Annual report for the year to 31 March 2022

This year marks the final year of our Everyday Equality strategy. We’re excited at the prospect of consulting and engaging our networks, so we can make sure our focus in the years ahead is on the issues that matter most – where we can achieve meaningful and lasting change for disabled people.

Our services

Last year, we provided 3,549,601 people with some of the essential support they needed to make informed decisions and live more independent lives – through our online information and advice, and our online community. Our helpline responded to 33,947 calls for support via telephone and email.

Supporting disabled families

• Overall, we increased the number of families we directly supported through our tailored family services from 1,687 in 2020/21 to 2,058 in 2021/22.
• Our Sleep Right service worked with 1,037 families to improve their disabled child’s sleep (81% reported improved sleep) and parents’ resilience and wellbeing.
• Navigate, our national mentoring service, provided practical and emotional support for 478 parents and carers of disabled children.
• Through our Parents Connect support programme, we worked with 145 parents and carers in scheduled groups, and a further 103 parents joined our one-off workshops.
• Our Activities for All inclusion service supported 295 families with information and advice. 109 disabled children were supported to access mainstream activities and 145 mainstream settings were supported to become more inclusive for disabled children.
• In 2022/23 and in line with the success of our community engagement programme, we’ll expand our community work to include young disabled people. And we’ll take a local approach to establish our new and exciting programme of work – the Scope Youth Community Collective, supported by Barclays.

Our employment support

After providing all our employment services online or by phone in 2020/21, we cautiously started working in person again − delivering small group sessions or one-to-one sessions with people who requested it. We continued to offer the majority of our services online or by phone. This new hybrid delivery method helped us reach around 19% more people than in 2020/21.

• Our national employment service Support to Work reached 812 disabled people, enabling 283 to find paid work within 12 weeks.
• Through our one-to-one support programme Kickstart, we also enabled 212 disabled people to achieve their career goals.
• And our pre-employment training programme, Starting Line, supported 349 disabled people at the start of their journey into work.
• Our Working on Wellbeing service supported 315 disabled people.
• We provided 134 disabled people with tailored in-work support, enabling 30 to find additional employment after their original roles were changed.
• Advisers at our Deloitte-funded Career Pathways programme provided independent careers advice to 402 young disabled people 201% over our yearly target. In 2022/23 we’ll expand the Career Pathways Programme into Leeds, with additional support made available by Barclays.
• In January 2022 we launched a pilot service in Manchester, to discover if an individualised support pathway would be a more inclusive and effective way of supporting disabled people into employment. This initial pilot will run for six months before being reviewed for impact. In the three months since launching, the service supported 22 disabled people with three entering work.

Our influencing work

Campaigns

• We launched our Benefits Without the Fight campaign, calling on the Department for Work and Pensions to improve the welfare system for disabled people. Over 30,000 people signed our letter calling for specialist assessors to be introduced into the welfare assessment process. Over 540 MPs received information from their disabled constituents about the campaign, and 57 MPs attended Scope’s parliamentary drop-in.
• We also partnered with ITV to raise awareness of invisible disabilities. Launched straight after an episode of Coronation Street in August, the campaign aimed to shift attitudes towards disability and disabled people. The campaign, run over 6 weeks, reached 28.2 million adults – with 43 per cent of viewers reporting increased awareness of invisible disabilities and 43 per cent feeling more confident talking about disability.
• After three years of campaigning about making travel fair, last year we secured commitment from Government to create a Disabled Passenger Charter – a resource that brings together disabled people’s rights across all modes of public transport in a single place. We know information is often fragmented, and it can be difficult to understand your rights when using public transport. We want the Passenger Charter to change this.

Partnerships

• Through our bespoke Get Inclusive programme, we supported 13 employers last year to be more inclusive in the way they recruit, retain and progress disabled employees.
• Consulting firm Deloitte funds our Career Pathways service for young people and 50 of their employees have been supporting disabled people through mentoring, workshops, and helping with interview preparation. In return, we’ve provided sessions to support their staff to open up conversations around disability in the workplace.
• We partner with utility suppliers and network companies, through our Scope Utilities Membership for a fairer energy market. We collaborate with suppliers and network companies, like SGN and UK Power Networks, to help them reduce extra costs and improve services for disabled people. This includes raising awareness of the issues disabled people face across the sector.

