We are delighted to announce that Rob Mills has been appointed as the new Chief Executive of Walton Charity.

Rob is currently the Director of Business Operations at Mount Green Housing, a small Surrey-based housing association, and has previously worked for Accent Housing and the Guinness Partnership. He has also been a trustee for several housing associations and charities, including Transform Housing & Support, Greenoak Housing, Walton Charity and Charity Works (a graduate trainee programme for the non-profit sector).

One of his first jobs nearly 30 years ago was as a Housing Trainee for Elmbridge Borough Council, and as a Housing Officer, he managed properties in Walton-on-Thames.

“I am really pleased to have been appointed as the new Chief Executive of Walton Charity, an organisation with such a long and strong history. I look forward to building on the excellent work Jackie has done over the past 15 years, and ensuring the charity continues to support the people and communities of Elmbridge, particularly in these challenging times.”

Rob will be joining the charity in late March and will be leading a review of the recommendations from our report ‘Under the Radar’.

“I have been hugely privileged to lead Walton Charity through the past fifteen years. During that time, we have seen many changes as we responded to austerity, the pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis.

Our recently commissioned research, ‘Under the Radar’, shows us how the nature of poverty has changed in our local area with more working families struggling to make ends meet. The high cost of housing and childcare in Elmbridge, coupled with rising energy and food bills are tipping more families into poverty. The priority for Walton Charity is to continue working with local partner organisations to tackle these issues.

Walton Charity has been working in the local community for over 800 years. Poverty is not new, but neither is our humanity and ability to come together to help others.

As an endowed charity we need to serve the community today but also ensure that we will be able to do so for years to come. We have no doubt that there will be future challenges as poverty and inequality evolve to impact differently on our community.

The ‘CEO baton’ passes to Rob Mills who will, with our amazing staff team, trustees and partners, do even more to support our local community.”

Our Delegated Funds are allocated to local organisations who work directly with individuals and families in Elmbridge on low incomes. The funds allow local organisations to respond quickly in times of crisis, providing vital support and taking immediate pressure off families.

The Elmbridge Family Centre, one organisation who hold a Delegated Fund, support families with children aged 0-11 years. Their Deputy Service Manager, Katie, shared some stories of local families they have been able to support through their Walton Charity Delegated Fund:

Emma’s Story
Emma is a single parent who suffers from epilepsy. Whilst having a seizure, her young daughter managed to get out of the house and was found wandering the streets.

Elmbridge Family Centre helped Emma by purchasing an emergency alarm and alert system. This will keep mum and her child safe should she have an epileptic seizure in the future.

Janice’s Story
Due to mental health issues in the past, Janice has joint custody of her only child, Tom, who is 7 years old. Tom has experienced a huge amount of trauma in his short life, including his mother being subjected to domestic abuse. He has recently been diagnosed with ADHD and suffers from anxiety attacks. Elmbridge Family Centre used their Walton Charity Delegated Fund to pay for ten drawing and talking therapy sessions which have enabled Tom to express worries he isn’t able to talk about.

Ellen’s Story
Ellen has three children aged 9, 8 and 5 years. Following domestic abuse, the family fled to a refuge and are now living in temporary accommodation in Elmbridge, waiting for a more permanent home to become available.

Ellen is struggling to cover the cost of transport for her children to continue attending their school outside of Elmbridge and often spends the day in the town because she can’t afford the cost of travelling home again. Elmbridge Family Centre have helped Ellen with the cost of travel for six weeks and are now supporting her family to find a local school that can take all three children, so they can make new friends and settle more easily into their new community.

Find out more about our Delegated Funds here.

A Walton Charity Community Grant of almost £40,000 (over three years) will contribute towards the salary costs of a manager for the Beehive Support Hub - a not-for-profit café and community hub at the Lower Green Community Centre in Esher.

The Hub provides a warm and friendly place for Lower Green residents to meet socially and access specialist support and advice, where needed.  Whether they just want a cup of tea and a chat or are struggling with debt, mental health, or other issues, it’s a place to go when things are tough.  By offering people practical support and a listening ear early on, it prevents problems from escalating to a crisis.   

Many of the Hub’s projects centre around food - bridging the gap between food waste and food poverty by redistributing surplus supermarket and home-grown produce for local families through their Community Fridge. Over the winter months the Beehive is operating as a Warm Welcome Hub providing homemade soup and free hot drinks and access to other initiatives to support local people during the cost-of-living crisis. The Surrey-based baby bank, Stripey Stork, also visits each fortnight, providing good quality clothing, toys and essential items for babies and children.  

The hardworking team at the Support Hub are keen to expand the services offered in the future and provide a calendar of events, skills workshops, social groups, health and advice services and much more.  

Jenny French, Community Projects Manager Lower Green Community CIO said: “We are very grateful to Walton Charity for their generous grant to support the work of our Community Hub. To have the salary of our Support Hub Manager assured for the next three years is a great boost and will help us to plan and develop further services and projects to support the local community in the future.”

A new Walton Charity Community Grant of £5,000 will help Relate West Surrey to fund more counselling for people on low incomes across Elmbridge.   

Relate West Surrey is a charity providing much-needed support and talking therapy to individuals, couples, families and young people, particularly those experiencing family breakdown and mental health issues. 

In recent years Relate has seen an increase in demand for counselling, but all too often families cannot afford the full cost. The bursary fund, supported by our community grant, will help to relieve financial pressure and open up the option of therapy to those who need it most. 

