and guidance. Both projects had made huge achievements in reaching targets and enabling some of the most economically inactive individuals to secure employment, new skills, training and further education making a substantial difference to their lives, their families and the local communities across Leicester and Leicestershire.
October 2023 saw Kevan Liles retire as VAL’s CEO after 33 years. Under his stewardship he provided strong leadership and focus to the organisation and was awarded an MBE for his service to the local Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector. We celebrated all that Kevan achieved during his last month at VAL. He was recognised as the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the VAL awards and our conference suite at VAL has been renamed the Liles Suite to recognise his legacy.
Kevin Allen-Khimani was appointed as VAL’s new CEO in September 2023. Kevin has worked with the organisation for 21 years and brings to the role an understanding of VAL, the sector and public sector partners. We are all looking forward to seeing where his vision for the organisation takes us.
We also celebrated 25 years of our VALUES service that supports individuals with learning difficulties and have increased the number of clients using their personal budget to buy this service. Income has increased from our office rentals, and we have started to see a return to bookings of our meeting and conference spaces as well.
The Sector Support Team secured a three year extension from the County Council and the Integrated Care Board to provide infrastructure support which is huge recognition of the work this team does. Our staff have provided support to over 711 local organisations and supported 1402 individuals to actively seek volunteering opportunities in local communities.
This year also saw the first year of delivery of the Healthwatch Leicester and Leicestershire contract where the team have spoken to over 8,000 people on their health and social care issues and produced reports on key matters such as dementia services and asylum seekers access to health services.
VAL continues to help change people’s lives for the better and if we can help you, your local VCSE group or project do get in touch.
Sector Support
Voluntary Action LeicesterShire (VAL) supports a thriving and diverse voluntary and community sector across Leicester and Leicestershire, contributing an estimated £195 million in Gross Value Added (GVA) to the local economy.
Our Voluntary Sector Support team assists local charities and community groups in starting up, securing funding, and growing. We also collaborate with the business sector to bring additional funding to VCSE groups. As Leicestershire’s accredited Volunteer Centre, VAL helps local residents get involved in volunteering.
We engage with community groups and individuals to understand key issues, build on their strengths, and enhance their capacity via our conferences and network sessions. We also foster relationships with key stakeholders and strategic partners to collectively understand and support the VCSE sector’s needs.
£1,213,475
MONEY RAISED FOR VCSE GROUPS IN LEICESTERSHIRE
711
GROUPS SUPPORTED IN LEICESTERSHIRE
60%
ARE SMALL COMMUNITY ORGANISATIONS
1108
32
476
DELEGATES ATTENDED
Neighbourhood Mental Health Cafés
VAL continued to support colleagues from the Integrated Care Board (ICB) to support the development and introduction of Neighbourhood Mental Health Cafés across Leicester, Leicestershire, and Rutland.
We developed and delivered this Grant Scheme for the ICB. We provided additional support to applicants to review policies and procedures, reviewed draft funding applications, looked at organisational planning, and supported wider collaboration between VCSE organisations.
VAL has run three grant panels for the Neighbourhood Mental Health Café Grant Scheme, which has seen 13 VCSE organisations secure funding to provide much needed support to those in local communities experiencing mental health issues.
We successfully supported, the following organisations to be key providers of this much needed support across the local communities of Leicester and Leicestershire.
Neighbourhood Mental Health Cafés
ROUND 2 - MARCH 2023ROUND 3 - MARCH 2024
Age UK - MeashamJamila’s Legacy – Thurnby Lodge
Beacon Care – EnderbyRCC – Earl Shilton
Jamila’s Legacy – Highfields LLR Mind – University of Leicester
Mental Health MattersEyres Monsell, Thurnby Lodge & Earl Shilton
Peppers A Safe Place –Rutland
Team Hub – New Parks
RCC – Syston
Saffron Lane
Neighbourhood Council
LLR Mind – De Montfort University
LLR Mind – Loughborough University
Volunteering
Volunteers bring together communities, making a positive change happen and improve the quality of life. VAL’s Sector Support team provides a range of services and support to those looking to volunteer and the organisations seeking volunteers.
Over the past year, the volunteering landscape has become more inclusive and diverse In Leicester and Leicestershire, with fewer people inquiring about volunteering post-pandemic. We have noticed a shift away from volunteering in the public sector, with individuals now choosing to volunteer on projects and for causes that matter to them.
To meet this change and shift we have collaborated with the VCSE sector to address their challenges, explore potential opportunities, and promote positive engagement to encourage volunteering. Additionally, we have successfully renewed our Volunteer Centre Quality Accreditation, focusing on enhancing the volunteer experience and our ongoing commitment to creating a positive impact and driving change. VAL is also an Investor in Volunteering (IiV).
VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE 578
1402 VOLUNTEERING ENQUIRIES OF VOLUNTEERS WERE HAPPY WITH THEIR ROLES 92%
113 ORGANISATIONS REGISTERED TO THE WEBSITE
Peter Le Marchant Trust
Peter Le Marchant Trust is the UK’s oldest and busiest canal boat charity, based in Loughborough. With a team of 130 volunteers, the Trust serves over 7,000 people each season, focusing on community groups and individuals with physical and mental disabilities.
The Trust needed more volunteers and better volunteer management to meet the growing demand for their services, especially for those with disabilities. They also needed help launching new health and wellbeing programs.
VAL provided essential support by:
Promoting volunteering by helping to advertise and attract new volunteers.
Recruiting volunteers needed to support the Trust’s activities.
Offering guidance on effective volunteer training.
Improving management by assisting in setting up better standards for managing volunteers.
VAL’s support enabled the Peter Le Marchant Trust to run canal boat trips for people living with physical disabilities, support their growing Health & Wellbeing trips, deliver popular seasonal boat trips for children and families, and back their innovative Young People’s project.
With VAL's help, we strengthened our volunteer program, which has allowed us to expand our services and make a bigger impact in the community.
TIM MARREN
Healthwatch
Healthwatch Leicester and Healthwatch Leicestershire is the independent local health and social care champion. The team and volunteers ensure NHS leaders and decision-makers hear the local voice of communities and use their feedback to improve care. Healthwatch Leicester and Healthwatch Leicestershire also help people to find reliable and trustworthy information and advice on a range of health and social services.
12 reports were published about the improvements people would like to see to health and social care services.
5
HEALTHWATCH ADVISORY BOARD (HAB) MEMBERS
8040
people shared their experiences of health and social care services with us.
19
8821
people came to us for advice and information about topics such as mental health and dentists.
248
HEALTHWATCH VOLUNTEERS EVENTS ATTENDED BY THE TEAM
“Without Healthwatch raising awareness about the challenges faced by people in the contingency hotels and mobilising a partnership team to start engagement work, asylum seekers living in Loughborough would not have the support they do now.”
SARAH JONES, LEICESTERSHIRE PARTNERSHIP NHS TRUST
Enhancing Healthcare Accessibility for Asylum Seekers
In response to the growing concerns regarding the accessibility of healthcare services for asylum seekers, Healthwatch Leicester and Healthwatch Leicestershire decided to visit all the hotels in Leicester and Leicestershire housing asylum seekers. This work saw the creation of two reports highlighting the experiences of asylum seekers with local health and care services.
Key Findings form the report concluded:
Asylum seekers face obstacles in accessing healthcare due to language barriers, cultural differences among providers, and limited knowledge of available services. Navigating the healthcare system is especially difficult for them.
Asylum seekers often experience increased mental health issues due to uncertainty about their legal status. Providing specialized mental health support within local healthcare systems is crucial for their well-being.
After reviewing the information and hearing from asylum seekers in the hotels, we recommended to our public sector partners:
Language Support: Implementing language support services can help asylum seekers communicate with healthcare providers more effectively.
Collaboration and Community Engagement: Better collaboration between service providers and community organisations is essential to understand asylum seekers’ needs and provides more and effective support.
We will review the progress against this work over the coming year.
25 years of VALUES
Our VALUES service supports adults with learning disabilities to be a part of their community by supporting them to take part in social and leisure activities, finding volunteering, employment opportunities, training to help them travel independently. We support over 100 people each year in the city and the county.
VALUES provides opportunities for people with learning disabilities in Leicester and Leicestershire to learn new skills and have fun.
“I
look forward to coming to VALUES I enjoy all my sessions”
CHANEE - VALUES CLIENT
18,000
HOURS OF SUPPORT
In 2023, VALUES celebrated turning 25 with a combined birthday and Christmas party. Staff and clients from the past and present attended the celebrations.
“I
enjoy the VALUES walking group and like to chill out with my friends”
VANDANA - VALUES CLIENT
1500
HOURS PER MONTH
110
CLIENTS SUPPORTED
I enjoy being at VALUES and spending time with the people here. I love coming for the fashion group and have made so many friends. I'm really happy here - I love VALUES! I FARZANA - VALUES CLIENT
Building connections
Bharti joined VALUES in August 2023 and quickly became part of the VALUES family. She eagerly participated in a variety of activities and made new friends, making VALUES a significant part of her life.