Putting disabled people at the heart of what we do

Disabled people and their families’ experiences are key to everything we do. We now have over 100 storytellers who share their stories publicly to make everyday equality a reality. In the last year alone, 82 of our storytellers lent their support to Scope projects, and 55 were featured in regional and national media.

We’ve grown our Research Panel to include over 1,500 disabled people and parents and carers of disabled children. The Panel helps us gather insights and develop new products and services, making sure they meet disabled people’s needs. Last year, hundreds of panellists also reported on the issues they were facing during the first lockdown, informing our wider response to the pandemic.

In 2021, we launched our first co-produced public engagement campaign, Power Up and Play seeking to engage people in disability equality through gaming. We worked alcongside disabled people to create the campaign and evaluate it. Co-production is fundamentally important to us and it’s an approach we’re fully committed to, across everything Scope does.

We are wholly funded through our:

• charity shops
• public donations
• work with corporate and other partners
• funding from Government Grants, Trusts and Philanthropists

Our income

In 2021/22, we raised a total of £44.2 million (2020/21 £34.1 million). This was above our target for the year by 11% (or 6% excluding Covid-19 Government grants).

This includes:

• £12.8 million from donated income including legacies (2020/21 £13.9 million).
• £5.4 million from grants, fees, and other income (2020/21 £5.3 million) excluding Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and other Covid-19 Government grants.
• £22.7 million from trading activities including our shops and online sales (2020/21 £9.4 million).
• £2.7 million from the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and other Covid-19 Government grants available to organisations affected by the pandemic (2020/21 £5 million).
• £0.6 million from our portfolio of investments (2020/21 £0.5 million).

Our charitable spending

In 2021/22 we spent 23% more on our charitable activities than in the previous year. Every pound we raise is extremely important to us and we carefully plan our use of resources to get the most impact. In 2021/22, for every £1 we spent, 66% was spent on our charitable activities to help disabled people and their families (2020/21 73%). This is a lower proportion than the previous year because we invested £7.3 million in our individual giving fundraising programme (£3 million more than in 2020/21) to recruit new donors who we couldn’t reach during Covid restrictions. This investment will generate future income to fund an increase in our impact through service delivery and influencing activities. In common with most similar charities, our trading activities are not included in this calculation, as our shops operate like other retail businesses, raising net funds through selling merchandise. This percentage is likely to fluctuate over time, but we’re committed to increasing it.

The remainder goes towards running our organisation and generating funds for our future plans.

We spent £0.6 million on strategic investment for the future. This included the implementation of the first stage of our Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to provide a better experience for the people we help and our supporters. The second phase of this implementation is expected to complete in 2022/23. We’ve also invested in our operational planning model and in data and insight for our digital legacy acquisition programme.

We have a further £2.5 million held in a designated reserve for strategic investment projects in the next two years – designed to increase our impact, increase our ability to generate future income and improve our operating efficiency.

Reserves

We hold reserves to make sure we have enough money to keep operating should our income fall or costs unexpectedly increase and to further our charitable mission through strategic investment. We’ll continue to invest in our strategic goals in 2022/23, as well as develop a new strategy to take us to 2026.

Free reserves (defined as net assets excluding restricted funds, designated funds and funds used to acquire fixed assets for the charity’s own use) at 31 March 2022 were £30.9 million made up as follows:

• A minimum of £15 million in order to protect the financial future of the charity and make sure it can continue to operate in times of uncertainty.
• Planned investment of £8.1 million over the next two years to fund our impact on the lives of disabled people while we recover from the impact of the pandemic, maintain and develop our services and campaigning activity and proceed with our strategic investment plans. This investment will also drive income for the future so we can deliver an even greater impact on the lives of disabled people for the long term.
• The Board of Trustees will consider the remaining amount of free reserves above our minimum policy level (£7.8 million) as part of the development of the next phase of our strategy between now and November 2022 – the intention is to put these funds to use in the next few years to support our charitable purpose while keeping our financial position under constant review.
• In the medium term we expect free reserves to be reduced in line with our policy.

2022 full report

Download the full report for more detail