Toynbee Hall Strategic Plan 2016-19 For a future without poverty

Toynbee Hall Strategic Plan 2016-2019 1. About Toynbee Hall Toynbee Hall is an anti-poverty charity and social action centre based in the East End of London. We are working to create a future free from poverty. We work alongside people, families and communities to develop their skills and open up access to opportunities; to tackle the root causes that trap people in poverty and provide services and support to mitigate its impact. We support people to have a voice and be able to advocate for a future free from poverty.

1.1 Vision Toynbee Hall’s vision is of a future free from poverty. Our mission is to support people and communities to break down the barriers that trap them in poverty. 1.2 Our values; Bold

• We act with ambition, integrity and with the courage of our convictions, using evidence-

based social action to shape what we do and give us an authoritative voice to challenge,

influence and make a difference.

Enquiring • Inquisitive and collaborative, we seek out relationships with people, communities and

partners to develop, as well as to share our knowledge and understanding; facilitating and

supporting them to design their own solutions to tackling poverty

Open • We are open-minded, inclusive and transparent; learning from what we do; seeking fresh

and alternative perspectives to shape and influence our practice.

1.3 Strategic Aims We support people to;

Improve their financial wellbeing

Exercise their rights and have access justice

Improve their confidence and wellbeing

We achieve these aims through a combination of service delivery, research, policy development and advocacy;

We run a range of 18 projects and services, operating locally, across London and nationally

We support around 14,000 service users each year largely from our site in Aldgate East

We lead and manage the pan London debt advice service, Capitalise a network of local advice centres that supports 22,000 Londoners with complex multiple debt each year

We lead and manage the Tower Hamlets Linkage Partnership, a borough-wide network of services aiming to connect older people, reduce isolation and improve health and wellbeing

We use evidence from these services and research to influence local, regional and national policy development

2. Summary

This strategic plan sets out the context to our work, what we plan to do over the next 3 years, the impact we hope to make and the resources we need to be able to do that. We have a separate estate redevelopment strategy that sets out our exciting redevelopment plans. We aim to sustain our current portfolio of services, implementing a range of service improvements to enhance support on building financial and legal capability and integrating a more social action approach. We plan to increase service capacity in some areas, particularly advice services. We will also undertake a co-produced research project with older people to develop a strategy for tackling poverty and social isolation. Alongside sustaining and continuing to improve our services we are planning on delivering three key new priorities that will enable us to develop and pilot more social action focussed approaches to tackling poverty; • Service Design – implementing our Model for Meaningful Change • Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action • Tackling the Poverty Premium 3. Context of poverty and inequality in London Like all inner London neighbourhoods our local area is undergoing massive regeneration and change. New private housing developments, the eastward extension of the City, the growth of Canary Wharf and major transport developments are creating unprecedented opportunities and significant population growth facilitated by significant housing development. However for many of our local residents either trapped in low waged employment or on the edges of the labour market those opportunities are presently out of reach. The combination of low paid, insecure employment, a growing reliance on the increasingly expensive private rented sector for housing along with the implementation of welfare reform is creating a highly insecure and transient existence for many people in our local community, struggling to make ends meet particularly as living costs are continuing to rise faster than average incomes. Life is increasingly precarious for many people in the city and the need to support people to develop their financial and legal capability is becoming increasingly important. Poverty in London now affects more working households than it does other groups, and this is forecast to continue to rise. We know from our own research that many of these low income households incur significant additional living costs through the poverty premium, effectively trapping low income households in a downward spiral of rising costs creating an increasing reliance on using credit as an income supplement and fuelling increased debt. This combination of factors is also driving social isolation. Many local families are forced to move out of the local area to find cheaper housing, further breaking down their informal social support and networks at a time when public sector funding cuts mean there is less support available. The growing night-time economy, increasingly expensive shops and bars particularly isolates many older people in our community who feel increasingly disconnected from a sense of place.

This context presents very significant challenges for Toynbee Hall. Demand for our services has grown considerably over the past 5 years; increasing demand for welfare benefits and debt advice along with housing and employment advice have more than doubled the number of service users to nearly 14,000 people per year. We forecast that demand for our services and support will continue to rise over the next 5 years and indeed beyond. More people are struggling with complex and multiple debt, the seemingly inevitable administrative problems associated with welfare reform, growing problems with private landlords and zero hours contracts all which increases demand on our services. Public sector funding cuts compound these challenges reducing support for people at a time of growing need. These circumstances have undoubtedly contributed to this growing demand and we expect this to continue. Where feasible our plan includes measures to respond to this increased demand. But we also recognise that we need to do more than just provide services, and this plan sets out our ambition to develop a more social action focussed approach to our work that can also build capability and resilience. 4. Our approach to tackling poverty

Historically Toynbee Hall has pursued an education, wellbeing and social justice approach to tackling poverty complemented with a strong campaigning and social action focus. By supporting people to develop their skills we have enhanced their employment opportunities to increase their income. We have also provided a place for people to meet, build relationships, share ideas and improve their wellbeing. This has been accompanied by a social justice approach, mitigating the impact of poverty by providing legal advice and support to help people resolve their immediate social welfare problems. Help on tackling insecure housing and employment, problems with benefit and debt have formed the mainstay of this aspect of our work for nearly 130 years. Alongside this service based approach Toynbee Hall has a rich heritage of research, campaigning and organising for social change. From work on establishing rent committees in the 19th century, to supporting the development of trades unions in early 20th century to highlighting the inequity of the poverty premium in 21st century we have initiated and led social action to deliver more systemic solutions to tackling poverty and disadvantage. In recent years Toynbee Hall’s service delivery and number of service users has grown very considerably. Whilst this is evident of the trust and recognition that we have with our local communities, we recognise that we need to do more than just provide services. A lot of what we do now provides valuable support to mitigate the effects of poverty. This includes debt advice and income maximisation, helping people sort out the immediate social welfare problems that disproportionately impact on low income households. We tackle social isolation particularly through our work with older people, and support people to develop the skills and confidence to succeed in education or in work. We want to retain and in some instances increase this support over the next three years to be able to respond to growing demand. But we also want recapture our more radical past and find more systemic and sustainable approaches to tackling poverty and deprivation. We want to work collaboratively with people to design and test more ways out of poverty, and to support people in developing their own solutions to poverty and the impact it has on their lives, facilitating social action. This means supporting people to become more resilient, particularly strengthening their financial resilience whilst ensuring they can exercise their rights; to enable them to take advantage of the growing opportunities in London and to combat the increasing social isolation that many people experience in a rapidly polarising London. We also want to support people to have a voice and to find ways to collaborate and advocate with others to solve common problems, and to tackle the growing inequalities that we see all around us. Over the next 3 years we want to start that journey to a more radical and