Bharti especially enjoyed her Friday morning cooking sessions, proud to bring home what she made to share with her mum, something she hadn’t done before. She even brought her mum to VALUES a few times to show her around, introduce her to her new friends, and display the activities she was involved in. VALUES is a place where Bharti truly feels she belongs.
“Everyone is really nice, they all make you feel good.”
In December, Bharti’s mum unexpectedly passed away, which has been very difficult for her. Bharti relied on her mum for a lot and needed help adjusting to this sudden change. She has been struggling emotionally.
“I needed somewhere where it was still the same, It helped coming in more”
VALUES supported Bharti in securing additional funding from social services, providing her with a supportive environment where she could receive emotional help and be herself among friends. She still enjoys her Friday cooking sessions and often shares her food with everyone.
“I’ve
been here six years and I like coming to the fashion and jewellery sessions. I want to get a job”
TOFIQ - VALUES CLIENT
VAL Projects
VAL has been collaborating more with local partners and stakeholders to develop and deliver various projects on key themes and areas of work to complement our core services and activities. These projects aim to address key issues across Leicester and Leicestershire, exploring new innovative ways for the VCSE sector to work in partnership with key stakeholders across our diverse communities of place and of interest.
We recognise the need to support work to tackle health inequalities, find new ways to engage people in volunteering and social action and the need to explore opportunities for new project development. Here are some of our additional projects for 2023-2024.
Anti-Poverty Project
VAL in partnership with Leicester City Council undertook a programme of events and session to embed the VCSE in how they can help to alleviate poverty in Leicester City.
We held two conferences with 100 delegates attending each one. The conferences had a mixture of key note speakers from national bodies such as the Centre for Social Justice and Child Poverty Action Group. The event focused on keeping poverty discussions and motivations at the forefront, ensuring attendees felt heard, informed, and recognised for their efforts. We facilitated sharing of experiences, good practices, and frustrations, aiming to alleviate burdens and find solutions.
Despite the uncertainty and uncomfortable realities needed to be addressed, the essence of the day remained positive – again showing the high motivation and resilience of the VCSE sector.
Thanks for making a difficult topic as positive as possible! Really useful to connect with other organisations and think about challenges and solutions around poverty.
ANTI-POVERTY CONFERENCE ATTENDEE
Multiply Project
VAL is a delivery partner on the Multiply Project for Leicestershire, working alongside Leicestershire County Council and other partners to provide targeted numeracy support for local residents to boost their confidence and develop their skills.
Over the last year, VAL has worked with a total of 31 Multiply participants and delivered various training and outreach sessions to provide support. The Multiply Project is supported by Peer Mentor Volunteers, who have been assisting with outreach and training session delivery to help local people build their confidence in using numeracy skills.
VCSE Alliance
VAL worked with the Integrated Care Board (ICB) on the launch of the VCSE Alliance for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland between November 2022 and October 2023.
VAL provided targeted support on two areas of work, VCSE Alliance Infrastructure Support and VCSE Alliance Management. Throughout the year, we partnered with ICB colleagues to involve VCSE organisations in joining the Alliance, organised networking events, conducted webinar training sessions, shared information on funding opportunities, and promoted collaboration.
Charnwood Forest Geopark
VAL has been involved in the Charnwood Forest Geopark Project since 2018, providing support for community engagement, connecting with VCSE organisations, and supporting volunteering efforts.
Over the past year, we have organised a series of joint events and training workshop sessions to support the VCSE sector in and around the Charnwood Forest area. We held 7 events, with 79 people attending these sessions.
Harborough District Council UKSPF Pilot Project
VAL has worked with Harborough District Council on two distinct projects.
Firstly, to undertake some targeted pilot work in Harborough around volunteering, with a focus on matching volunteers to local organisations. We also provided targeted work with Volunteer Involving Organisations to explore key volunteering issues, challenges and solutions, scoping work with local businesses and exploring microvolunteering roles within the District.
On 4 July 2023 in partnership with Harborough District Council, we hosted a Networking Workshop for local businesses to explore support for volunteering and community action. The workshop discussed micro-volunteering and sharing business skills with the VCSE sector. Plans to continue this work are in progress, building on previous collaborations with businesses in Lutterworth.
The VAL Awards 2023
Leicester and Leicestershire’s ‘Community Champions’ were celebrated at our annual VAL Awards on November 10, 2023, in Leicester. Supported by Market Harborough Building Society as the headline sponsor, the awards honoured individuals and organisations making significant contributions to local communities.
The event highlighted the invaluable work of volunteers, community groups, and charities that positively impact Leicester and Leicestershire.
