Gateway into the Community believes everyone deserves to reach their potential. CEO Julia Ferguson explains how the unrestricted grant and development support from Lloyds Bank Foundation enabled the charity to continue to tailor its offer to meet the needs of people with a learning disability and remain at the heart of the local community.
Because of our specialist experience, and understanding of Jennifer’s complex needs, and because she trusted us, we were able to advocate for her with local services, checking on her daily and liaising with hospital staff and Macmillan nurses. Eventually, we supported her into a hospice, ensuring she had comfort, security and dignity right to the end of her life
When someone has a learning disability, it affects how they learn and communicate, including challenges in learning new skills, living independently and when faced with new or complex information. Gateway into the Community helps more than 200 people with a learning disability each year, and over 120 people attend various groups and activities each week. The people we support are aged between 13 and over 80 with a wide range of needs.
We aim to ensure they are not held back by their disability and have the same life chances and choices as their peers, increase their independence and quality of life and have the opportunity to make and develop friendships. Being based at the centre of the local community is our strength. We are established and well recognised within Hexham and work with many other local services such as the local special school, college and several businesses. We pride ourselves on a bespoke offering and being able to adapt to the needs of the people we support.
We run a range of grant-funded social and special interest groups chosen by our beneficiaries, these include performance, creative sessions, healthy living, computing and sports. We also provide an individual service for those with high support needs, day service and accredited courses in personal and social development. We have a life skills training kitchen, bespoke sensory room and our ‘Gateway into Nature’ garden.
We have been working with Lloyds Bank Foundation since 2021, having been lucky enough to secure a £50,000 grant over two years. The grant is fantastic because it covers our core costs – my role and the administration team, which comprises two people. These costs are always the hardest to secure yet provide the foundations from which services can operate. Having support from Lloyds Bank Foundation makes us more sustainable and when we apply to other funders, they are reassured because of the support we have in place.
But it’s not just the money Lloyds Banks Foundation provides; it’s the whole package that makes such a difference! And it’s not only the amount and type of support we’ve had; it’s the way it has been offered – from a perspective of understanding our needs as a small charity. This combined support enables us to keep our autonomy and care for everybody – we want to stay true to what our experience and expertise tells us is the right thing to do, rather than be dictated to or told who we can and can’t support.
CEO Julia Ferguson with Lloyds Bank Foundation Grant Manager Neil Shashoua
I was surprised by how many opportunities the Foundation shares and offers to develop skills, network and collaborate. I am part of a Peer Learning Network with other small charity CEOs, organised by the Foundation. We meet virtually, sharing ideas and solving problems together etc It can be lonely as a CEO, so it’s great to have people to bounce ideas off. - Julia Ferguson - CEO, Gateway in the Community
On top of this, the Foundation organised additional support from Lloyds Banking Group and our senior management team had the opportunity to work through some pressing challenges with staff from the bank, such as succession planning of our administrator and the development of our Board.
The Foundation has also provided me with 1:1 support by connecting me with another local charity CEO. We meet monthly and look at areas of need such as supervision and staff appraisals to provide feedback on performance and identify development needs. As half of our trustees are people with learning disabilities or their carers we will look at how we can best support them in this role, as well as recruit new trustees with a range of skills in order to deliver the organisation’s strategy and manage risk. We are now looking at how we measure and talk about our impact to help secure future funding so that we can be more sustainable as an organisation. This consultancy support has been fantastic.
Although we have expanded – we now have 30 members of staff – we take one step at a time to ensure it does not compromise the quality of our service and ability to provide bespoke support for our members. We have plans to grow our offer, moving into another part of the building we are in to create a local community hub. It will be a great space to bring the community and members together. We have a vision of it being a space that members can use and have the support to showcase the skills they have learnt to friends and family - cooking and throwing a dinner party, for example. With the support from the Foundation, we feel confident about the future.
We truly value each individual, and a recent story that demonstrates just how bespoke our service is, is the story of Jennifer, one of our long-standing members. Jennifer became terminally ill with cancer. She and her husband both had a learning disability, and her family were not local. Because of our specialist experience, and understanding of Jennifer’s complex needs, and because she trusted us, we were able to advocate for her with local services, checking on her daily and liaising with hospital staff and Macmillan nurses. Eventually, we supported her into a hospice, ensuring she had comfort, security and dignity right to the end of her life. Her family and the nurses and doctors we spoke to were grateful and praised the support and communication they had witnessed and experienced from our team.