innovative future balanced alongside the practical support that we provide. This plan sets out how we intend to do that. 5. The Toynbee Hall estate Over the next 3 years we will complete a £16m restoration and redevelopment of the Toynbee Hall estate and implement our redevelopment strategy. This includes restoring the historic Toynbee Hall, improving the quality of community and service space and enable us to become more financially resilient by increasing the income generated from our assets. Our redevelopment will also enable us to share the rich stories of our heritage through a new learning and exhibition programme, Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action which we hope will inspire new generations of social activists. This is a massive and exciting undertaking for us which will have profound impact on the future and financial sustainability of Toynbee Hall for generations to come. The redevelopment project will though significantly impact on our capacity, particularly in terms of leadership and management. In developing this strategic plan we have also been mindful of the impact these changes are already having on our staff, volunteers and community of users and partners who have and are experiencing significant change and disruption as a consequence. We will need to continue careful change management throughout this time. Our redevelopment strategy and project management plans are well documented elsewhere and are not therefore repeated in this Strategic Plan. These are available separately on request. 6. London Fairness Commission Toynbee Hall hosted the secretariat of the independent London Fairness Commission which ended in April 2016. The Commission has produced a set of recommendations for the Mayor of London to adopt that provide an action plan to create a fairer city and reverse the growing inequality in London. The recommendations focussed on housing, income and wealth. Our work on tackling the poverty premium incorporates elements of the Commission’s recommendations which we are planning to take forward and we will ensure is linked in to wider London-wide development on cost reduction. Other recommendations the Commission has made are out with our areas of expertise and focus on reform of employability services, housing development or business practice transparency. These recommendations are best championed by partners with relevant expertise and experience to shape and inform policy and practice and will also need to reflect the priorities, plans and the structures that the new Mayor will be putting in place but which won’t be known until later in 2016. At the present time we are still in discussion with the sponsors of the Commission to determine how best to advocate and take forward the Commission’s recommendations, to evaluate the impact of the Commission’s work in 2017/18 and to set in place a legacy index of measures to track progress on tackling inequality in London. None of this work has yet been costed and it will require additional resources to be able to deliver. Given the uncertainty that exists we have not therefore included any specific actions to support the implementation of the Commission’s report. We will maintain the dialogue we are presently having with sponsors before developing any further proposals for action later in 2016.

6. Retaining and improving our services

We plan to sustain our existing services, identifying and implementing a range of opportunities to continuously improve service outcomes. The plan builds on our track record and assumes that current levels of predominantly statutory funding is sustained. Our funding plans are set out in the section on Resources. Building on trend over the last 5 years, we forecast that demand for some services will continue grow over the next 3 three years. Where we believe it feasible this plan sets out how we will respond to this increasing demand. We organise the management of our services into three service departments, Money, debt and advice services, Community Services and National Services. They are supported by an Information, Research and Evaluation Team that provides ICT, performance management, research and evaluation support. Each service department has their own Business Plan that sets out more detailed aims, objectives, targets and resource plans. These plans provide the basis for our performance management system and we report quarterly against a set of key performance indicators. 6.1 Summary of Service Plans 2016-19 Money, Debt and Advice Services

Service Scope 2016/19 plan

Advice for people affected by cancer

Advice service on welfare rights funded by Macmillan for people affected by cancer living in the London Boroughs of Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and City of London

Sustain at existing levels of service. Funding is presently reviewed annually.

City Advice Generalist advice service funded by City of London for City residents and workers

Sustain new service delivery partnership and increase take up amongst City workers. Service will recommissioned in 2018/19

Capitalise Debt Advice Service

Free specialist debt advice service funded by MAS delivered from multi-site locations across East London, alongside funding and management of a pan London network of services

Sustain and respond to increased demand by diversifying channels of delivery. We will identify and pilot how to improve financial resilience of users. Service expected to be re-commissioned 2018.

Free Legal Advice Centre

Pro bono legal advice clinic funded by corporate partners, providing free advice on social welfare law, runs 3 evenings per week and a monthly Saturday morning clinic

Sustain and respond to increased demand by continuing to develop volunteer. We plan to identify and pilot legal capability and social action development in housing and employment advice. Additional funding is required to do this.

Money Mentors A London wide financial capability and knowledge sharing project funded by corporate partners

Sustain at existing levels of service, with development plans linked to Digital Money Mentors online

learning and plans on tackling the poverty premium.

Tower Hamlets Debt & Money Management Advice

Advice and support on debt and financial capability for people with complex multiple debt living in Tower Hamlets. Funded by L B Tower Hamlets

Sustain at existing levels of service, identifying and piloting how to improve financial resilience of users. Funding is higher risk given cuts to third sector commissioning budget.

Community services - heritage, learning and wellbeing

Service Scope

Make It! Young people’s development programme, Make It! uses informal education practices to engage Year 9 students who are marginalised/ overlooked within the school system

Sustain new delivery model introduced 2015, whilst increasing number of school partners and identify opportunities to increase scale of delivery

Be Active Summer holiday outdoor discovery programme for primary school children making the transition to secondary school

Sustain existing service, funded by trusts.

