Brandon has committed to deliver extensive positive impact for the people we support and the communities we serve.
We take a whole-life approach to the support and partnerships we offer, with emphasis on supporting transitions through the different stages of life by working with individuals, their families, and others who support them.
We are proudly delivering tailor-made life experiences and we are now able to measure the success of that work through our new Impact Measures.
Those measures are in four categories: People, Communities, Environment, and Engagement.
We have assigned measures of success and desired outputs for each of those categories, some of which we are now able to report on for 2024, while the remainder will be developed through 2025.
Collating the 2024 Impact Report in our milestone 30th anniversary year, has been a reminder for all our teams and stakeholders, of the remarkable work Brandon is doing across the South of England, from London in the East, via Warwickshire in the South Midlands, to Cornwall in the South West.
Our Impact on People
The 2024 Impact Report explores some of the many ways we are transforming lives. One of our Impact Metrics for People is that 5% of people we support are employed. In 2025, we will be able to measure this using our new digital care record tool, Nourish.
We hear from Tom, one of our trainees at Enterprise Packaging, who is part of the team building NHS transplant organ retrieval kits.
Tom has held positions in open employment in the past but had not had positive experiences as the attitudes of people he worked with had left him feeling unsupported and alone, severely affecting his confidence.
At Brandon, he has been supported to undertake the role’s responsibilities, with thorough training and time to upskill. We encouraged positive risk-taking as his experience grew, leading to increased confidence in his own abilities.
Tom said: “Everyone is so friendly. That’s important to me because it puts me in a nice mood. In the past, I have worked with horrible people and it doesn’t give me incentive to work when people are so negative.”
Our Impact in our Communities
One of our Community Impact Measures is that we will grow our corporate partnerships by 30% each year. We are able to report that in 2024, we welcomed 12 new partners to join our work.
In the report, we hear from a number of partners, including local authorities, businesses, and organisations.
Bristol City Council’s Strategic Commissioning and Transformation Lead, Jonathan Wright, said: “Over the last year, our partnership with Brandon has led to an understanding of the demand for new community-based services and how we may move to meet them in the long term.
“Given their track record of commitment to the sector and to the people they support, Brandon have demonstrated an understanding of how the market needs to reform to continue to be effective.”
Our Impact on the Environment
Our Environment Impact Measures will be developed through 2025 and we look forward to reporting on the early success of our work to become carbon neutral in our next Impact Report.
The measures include that we have completed 50% of our actions in our annual carbon action plan, which we are developing with support from the University of Exeter, following analysis of the data to create our baseline.
In the 2024 Impact Report, we outline all the ways in which our Digital and Retail teams are focused on carbon neutrality and making environmentally sustainable business decisions.
The Digital team used the WWF Footprint Calculator to measure that everyone in digital services is generating between 6 and 10 tonnes of carbon per year. This informed decisions regarding the purchase of new devices, extending refresh periods for digital devices, and introducing Microsoft Office 365 and Azure Service Carbon Monitoring to track and manage digital services carbon emissions.
Our high street shops are passionate ambassadors for pre-loved fashion and sustainable living, offering a boutique shopping experience to tackle the huge global waste of fast fashion culture, by consciously promoting the environmental impact of giving unwanted items a second life at every opportunity.
In 2024, we opened a ‘£3 or less’ outlet in a dedicated area of our Chipping Sodbury shop, to redirect items made by high street and fast fashion brands from being recycled. This saved 1,950 items and boosted the shop’s income by £5.5k in the first three months.
Our Impact through Engagement
One of our Engagement Measures is that we will have increased our volunteers by 10% every year, and we reveal that we recruited 50 volunteers in 2024.
We hear from a number of our volunteers working across our social enterprises, including Lynn, who has volunteered in our Cotham, Bristol shop since 2021.
She said: “I like that goods made by the young adults Brandon supports are for sale in the shop, enabling them to have a sense of belonging and fulfilment in their lives.
“I have been very privileged in my life, and I get a great sense of well-being from being able to give something back and I still see every day as a learning day.
“I love working with the people we support, and we have a very good camaraderie. I also learn from them. I really do feel part of a wider family and both of my current managers are very understanding of some recent personal issues that have affected my family and they have been incredibly supportive.”
Read the Impact Report
Brandon Chief Executive, Helen England, said: “I am incredibly proud of everything we are achieving at Brandon to deliver powerful and positive impact. 2025 will see us further commit to ensuring the stability of the social care sector in a challenging funding environment.”
You can explore all of our Impact stories and our 22 Impact Measures in the Brandon Trust Impact Report 2024.
