Grow-Wellbeing CIC has continued to facilitate and expand it's nature-connection activities throughout the 21-22 financial year. These have included workshops and programmes of forest school, community gardening and nature wellbeing.In terms of forest school, we have provided regular public facing kindergarden, woodland explorers (for primary age children), family forest and holiday clubs. Additionally, we were contracted directly by three primary schools to deliver year-round weekly forest school sessions for their pupils. In summer of 2021 we delivered holiday programmes (funded by the Govt Holiday Activity fund) in a youth centre (reaching 90 children over a 4-week period) and with vulnerable children in the care of the local authority. The HAF was designed to ensure that children in the most disadvantaged wards were engaged in creative, physical and stimulating play activities whilst ensuring they had a good nutritious meal each day of the holiday period.Continuing our collaborative relationship with the Mersey Forest, we delivered forest school sessions at 2 schools in Chester as part of the UK government DfE/ Defra Nature Friendly schools programme. At Lache Primary we delivered 12 sessions of forest school to the Willows, a unit for children with additional learning needs, whilst at St Clare's Catholic Primary School we facilitated forest school sessions for Foundation and Year 1 pupils, who benefited from enhanced engagement with nature, improved speech and language, physical and cognitive development and increased confidence and resilience.Additionally, Mersey Forest engaged us to deliver two programmes for BAME groups, one for families, based at our community garden, and a second one leading young male asylum seekers accommodated in a local hotel in nature landscape walks around Wirral and Merseyside. These sessions helped participants to feel both located and engaged with the local community whilst resident on the Wirral.We continued to support Barnardos Action for Young Carers through nature wellbeing workshops for families at our community allotment in Birkenhead. Our partnership with Callister Trust continues to prosper, as we facilitated women's wellbeing workshops in nature, for vulnerable women attending local support groups, and family forest workshops for local volunteers as well as refugees and asylum seekers.Due to the receipt of investment funding from Kindred LCR, Grow-Wellbeing CIC has increased staffing, including employment of a Project Co-ordinator and other administrative staff to support the nature connected outdoor activities delivered. We also employed six DWP funded Kickstart trainees during the period, who gained skills and experience that will help them in their future careers.

The stakeholders of Grow-Wellbeing CIC include the children and adults who have participated in the activities we have delivered during the year. We consulted with those stakeholders in a variety of ways including baseline and end of session questionnaires, online surveys and in-session evaluative activities. We have asked for verbal feedback through discussion, and asked stakeholders for their written feedback by email or on our social media platforms. Other stakeholders include the agencies, schools and community organisations that we collaborated with. We have engaged in dialogue with those agencies to establish the best ways to provide their client groups with the nature connected provision that they require. We have listened to the consultation results and these have helped to shape future iterations of our activities, making changes to the structure and content of activities, and increasing opportunities for families to attend our sessions.

No remuneration was received

No transfer of assets other than for full consideration