Deesha An English language and literacy skills programme for women

Sustain existing service and improve learning evaluation methods. Develop current school learning partnership and identify opportunities to meet increased demand. 4- year trust funding in place provides leverage to match fund

City 50+ City50+ service funded by City of London tackles social isolation and improves wellbeing for older residents through specialist advice, networks and support.

Sustain existing service and review service model as part of step change programme with older people. Recommissioning from 2018.

Dignify To raise awareness of, and tackle the issues of elder abuse funder by LB Tower Hamlets.

Sustain existing service in the short term and review long term plans in partnership with Tower Hamlets

Linkage Plus Helps people over 50 stay active and healthy, combats isolation and refer them to specialist services on advice, health care. Joint-funded LB Tower Hamlets and NHS

Sustain existing service and review service model as part of step change programme with older people.

Wellbeing Centre

Drop-in, lunch and activities for older people funded by LB Tower Hamlets

Sustain existing services and review service model as part of step change programme with older people

START START an adult safe guarding project for people with learning disabilities based on the Dignify methodology.

This project will end when funding ceases later in 2016.

6.2 Service development and improvement plans 6.2.1 Money, Debt and Advice Services The key service development priority for 2016/19 across all of our advice services is to develop and test models of capability building which also facilitate a social action approach. We want to support our users and the community more widely to build their knowledge and skills in key financial and legal issues so they are more resilient and less dependent on advice services. We plan to develop financial capability for debt advice service users and legal capability for FLAC users seeking housing and employment advice. By integrating a social action approach alongside capability building we will encourage and support people to create their own networks of mutual support and information sharing, and exploring ways in which they may be able to organise campaigns or advocate for policy change that address some of the root causes of the problems they are experiencing. This approach very much reflects our practice and learning from the Money Mentors programme over the last 3 years which brings together capability building support alongside facilitating information sharing, networking and a Champion building approach; that is where Mentors take on a champion role in financial wellbeing and share the outcomes of their personal learning across their networks, perhaps in a local nursery, Church or on their housing estate. The use of the MAP tool for our debt advice service has already begun to demonstrate that the debt advice process itself results in self-reported capability improvement. We want to build on this initial support and explore what more can be done to develop this capability even further. This a priority that we share with MAS who have indicated that there may be additional funding under their What Works programme to test this over the next year or so. From our own past experience on piloting wider financial capability for debt advice users we recognise however that for many people the outcome of an effective debt advice intervention is for them to stop having to think about their debt. This can present a real challenge to then engaging people to work with us on developing capability over a longer period of time. This is challenge we will need to address. We plan to measure the impact of our financial capability work by using the MAP tool to demonstrate how we have improved financial wellbeing. We want to replicate this model with our Free Legal Advice Centre too, developing and piloting a legal capability programme combined with a similar social action approach. Demand for housing and employment advice at FLAC has grown very significantly over the past few years. Socio-economic and demographic changes are driving the rapid growth of private rented sector which is causing significant increase in demand for advice as many tenants experience insecurity, rising rents and poor standards. Zero hours contracts, insecure work and poor employment practice in many low waged industries have a similar impact on demand for employment advice. We plan to secure additional resources to develop and pilot a legal capability project drawing on an increasing sector wide learning and again combine this with a social action approach. We hope this will increase participants’ knowledge and skills and through a similar Champion programme as Money Mentors support people to facilitate information sharing and policy and advocacy work led by service users. There is no legal capability measurement tool in place at present and therefore we will need to identify what impact measures can be developed to enable us to assess whether this type of approach can work. 6.2.2 Community services - heritage, learning and wellbeing Over the past few years we have made considerable improvements to our portfolio of services and activities for older people. Service user numbers have increased and we have improved the funding model to reduce the amount of unrestricted income we have needed to subsidise restricted funding.

We now have a unique opportunity following a recent and substantial legacy gift to build on this success and review and develop our longer term strategy for working with older people. This is particularly timely as it will provide the evidence and insight to shape what we do when the redevelopment project is complete and we return to Toynbee Hall in 2018 with a new bespoke Wellbeing Centre. We plan to begin this review in early 2017 with a co-produced research project, led and designed by older people. This will seek to identify older people’s current needs and aspirations, provide them with a platform to share their narratives and invite them to develop and design their own solutions and activities that they believe will make a difference to them. We will combine social research and advocacy with our Model for Meaningful Change to facilitate this design process. We will also draw on the findings and methodology of our Rebel Researchers project in 2014 in designing the research process itself. We will endeavour to involve local Commissioners of older people’s services in this process too so that our research can have the widest influence and impact. At this point in time we do not know what the outcome of this review will be. And whilst the legacy offers us the opportunity to fund this review entirely we want to use the gift strategically to lever in additional match funding and provide the foundation for a 3 to 5 year investment in tackling poverty with older people. 6.3 Service growth to meet growing need

As the context to this plan indicates we predict continued growth of 10% a year in people needing our services in 16/17 and 17/18 and then from 18/19, in part facilitated by our new premise and full implementation of our heritage programme, we anticipate this growth will increase by 15% from 18/19. We do not forecast income for the majority of these services increasing however and there are therefore a number of key actions will need to implement to responding to this changing context.

• Debt advice services Our existing funding agreement with MAS includes targets to increase capacity across all the pan London delivery partners by diversifying the channels of delivery, in particular referring more people to telephone and online advice and focussing face to face delivery on those people who will benefit most for this type of support. This channel shift is complemented through targeted partnership development programme and marketing campaigns to increase take up of debt advice services. We will identify how best to respond to changing demographics in London such as increasing number of private tenants with complex, multiple debt.

• FLAC Legal aids cuts have led to a significant reduction in the availability of free legal advice. Services such as FLAC are often now the only way in which people can have access to justice if they are unable to afford it. We have made significant progress in making FLAC more sustainable and increasing service capacity over the last two years through a corporate partnership model with a number of big law firms. This partnership combines a financial contribution towards our management costs of FLAC complemented with a regular volunteering programme with their solicitors.

