Review of the year

Adult Housing and Respite

We operate 4 registered care homes in Westminster, with dedicated staff teams benefiting 16 adults with learning disabilities who need 24 hour support. The people who use our services are supported to ensure their individual needs, wants and wishes are met in a homely environment at the heart of their community.

We provide a range of supported housing services in Westminster, Camden, Islington and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea which includes one bedroom flats and shared living flats. This range of secure tenancy accommodation benefits 204 adults with learning disabilities. The tailor made support packages vary from 24 hour on site support to the more traditional supported housing outreach model.

Ensuring our adult housing services are fully utilised continues to be a top priority. The average void / vacancy rate across our housing services remained at 7.0% during 2020/21 (7.0% in 2019/20) and at year end the void rate had increased to 8.0% (6.0% in 2019/20). There have been a total of 19 moves during the period (15 in 2019/20) in line with our housing strategy in responding flexibly to individual’s housing wants and needs. All supported housing and registered care tenants had an individual budget, each with a clearly identified level of support hours being provided and transparent associated costs.

We also provide a Short Breaks Respite service across 2 sites in Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea. This service provides planned and emergency building based respite places benefiting up to 16 adults with learning disabilities at any one time, as well as up to 150 hours per week of outreach support.

Community Services

Our LDN Connect and LDN Drop-in services have provided a wide range of group activity, drop-in, holiday scheme and volunteering sessions and events for adults and young people with learning disabilities. Unfortunately, we were not able to operate these services in 2020/21 during the Covid pandemic due to the community based group nature of the activities. We are looking to relaunch a new service in 2021/22 aimed at supporting vulnerable adults who receive little or no support from other agencies.

The LDN4U outreach teams and other supported housing hubs have continued to provide tailor made packages of floating support to people living in the community. At year end, 966 weekly support hours were being provided to 62 people (1,821 hours for 97 people in 2020) with individual packages ranging from 3 hours per week basic tenancy support to more complex and inter agency support packages. This includes support being provided in Westminster, Camden, Islington and Kensington and Chelsea.

The number of families receiving support from our Family Services Team in 2020/21 was 142 (188 in 2019/20). The service aims to develop family confidence and resilience and provides counselling and portage as well as advice, information and support regarding welfare benefits, landlord disputes, health issues and risks, referrals, ECHP’s and signposting to foodbank and volunteer programmes.

Rainbows is a nursery catering for children with and without disabilities. At year end, this early year’s provision for children under 5 was providing places for 10 children with learning disabilities and 28 mainstream children (5 and 41 at year end 2019/20).

“Thank you to the family support team who helped me cope during lockdown and get essential support with access to benefits that we desperately needed”

Read more about the essential work our family support team did over lockdown and how we adapted the service to support people throughout the lockdowns.

Critical Family Support

Brenda’s Lock Down balcony

During the lockdown Brenda’s mobility sadly got worse. Read about how she created a lockdown balcony garden with the support of Marcus her outreach support worker.

Read the full story

Kids Can Achieve Limited (KCA)

LDN London is the sole member of KCA, a charity registered in England and Wales (Charity Number: 1096796).

KCA is a charitable company limited by guarantee (Company Number 4606116), incorporated on 10th December 2002 and registered as a charity on 1st April 2003. They have a trustee body which is responsible for overseeing and monitoring the key areas of activity within the organisation. The day to day management of the organisation is commissioned to and carried out by the LDN London which is led by its Director of Services who reports to the KCA Board of Trustees. KCA operates throughout the borough of Harrow, and in neighbouring areas, and maintains an office in Harrow Weald.

The objective of the Company (“Kids Can Achieve Limited”) outlined in the Memorandum and Articles of Association is to relieve the needs of children and young people with a learning disability or other additional needs and their parents and carers, in particular by the provision of play, therapy, representation and educational and social support. All of the charitable activities of the company are carried out in order to meet this objective and in doing so, provide a public benefit to a range of beneficiaries. There are no restrictions to access the services offered by the charity although their work is for children and young people with learning disabilities and their families.

KCA aims to provide quality services and create new opportunities for children and young people with learning disabilities and their families. In pursuit of these aims they have developed a wide range of services including outreach community support, holiday schemes and after school and weekend clubs.

KCA operates a year round Outreach Community Support Service delivering tailor made packages of support in the local community and schools during the day, after school, in the evenings and at weekends. Each package varies depending on the needs of the child or young person with 4,440 hours of support provided to 39 children during the year (2020: 9,256 / 47 children).

KCA also operates holiday schemes over 11 weeks of the year during Easter, summer, Christmas and half term periods. 869 days of holiday scheme were provided to 64 children during the year (2020: 1,005 days / 80 children).

There is an After School Club and weekend club operating during term time for 38 weeks of the year. The main After School Club takes place 5 days per week, Monday to Friday, and the Saturday Stay and Play Group takes place at weekends. 1,110 sessions were provided to 49 children during the year (2020: 1,774 sessions / 51 children).

KCA also provides a variety of family and children’s services funded by the City Bridge Trust, John Lyon’s Charity and the local Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Find out more about KCA

Plans for the Future

The charity’s main objectives for the coming year are:

LDN London

  • to maintain the health and welfare of the people with learning disabilities who use our services and the staff teams who have provided high quality support during the Covid19 pandemic.
  • to establish our LDN Connect initiatives in multiple London boroughs.
  • to implement our integrated people strategy which includes refreshed learning and development as well as recruitment, retention and recognition initiatives.
  • to strengthen our strategic partnerships in relation to the delivery of good quality and innovative accommodation services.
  • to find new ways to diversify our income and advance our fundraising and marketing activities, especially in light of the Covid19 pandemic.

KCA

  • to secure funding to mitigate the ongoing financial impact of the Covid19 pandemic.
  • to increase the level of outreach support provided.
  • to Increase the number of sessional workers available.
  • to increase the level of unrestricted general funds.
  • to increase levels of fundraised income and donations.

Covid Stories

Read Michaela, Estelle and Caroline’s stories and the impact lockdown has had on their lives

Read the full story

Covid-19

There has been a significant impact on LDN London as a result of the Covid19 pandemic. Our LDN Drop-in and LDN Connect group activities and holiday schemes remained closed during the year and there were significantly reduced levels of support provided across our short breaks respite and LDN4U outreach services. In April, May and June our Rainbow Nursery remained open but with reduced numbers providing essential childcare for keyworkers. The vaccine roll out and easing of lockdown restrictions should see a return to pre-pandemic activity levels.

Whilst this has presented major challenges, additional grant funding was secured from all local authorities and a range of funders to mitigate the financial impact of Covid19 and support the charity during this difficult period.

Download the full report

These few pages set out a summary of our our annual accounts and what we have achieved in 2021. To download the official set of accounts please click below.

Download report