BBC’s Rupal Rajani and VAL CEO Kevin AllenKhimani hosted the ceremony, attended by 230 guests. To view the VAL Awards 2023 winners: https://valonline.org.uk/the-val-awards/
The awards featured 11 categories and were kindly sponsored by local businesses including Market Harborough Building Society, Aspire Pharma Ltd, Fraser Urquhart Media, PPL PRS, Meesh Consulting, Paragon Sales Solutions, and Platinum Sounds. Their support allowed the event to be free for finalists and their guests.
A big thank you to VAL for a fabulous evening celebrating and showcasing, charities, their staff and volunteers - Very proud to be a Voluntary Sector service and to be part of such an amazing network. I YOUNG LEICESTERSHIRE
FestiVAL
FestiVAL is VAL’s whole month of celebrations for both volunteers and Volunteer Involving Organisations (VIO’s) tying in with the national June Volunteers Week. We have adapted our Volunteer Network and Learn events to include a wider remit including longer networking sessions, one to one support for VIO’s and volunteer recruitment opportunities under one event.
Volunteering has always been the lifeblood of the Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector, but the last few years have proven that volunteers are a crucial backbone of our whole society and we need to continually remind people of this and celebrate the value of volunteering.
A week simply is not enough time to celebrate volunteering, but expanding this to a month allows us to work with our diverse communities of place and of interest to explore more and more ways to recognise, reward and review the wider impact of people giving their time to support social action.
“Thank you for giving us the space to talk about working with volunteers. It’s really useful to see how other organisations are approaching their recruitment and ways to keep their volunteers engaged. We look forward to coming together again.
VAL VOLUNTEER
VAL Spaces
Our meeting and conference space at VAL not only provides a professional environment but also allows you to give back to your local community. Located in Leicester’s City Centre, our facilities cater to various needs, from small team meetings to large conferences.
What makes us unique is our commitment to social good. Every booking contributes directly to community projects. Profits generated are reinvested into initiatives like volunteer recruitment, supporting VCSE groups, and providing essential services to local communities. Your contribution helps foster social good and sustainability in the wider community.
To find out more or book a room with VAL Spaces e-mail: events@valonline.org.uk / 0116 257 5038 MONEY RAISED IN ROOM
Space to meet, Space to work, Space to grow
Over the past year, we’ve conducted significant renovation work in one of our three conference rooms to improve its functionality and appearance. This involved upgrading equipment and updating furnishings to create a more modern and comfortable environment.
Our entire meeting room and conference space has undergone a comprehensive refurbishment. This includes installing new coffee machines, replacing old carpeting, and applying a fresh coat of paint to brighten up the space.
In October, we celebrated the completion of these improvements with a special event to re-launch our Conference Suite. We renamed it the Liles Suite in honour of Kevan Liles MBE, who served as the Chief Executive of VAL for 33 years. This tribute acknowledges his significant contributions and lasting impact on our organisation.
We were really pleased with our VAL booking for our staff training days. The facilities were comfortable, convenient and well organised. We will definitely consider booking another event at VAL again and would highly recommend the service.
Looking to the future
Kevin Allen-Khimani VAL Chief Executive
With the change of government, we await to hear how the local VCSE fits into plans and strategies that they will seek to deliver. We are optimistic that we can be at the heart of their plans and enable us to continue to make a difference to local people and communities, however we do need to bear in mind that the financial picture nationally may mean that we still have lean years to come.
In light of this our priorities will be
1. Further development the relationship between the Integrated Care system and the local VCSE, seeking to look at new ways to work in partnership, securing better funding for the sector and VAL
2. Develop our relationships with key political leaders in the City and County following local and national elections
3. Further expand our VALUES service – supporting people with a learning disability to live fulfilling lives as independently as possible.
4. Provide more opportunities for local communities and groups to have their say on what matters to them via our Healthwatch and Sector Support teams.
5. Develop and deliver new services to support local people in gaining employability skills.
I would like to take this opportunity to say a huge thanks to all of our VAL staff, trustees and volunteers for their hard work and dedication for helping us to make a difference in our local communties.
Finally, next year sees VAL celebrate 60 years of providing support to enable us to change people’s lives for the better, we look forward to not only celebrating this but continuing to make a difference.
A useful day with a good balance of speakers and a great chance to network with others.
I have met lots of new people and I feel that Future Focus gets better each year, I really enjoy attending.
FUTURE FOCUS DELEGATE - 2023 VAL ANNUAL REVIEW 2023-24
With thanks to our funders
Leicestershire County Council
Leicester City Council
Integrated Care Board
The National Lottery
Harborough District Council
Oadby and Wigston Borough Council
The National Forest Company
European Social Fund
Voluntary Action LeicesterShire
9 Newarke Street
Leicester LE1 5SN
helpline@valonline.org.uk
0116 257 5050 www.valonline.org.uk
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