• Deesha - Expansion of schools based ESOL provision:

There is growing demand from local women for ESOL classes, particularly those who are in pre-employment. Coupled with a strong interest from E1 schools partnership to support ESOL learning of mothers we plan to explore what potential there is to further develop and expand this service. We will begin this by seeking funding for an impact evaluation of Deesha, on a similar model to our

successful Money Mentors evaluation and which then supported further investment/growth as well as developing a service improvement plan.

Development of youth services Our current youth project continues to provide high quality mentoring in Tower Hamlets but is of a relatively small scale. Over the next 2 years we want to review the feasibility of extending the model more widely across more East London boroughs, again in partnership with secondary schools. Our Schools Heritage programme to be implemented over the next 3 years will be an integral element of developing our youth offer and extending our relationship building opportunities with more schools. Table One Forecast number of service users and visitor numbers 2016/19

Toynbee Hall - Service users and visitors

16/17 17/18 18/19

Money, Debt and Advice Services: Capitalise & TH Debt Advice, FLAC, Macmillan Advice, City Advice

7539 8292 9535

Wellbeing and Learning Community Services: Wellbeing, Linkage, Make It! Be Active, Deesha, Money Mentors, City 50 plus; START, Dignify

7060 7766 8930

Commercial Hire Customers 0 5000 33000

Heritage Visitors 0 5000 13000

Total Users & Visitors 14599 26058 64465

Digital Visitors 65000 71000 78100

Total Visitors 79599 97058 142,565

Assumptions

• Figures are based on Toynbee Hall opening in June 2017 and being fully operational by September 2017. • 15/16 and 17/18 annual growth in service users by 10% • 18/19 annual growth in service users by 15%

6.4 What resources will we need to sustain and improve services? We start this strategic plan with a high level of confirmed service income for 2016/17 and to some degree into 2018. This provides considerable certainty about our service delivery and the number of people we expect to support through that activity. Whilst income is not confirmed for the majority of our services in 2018/19 our projections are that we expect the majority of this service income to be continued throughout this period. The risk of cuts to funding are more significant for services we deliver funded by local government. Our assessment is that LinkAge funding represents the highest risk of cuts from 2017/18 onwards, although the LinkAge model strongly reflects priorities of the Health Service in particular on social prescribing and tackling social isolation. In reality there is little more we can do to mitigate this risk of cuts other than to continue to demonstrate the outcome of the services we provide and to advocate for ongoing funding. Any loss of funding would result in a service closure, and reductions in funding would similarly reduce capacity. We do not believe it feasible that alternative non-statutory funding could be secured for these services.

Our Money Advice Service (MAS) funding is confirmed until September 2017. Following the Government’s decision to abolish MAS and replace it with a new debt and financial capability agency from April 2018 we expect the current MAS funding agreement to be extended, most likely for at least a 12 month period to September 2018 and possibly to April 2019. It is likely a new and competitive commissioning round will then be undertaken. In the meantime the existing funding spend will need to be reviewed to enable us to free up some resources for testing financial resilience

work and continue to respond to increased targets. The London wide pattern of provision is kept under regular review to ensure we are sensitive to the changing demographic of poverty in London. We have also recently secured 3 year grants/contracts in Tower Hamlets and the City for advice and wellbeing services. Overall this creates a relatively high degree of certainty around statutory funding over the next few years. Alongside this statutory funding we need to sustain current levels of trust funding whilst increasing our unrestricted donations. Our plan to sustain trust funding is strongly linked to the implementation of the Model for Meaningful Change which will generate new and innovative ideas for tackling poverty and which will provide a pipeline of funding ideas for us to take to trusts and foundations. Our fundraising team has been successful in increasing our corporate funding for FLAC and for Money Mentors. We will need to sustain this income whilst also seeking opportunities to increase corporate funding particularly for our Deesha project and our youth services.

6.5 National services

Toynbee Hall’s National Services team aims to share our expertise of local and regional service delivery, research and advocacy at the national level, ensuring our learning about ‘what works’ informs commissioners, policy makers, researchers and practitioners in designing and delivering policies and practice which achieve demonstrable impact in eradicating poverty.

The team has particular expertise on financial wellbeing and understanding of how financial resilience is undermined by poverty. The team works to a whole systems approach working on a consultancy and project basis predominantly with organizations seeking to improve their financial wellbeing policy and practice and the financial resilience of their service users. The team also undertakes a range of research and policy development work. Our current range of core services and products includes the MAP financial wellbeing measurement tool, FIHCO (Financial Inclusion Health check), and the Financial Health Exchange, a knowledge sharing portal on financial wellbeing. These service are complemented with bespoke consultancy services on financial wellbeing research, training and organizational development and change and large scale programme management.

The team is financed through a diverse range of sources including both consultancy contracts managed through Toynbee Hall trading and through grant funding managed through the charity. The business model for our National Services team is based on a social enterprise model and was based on a market appraisal that particularly identified demand from Housing Associations to embed financial wellbeing into their tenant support programmes as a key element to their welfare reform programmes. In reality this assumption has not materialized. Welfare reform became a lesser priority for Housing Associations following the Government’s announcement to extend the Right to Buy scheme to Housing Associations and force them to reduce rent levels. Welfare reform has also has less impact than initially forecast. We need to re-appraise this market and our business model over the next 12 months.

The team has therefore becoming increasingly funded on traditional restricted grant funding. This includes managing large grant funded projects such as the Barclays Community Finance project supporting the development of credit unions, and a recent Comic Relief funding project to develop our Money Mentor project as an online learning product.

Summary of National Services plans 2016-19

Service Scope 2016/19 plan

Money Access Participation (MAP tool)

MAP is a financial inclusion wellbeing measurement and outcomes tool that is currently in development and piloting phase

MAP is now available for purchase and a marketing plan is in place to achieve annual target sales of £200k 2017/18

Evaluation and research services

We offer bespoke financial inclusion and wellbeing research and evaluation services

To increase the volume and scale of research contracts undertaken supported by a marketing plan and awareness raising campaign through Financial Health Exchange

Financial inclusion training and consultancy

We offer bespoke financial inclusion capacity building support. Our financial capability services are designed to help people experiencing financial exclusion to gain the confidence and skills to take control of their money.

