Coinciding with our Annual General Meeting, we are delighted to share the publication of our Impact Report for 2022/23.
Download and read our Impact Report
In this report, we reflect on the sad passing of our Patron, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, as well as sharing updates from year three of our Strategic Plan and how we’ve embraced opportunities to innovate and change, while overcoming circumstances outside of our control.
We also reflect on how we’re reaching more beneficiaries than ever before – including celebrating a major milestone with our digital consultations – while sharing powerful, real-life stories demonstrating the impact we’ve had on our beneficiaries’ lives.
Our Chief Executive, Dr Jill Tolfrey, says of the year: “I am once again delighted to be able to report back to you on the highlights of another successful year, both in terms of our impact on the health and wellbeing of the fire services community, and in terms of the incredible support you once again showed to us.”
She adds: “On a personal level, it was an honour to represent the Charity – and all of our beneficiaries, supporters, volunteers and employees throughout the Queen’s patronship – at her state funeral in September 2022. Such an incredible once in a lifetime experience, I found myself sitting with one of our beneficiaries, a wheelwright responsible for the wheels on the gun carriage carrying Her Late Majesty. If you are at Harcombe House at any time, all the documents from the service are in the display case.
“2022/23 also marked the third year of our Strategic Plan for 2020-25 – a plan that has had to adapt to changing circumstances as we navigated first the covid pandemic, and more recently the cost of living crisis. However, I am enormously proud of how the Charity’s teams have worked in an agile way to meet these challenges and to keep us moving forward in a positive direction on all fronts.”
We’ve shared an overview of the last financial year in numbers, including all of our fundraising highlights. For example, our Fire Family Fundraisers took part in an incredible array of fundraising activities, at home, in their local communities and even across the Atlantic in a boat. Together they raised a staggering £227,148. Meanwhile, we received 2,243 one-off donations through our website throughout the financial year, totalling more than £221,700.
We also share a glimpse at just a few of the many successes we’ve seen in our health and wellbeing service delivery, including supporting more than 10,000 beneficiaries across the year and the delivery of 15 Hope Programmes – among many others, both online and face-to-face.
Chair of the Board of Trustees, John Baines, concluded in the Report by recognising our late Patron’s support of our Charity, while adding: “I have also been delighted over the last year at the great strides forward we have taken with our digital services. We are now able to reach and support more people, in their own homes, across the UK.
“Reaching our 10,000th digital consultation was a significant milestone that is worth our reflection and praise for the teams involved. Today we are able to bring members of our physical and psychological services teams into people’s homes, meaning we can support thousands more who would otherwise be unable to attend one of our centres.
“However, while on the one hand expanding our digital potential must be celebrated, it also shines a light on the work we still have to do to reach some groups in our fire family. In particular, I am keen for us to do all we can in the years ahead to reach and work with on call firefighters and beneficiaries in our devolved nations, using every digital and in-person opportunity to do so. The same applies to our ‘hard to reach’ groups, including our retired community, dependants or those left behind, together with green book staff and others in our wider fire family.”