Having now developed a suite of training products the priority is now on marketing and sales growth. We keep sales target under review. We will deliver the new Digital Money Mentors programme that will create an online learning tool for use in our Money Mentors programme. Barclays Community Finance project presently funded until April 2019.

Financial Health Exchange

The national portal for financial wellbeing. Promotes best practice and knowledge exchange across the financial inclusion sector, as well as raising awareness of the need to expand financial inclusion work within other sectors. Undertakes policy and advocacy work

Implement plans to promote and market the portal, alongside developing content. Marketing supported by national programme of sector engagement events that are trust funded.

7. Social action, heritage and poverty premium

Much of our current local and regional service activity is focussed on mitigating the impact of poverty. As set out earlier we plan to retain this portfolio of services but to complement it with new developments that stimulate social action, build resilience and open up opportunities for people to be able to break down the barriers and cycle that trap people in poverty. Over the past few years we have developed two approaches that form the foundations for this change; our model for meaningful change and our heritage and social action programmes. We plan to implement both of the models over the next 3 years. Alongside this we want to develop our existing work to prototype approaches to tackling the poverty premium. 7.1 Service Design - Model for meaningful change Like many third sector organisations, Toynbee Hall increasingly delivers services on behalf of public sector commissioners, particularly in advice and community wellbeing. Our success in winning and delivering these contracts demonstrates our reputation at a local, regional and national level and the positive – albeit short-term – outcomes we are able to deliver for ever growing numbers of disadvantaged people.

Whilst we deliver high quality services we have increasingly recognised that the over engineered commissioning models that pervade our sector do not always deliver the best outcomes for service users, nor do they empower or build personal resilience. Our services provide us with enormous insight into people’s needs and provide the basis for many of the relationships that we have with our local community. They react well to meeting immediate needs of people, often in crisis but do not address the systemic root causes of the issues facing our community. We therefore want to complement statutory funded services with additional and specialist capacity to enable us to work collaboratively with our service users and the wider community to stimulate new innovation and development that will build their resilience, capacity and independence and embed a social action approach – supporting people to advocate and campaign for change as well as facilitating mutual support. This process will give our community opportunities for greater learning, campaigning and social action. It will give them a pioneering platform and, most importantly, a place to be heard. We call this process our Model for Meaningful Change (MMC). It will become at the heart of Toynbee Hall’s operational infrastructure; a vital component of our vision for a future free from poverty. We also plan to use the same methods to redesign our service delivery models with service users to better deliver the outcomes they need. MMC is designed to use evidence of current trends in local social problems, using data gathered from our Initial Assessment Tool, Information and Systems Team and evidence from our portfolio of frontline services which are at the forefront of tackling financial, legal, social and educational inequality. We will build on this evidence with structured focus groups made up of local people, staff and volunteers, community leaders, leading minds in the private sector and technology innovators who will come together to work collaboratively to develop innovative solutions that create real change. To implement this we will create a new role at the heart of the organisation – a Head of Service Design. We also plan to test the model in building legal capability. This would take the principles of this service design model and use that as process with users of our existing Free Legal Advice Centre to identify and test ways of building legal capability and know how so we can better understand how we might help people to become more resilient and now need to rely on FLAC services for repeat problems. This will again require some additional resources to be able to pilot. 7.1.1 What do we hope it achieves? Our expectation is that through the Model for Meaningful we will achieve four key outcomes to support our work on eradicating, preventing and mitigating the impact of poverty whilst supporting early intervention practice; 1. Develop new campaigns, products and solutions that support people to eradicate and break the cycle of poverty. This might be designing a campaign to restrict letting agent fees, or developing plans for a community run employment support service, building resilience through developing a local savings club, or improving wellbeing by setting up a new debt counselling mutual support group. 2. Develop solutions to enable early intervention opportunities to be realised in key anti-poverty actions in skills development, debt and credit and social isolation 3. Provide our community with a platform to tell their stories, inspire and support people to take a social action approach to meeting their needs and addressing their concerns 4. Deliver system change by changing the culture of Toynbee Hall from focusing on meeting the outcomes of commissioned services to meeting own outcomes based on local need, and changing the commissioning practice by using the evidence and impact of service design to Influence commissioners

14

Figure One – Model for Meaningful Change

15

7.1.2 Resources We need to secure funding for the new Service Design post in 2016/17. We have already made significant progress in securing a contribution towards the cost of the post which we now need to match fund. 7.2 Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action Toynbee Hall has been tackling poverty and deprivation for over 130 years. During that time we have worked with local communities to develop and pioneer a variety of research, campaigns and services that respond to the specific needs of the time. From developing adult education and free legal advice in 1880s to debt advice and financial inclusion in 1990s we have combined research, with service development alongside campaigning in an integrated social action model. One of the remarkable aspects of Toynbee Hall is that the issues and needs in our local community have remained remarkably constant throughout this long history. Poor quality and insecure housing and employment, low income and child poverty, lack of skills and access to opportunities, high cost credit and debt are as prevalent in the work we do today as they were over 130 years ago. Progress has undoubtedly been made and the lives of people in the East End today are transformed compared to our Victorian predecessors. Disappointingly though too many of those characteristics of Victorian life are being witnessed once again. We believe that sharing the stories about our past will be an inspiration to new generations of social activists. In particular showcasing the more pioneering and campaigning activity we did in the past is one way that we plan to stimulate social action. The restoration of Toynbee Hall provides a unique opportunity for us to do this as we can integrate stories of the past in the design and restoration of the building, effectively creating a living museum of social action. We have already completed extensive work on our archive and over the next few years we will be picking out the key stories from our past and showcasing them in a new learning and exhibition programme that will bring the past alive by linking them to the present. Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action is our four year heritage development plan covering 2015/19. The plan aims to connect the restoration of Toynbee Hall with a new programme of activity to engage people with our heritage, and embed it into our learning and community work for the first time ever. Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action combines four key elements;

Heritage Exhibition

School Heritage Programme

Residential Volunteering

Heritage and ESOL

We will integrate heritage learning across each of these elements. This will be a social action based, combining historical learning with action based activity/campaign design. Our local community and service users will be fully involved in these developments from local history research through to social action heritage workshops and campaign development. We will also make sure we link this work to the Model for Meaningful Change, as the approaches are very complimentary. Implementation of Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action began in 2015 with our archive moving to London Metropolitan Archive, being catalogued and now being digitised. This will enable us to offer much greater access to our collection, conserving it whilst also being able to use it in our work. Work on our archive is a precursor to four other themes of work.

7.2.1 Heritage Exhibition

The Heritage Exhibition will be displayed in a new entrance to Toynbee Hall and will be open to the public for 60 hours each week. It will showcase Toynbee Hall as a powerhouse for social change.

16

Stories on show will include an overview of 19th Century London which created the need for Toynbee Hall, the story of our founders and the settlement movement, and look at how Toynbee Hall has effected change by telling the stories of key campaigns, from anti-sweating to child poverty. The exhibition will cover seven key themes of our history: workers’ conditions, opening minds (education), childhood poverty, access to justice, housing, living together as neighbours, and charity and welfare.

Educational activities and public events

Alongside the exhibition we will develop a series of heritage event, walks and tours in collaboration with other local organisations, including heritage, arts, higher education and voluntary organisations. A heritage art project will be conducted with local primary schools for children to explore the public realm and the use of Toynbee Hall as a building over the years. We will offer training opportunities in heritage skills, public speaking, debating and campaigning to a mixed group of people recruited from Tower Hamlets College and the local community. The group will produce a series of oral histories, stage debates about the way in which discussion of local issues have changed since the foundation of the Welfare State under Clement Attlee., including health, housing, racism, poverty and welfare. From this group, two people will be offered a year-long paid apprenticeship to NVQ level II. 7.2.2 Schools heritage programme - Workshops, skill development and summer camps Our schools heritage programme will work in partnership with local schools and colleges to deliver a range of workshops, summer schools and skills activities around three core areas: social history, social change and social action. The social history workshops will focus on topics covered in the curriculum including local history, industrialisation and urbanisation, and post-war social change alongside topics covered in our Heritage Exhibition. Social change workshops will focus on curriculum subjects linked to the seven themes in our Heritage Exhibition: workers’ conditions, opening minds (education), childhood poverty, access to justice, housing, living as neighbours, and charity and welfare. The workshops will focus on the way the local area has changed in recent decades and will explore the site through a digital platform, ‘Exploring Toynbee Hall’, noting how it has changed since its foundation in 1884. This will be complimented by discussions with local residents about how the area has changed in their lifetimes. Social action workshops will look at citizenship, campaigning and community, drawing on Toynbee Hall’s history of hosting iconic campaigners and current issues to inform debate. This will support the curriculum theme of Citizenship and specifically ‘making a difference in your community’. These on-site workshops will examine materials from our archive which demonstrate how historic campaigns were run, and we will invite guests from our public policy networks to talk about their relevance to campaigning today. We also plan to run Social reform summer schools to cater for 20 students and cover the heritage and methodology of social reform in East London, the Settlement Movement and Toynbee Hall. Archive skills workshops will introduce A-level history students to the principles of archival research for historians and curation of materials for exhibition. These workshops are aimed at stimulating interest among students considering heritage-related higher education. 7.2.3 Residential volunteering programme The residential volunteer programme will be reinstated within the refurbished Toynbee Hall in 2017/18. Six volunteers will be recruited each year for a nine-month residency. Three volunteers will directly support the delivery of Toynbee Hall’s work in the community, while three volunteers will

17

support the delivery of our heritage programme. The heritage volunteers will deliver a programme of 15 community and public events each year. 7.2.3.1 Heritage-focused residential volunteer roles Storyteller in residence Our Storyteller will develop a series of public events and learning activities using Toynbee Hall’s archive and heritage generated through other programmes within Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action as inspiration. Artist in residence Our Artist will draw on the rich cultural heritage within the Toynbee Hall archive and movements associated with its founders. They will deliver a participatory art project with primary schools, temporary exhibitions, community engagement and learning activities. Heritage innovator Our Heritage Innovator will develop a programme of work using our archival and community heritage to inform and inspire new approaches to contemporary issues of poverty and inequality. They will research heritage stories where there are gaps and disseminate

7.2.4 Heritage ESOL

Heritage ESOL will be a new strand of ESOL learning using a methodology which builds on our current ESOL programme (Deesha) and learning from Tower Hamlets’ own HLF-funded Opening up Archives ESOL project. Our archive collection will be used to develop course material with our Heritage ESOL Coordinator recruiting and training volunteer community facilitators to engage community groups interested in developing heritage-based ESOL learning resources. The aim being to create new learning resources drawing on the diverse heritage of course participants and their experiences of living in East London. We aim to deliver 120 heritage ESOL classes, with 250 people participating in accredited learning. 7.2.5 How we will measure the impact we work We will use Inspiring Learning for All (ILFA) to measure the learning outcomes from this programme. Resources This programme is part funded by Heritage Lottery Fund with the majority of the funding now in place. The programme will be led by a new post of Heritage Learning & Participation (HELP) Manager supported by a small team of project workers and volunteers based in our Community Services team.

7.3 Tackling the poverty premium In 2007 Save the Children coined the concept of a Poverty Premium to describe the extra costs that families in poverty pay to access essential goods and services, such as food, fuel and credit. This premium arises because those in poverty pay higher costs per unit for particular goods and services due to having limited payment choices. This extra cost was calculated to be in the region of £1,000 in 2007, rising to £1,280 by 2012 Toynbee Hall has been gathering evidence on and advocating about the impact of the Poverty Premium for some time. This includes our landmark study in 2014 to quantify the poverty premium in Tower Hamlets and which was the first local area based study into the premium. The research showed that Tower Hamlets residents are likely to pay a Poverty Premium of up to £1,014 per year, consisting mostly of higher energy costs, car insurance and loans. This is likely to apply at a similar rate to low income households across London. Earlier in 2016 we undertook some research for the London Fairness Commission to identify more broadly the additional costs of living in London combined with the poverty premium. This research was key in shaping the Commission’s

18

recommendations to the Mayor of London to develop cost reduction plan to support low income Londoners. Nationally, interest in the poverty premium and the wider issue of rising living costs disproportionately impacting on low income households has grown significantly. A cost-based approach to tackling poverty is now increasingly seen as important an element in anti-poverty strategies as traditional income maximisation and skills development actions. Whilst this recognition is to be welcomed there has been a lack of action in terms of tackling the poverty premium. Our national policy work seek to influence change in payment methods, consumer vulnerability policy and access to credit as three key elements of tackling the premium. We would like to complement this policy work with a grass roots social action/campaign project to test whether locally led action can reduce the impact of the poverty premium on income, and create greater influence in addressing the systemic factors that result in the increased costs. Our Money Mentors programme has already helped us gather greater insight into how the poverty premium impacts on people’s finances and lives and the barriers that exist both at an individual and systemic level that perpetuate the poverty premium and its impact. Money Mentors has recently expanded to become a London wide project working with our Capitalise debt advice partners. We want to sustain the Money Mentors programme and further develop it with to pilot ways in which this capability programme can be enhanced with a stronger focus on tackling the poverty premium. Again our approach to this will be to use our Model for meaningful change methodology to undertake collaborative development work with our existing Money Mentors network to identify ways of supporting them in the long term in cost reduction and poverty premium minimisation. Through a strong advocacy element this programme will also share people’s experience of the poverty premium and form the basis of a campaign to advocate for systemic change in areas such as payment methods and access to affordable credit that will both reduce the impact of the poverty premium and create pressure for policy change. This will require additional resources to be able to implement. Alongside this development work we will also monitor the implementation of the London Fairness Commission’s recommendation on a cost saving Mayor and continue to advocate for the Mayor to lead policy improvement on tackling increased cost, lack of payment options and limited choices that impact on low income households.

8. Voice and engagement We want to find ways in which we can better support the people we work with to have a voice and to share their stories. Over the next three years we want to make sure we have a stronger link between our external communications and the evidence of the work that we do. To achieve this we will do the following; 8.1 Voice/Engagement & Change Through our initial assessment service we are now involving all of our service users in a dialogue about their needs, as well as continuing to assess how effectively our services involve users through customer surveys, focus groups etc. Several of our key priorities areas for development during 2016-19 will be pivotal in supporting more voice and engagement activity, which include:

Our financial and legal capability programmes which will engage local people and support them to take social action including mutual support and advocating for policy change

Implementing our Service Design programme

Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action

Tackling the Poverty Premium

19

8.2 Research and Evidence We now have an established Information, Research and Evaluation team responsible for the organisational data management, monitoring and analysis and the systems and processes in place to achieve this. The team supplements this core work with further research relevant to the organisation and seeks to collaborate with partners to increase our reach and provide a wider understanding of the effects and causes of poverty. They look to use innovation and technology to improve organisational efficiency and increase capacity in a cost effective way. With this evidence based approach and improved understanding, as well increased capability and scope through as partnerships, they seek to create informed strategy for improving service outcomes. This will also allow us to demonstrate need and the impact of our work, important for fundraising and communications as well as to ensure we are achieving our goals as thoroughly as possible. In the coming years we aim to take this further using our robust data, along with close user involvement to confidently form policy recommendations and strive to further our influence of decision makers and assist the community through social action / campaigns to create more sustainable solutions for those effected by poverty and exclusion helping Toynbee Hall achieve its mission to eradicate poverty. This is all in line with our 16-19 strategy and the model for meaningful change. Critical to achieving this is embedding service evaluation to increase efficiency, accuracy and outcomes so we can build more reliable evaluation to influence, promote our work and support income generation. We have also developed a ‘research and evaluation webpage’ dedicated to profiling Toynbee’s work. All of this above will help support us to expand our policy work and influence, with the ambition of becoming a recognised Research and Policy Centre in the next few years.

Publicise each quarter a tackling poverty case study story from our advice, wellbeing and national services

Recruit storytelling volunteers to support our Heritage & social action work We have also been able to complement this by strengthening our research capacity and develop greater insight into the needs of our local community. Research over the past 3 years includes welfare reform and letting agents, legal aid cuts and access to immigration advice. We plan to build on these strong foundations and between 2016/19 we will prioritise research is related to key areas of this strategic plan; the poverty premium, financial and legal capability and our research on the need of older people. We will continue to report and publicise our service demand trends to showcase need in our local community and ensure we use this to identify changing trends and set an agenda for informing future research.

9. Developing People & Our Organisation This strategic plan is supported by a People Development and Resourcing Strategy that aims to deliver effective engagement, management and development of staff and volunteers and support us to be a high performing organisation. Our temporary relocation to Cityscape has brought all staff and volunteers together into a single office for the first time ever and this has enabled us to significantly improve cross team communication and joint working. We want to build on this improvement and continue to develop the best working environment we can and to develop an engaged and involving culture with opportunities for personal development and progression. 9.1 Effective People Engagement, Management and Development objectives are to:

Implement Change management programme: In 16/17 we will run an engagement and values programme linked to this Strategic Plan and to build a culture of trust and create ‘One Toynbee’.

20

Review & update ‘People Management, Reward and Valuing’ Framework: Autumn 2016 review and update process for: recruitment, performance, reward, retention, and release to ensure have effective, fair & transparent

Develop a Progression Routes programme: o By 2018 have a fully operational ‘Routes to work’ programme – from volunteering,

paid internships, apprenticeships, work experience, internal progression routes to paid work at Toynbee or elsewhere. Focus on ensuring open to all.

o Started apprenticeship programme in April 2016

Improve and develop our volunteering programme: o Sustained volunteering opportunities until move back to Toynbee Hall, with growth

by 2018/19 to 500 active volunteers o By 2018 achieve Volunteering Accreditation-improve volunteer practice & tools to

support o Develop cross organisational team/resources to support volunteering/community

development/engagement activity

9.2 High Performing Organisation

Gain an Organisational Quality Mark: By 2018 to have gained cross organisational quality mark to ensure our systems and process support our clients, staff & volunteers effectively

Review IT systems & implement change programme: In 16/17 IBM will work with us to undertake an audit and develop an ICT strategy which we will implement 2017/18 aligned to our redevelopment timetable with a new ICT system fully operable on our return to Toynbee Hall.

10. Budget and financial strategy

We have a 10-year plan for Toynbee Hall with financial projections up to 2025 within which this Strategic Plan sits. Our overarching financial objective over the next three years is to meet the annual income and expenditure targets and to continue to diversify our income model. This diversification is focussed on securing five complimentary income sources;

• Statutory Funding - largely restricted for services

• Trusts and Foundations - largely restricted for services

• Corporate donations - predominantly restricted for services

• Contracts and social enterprise income - unrestricted income generated by Toynbee Hall assets or sales of goods and services

• Individual donors - largely unrestricted Over the past 3 years we have focussed with some success on sustaining statutory and trust and foundation income whilst growing our corporate and individual donors. Contract and social enterprise income has made equally good progress, though the closure of Toynbee Hall estate in 2015 significantly reduced the asset generated income over the period of the redevelopment. When the redevelopment is complete and we move back to Toynbee Hall in 2018 our asset generated income will grow significantly as we re-introduce our previously successful Venue Hire business and we generate a commercial rental income from our new building at 28 Commercial Street. A key financial challenge that we need to address in 2017/18 onwards is to identify how we can reduce our ratio of core costs. Our 10-year plan set an assumption that cost of service delivery equate to 90% of service based income. This means 10% of service income will contribute towards core costs along with a proportion of our non-service income; that is unrestricted donations or earned income. To ensure that we meet our twin long term financial goals of firstly building an unrestricted cash reserve, and secondly of having a reasonable amount of unrestricted income particularly generated from our assets available to spend on social action and service innovation we

21

will need to identify cost savings in our core costs of at least 10% per annum. We will need to address this in 2016/17 to take effect from 2018 onwards.

10.1 Forecast income and expenditure 2016-19 The table below reports 2016/17 budget and forecast budget 2017/18 and 2018/19 as extracted from our 10 year plan. Note the net funds brought and carried forward from 2017/18 have not been reconciled to the net funds carried forward from 2016/17. This reconciliation will be aligned to annual budget planning.

Income and expenditure forecast 2016-19

Income/year 2016/17 Budget 2017/18 2018/19

UR Donations 120,800 178620 226848

UR Trading - Venue Hire 0 85793 214481

UR Contracts 563,234 586001 600651

UR Other 59,022 46614 46614

UR Rent 0 148866 297732

Total UR income 743,056 1045894 1,386,326

Statutory R 4,777,968 4537743 4560432

Trust & Foundations R 394,627 768794 792089

R Corporate 353,000 500000 505000

R Other 55,278 31250 31250

Total R income 5,580,873 5,837,788 5,888,771

UR & R Income Total 6,323,929 6,883,681 7,275,098

Net funds prior year 1,903,877 200,000 0

Total income £8,271,364 7,083,681 7,275,098

Expenditure

Service delivery 6,364,787 5961409 5840480

Indirect costs 0 239977 309911

Core costs 646213 856877 865446

Total costs 7,011,000 7,058,264 7,015,837

Funds carried forward 1,324,000

Net surplus/(deficit) £(62,000) 25,417 259,261

11. Risk

Toynbee Hall has a comprehensive risk policy. The current funding, service delivery and policy environment is challenging for all third sector organisations. The assumptions underpinning this

22

strategic plan are prudent. However it is recognised that any significant changes to the existing funding of our services beyond those we have assumed will significantly impact on our ability to deliver the objectives, outputs and financial targets set out in this plan. 12 .Targets and evaluation We have a performance management system made up of a range of targets that together enable us to measure how successful we are in implementing this strategic plan, and how well we deliver against our strategic aims. These targets are still predominantly quantitative output based covering services, finance, and fundraising. We are continuing to adopt stronger impact measurement tools, this including the MAP tool for measuring improvement in financial wellbeing; the NEF Five Ways to Wellbeing model in our community services and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) for our youth services, which is a measure of psychological well-being in 5-17 year olds. We are planning on using the Inspiring Learning for All (ILFA) model to evaluate our new heritage programme. We also report on a range of funder outcome measures. In addition to using these monitoring and measurement tools we undertake periodic qualitative impact evaluation of our services. We are presently undertaking this type of evaluation of our Make It programme and plan to undertake a similar study on the impact of Deesha. In order to deliver this strategy we have set the following corporate targets;

Sustain our existing levels of services as measured by number of service users and income levels for each service area reported quarterly

Implement and evaluate a financial capability programme

Implement and evaluate a legal capability programme

Undertake a co-produced older people’s research project to use as the evidence for an older people’s strategy

Implement and impact evaluate the Model for meaningful change

Implement and impact evaluate Revealing Social Reform, Renewing Social Action

Design, implement and impact evaluate a poverty premium reduction programme

Staff engagement levels increase as measured by a 90% participation rate with a 20% increase in reported Happiness scopes

Fundraising targets are met

Develop and implement financial plan to achieve our core cost reduction We will regularly review progress against each of these corporate targets and develop more detailed outcome targets for our new priorities on financial and legal capability, older people’s ageing well research, our heritage programme and Poverty Premium reduction programme.