Jill Rawling, Chief Executive Officer of Relate West Surrey, says: “We are very grateful to Walton Charity for this grant which will enable more cash-strapped families to get help. We have seen a significant rise in demand for our iRelate service for 10-18 year olds, with more 10 year olds suffering from anxiety, peer relationship pressure, low mood and family problems”

2022 has been another challenging year. Just as we are learning to live with Covid, the rising cost of living brings a new set of challenges. Working with our partners, we will continue to do all we can to support our local community through these challenging times.

But this year we’ve also had some happy highlights. From joining forces with Walton & Hersham Foodbank, to celebrating our win at the Hampton Court Flower Show, here are some of our favourite moments from 2022….

• Funding some fabulous community projects including recipe boxes and homecooked meals for local families, mental health workshops for schools and practical support for parents.

• Watching our green spaces flourish with the launch of our new Tree Canopy Project (thanks to some hard graft from our corporate partners) and, of course, taking home the top prize for our Community Allotment entry to the Hampton Court Flower Show!

• Celebrating… the Queen’s Jubilee with our Community Allotment volunteers, our love of books through The Great Elmbridge Book Hunt, and ALL the big events with our independent living residents.

• Officially welcoming Walton & Hersham Foodbank into the Walton Charity family.

• Launching an important new report which will help us to tackle poverty and low income in our local community.

• Watching the total climb in our Santa Stork Christmas appeal funding presents for children across Elmbridge who need a helping hand.

For more on the stories behind these highlights, just click on the photos below.

Thank you to all our partners, supporters, volunteers, staff and trustees who have helped to make these moments - and all our work - possible.

We hope there will be many more highlights in 2023!

Walton & Hersham Foodbank

Cook4Care community project

Jubilee celebrations

Great Elmbridge Book Hunt

Home Start parenting cafe

Hampton Court Flower Show

New local research

Our corporate volunteers at work

Halloween with our residents

This year's Christmas appeal

Following a competitive tendering process, we are delighted to announce Burwood Preschool will be the new tenants of our community property on Burhill Road from September next year.

Burwood Preschool is a local charity providing high quality, affordable childcare and early years education for families in Hersham.

As our recently published report by the New Economics Foundation shows, childcare costs more here in Elmbridge than in many other parts of the country. This puts extra pressure on household resources and can make it harder for local families to make ends meet.

By leasing the property and land to the preschool at a low rent, they will be able to pass this saving on to local parents – taking pressure off families on low incomes. The preschool will also be able to expand their services and set up a forest school once they take on the building and land next year. The aim is for the new services to start from early 2024.

Earlier this month, we launched a new report Under the Radar looking at the changing picture of poverty and low income in Elmbridge. The report, written by New Economics Foundation, is a culmination of six months of work – analysing data, talking to partners, talking to residents. But we don’t want the work to stop there.

The report gives us an up-to-date picture of poverty and low income in our borough – who is affected, what drives poverty locally, and the challenges of living on a low income in Elmbridge.

Now we have an opportunity to use the information to explore new ways of working, to form new partnerships, and to make sure we are using all our resources as effectively as we can to support our community.

And in all these discussions and this work we must remember why we are doing it. We often talk about ‘cost of living’ but really we’re talking about people. People in our community who will suffer because of what is happening and what will happen.

At our report launch event, we heard from an excellent panel of speakers who brought ideas and experience from their own organisations for ways to innovate and drive change at a local level. It was so useful to hear real examples and to be challenged by the panel to be bold in our response to the report.

We will be sharing updates as we take the recommendations from the report forward, but in the meantime here is a round up of the key points from the interesting and thought-provoking panel discussion.

Jackie Lodge, Chief Executive

For many children, the move from primary school to secondary school is a daunting prospect. The Covid pandemic has heightened some of the issues and vulnerabilities that young people face, and schools are seeing increasing cases of anxieties and behavioural challenges. Following the success of their summer transition support programme in Spelthorne last year, Eikon was keen to introduce the programme to children and young people in Elmbridge. A Walton Charity Community Grant of £45,000 will fund early intervention support for 25 Elmbridge children for the next three years.

Eikon is an award-winning charity that has been providing long-term support to young people in Surrey for over two decades.

Nigel Goddard, Chair of Trustees, Eikon said “This award is particularly welcome and valued in the present exceptional and unprecedented times when hardly a day goes by without the national Press mentioning the ever-increasing demands for and complexity of the emotional wellbeing and mental health challenges facing children and young people today. Your award will certainly help our planning and financial stability for this programme in the years ahead.”

The summer workshops will help young people who are at risk of exclusion or those with complex needs, low school attendance or those who have strong concerns about transitioning from primary to secondary school.

The young people will work through a series of fun activities including writing, arts and crafts, sports, and games designed to help them overcome anxieties and address challenges. They will also have the opportunity to discuss their concerns with support workers and their peers.

After the summer workshop, youth workers will go into the young people’s secondary schools to provide further support and to help them put their learning into practice. By helping young people develop new skills, and ensuring they have someone to turn to, Eikon can help ensure the young people they work with will have a more positive experience and remain in school.

A small community grant, awarded to Weybridge International School of English (WISE), is helping to fund English language lessons during the summer holidays for Ukranian refugees, living locally.

WISE has registered over 80 Ukrainian’s over the last few months and has provided classes for all levels of English.

The participants, which include parents and their children, are not only benefitting from having face-to-face English classes to improve their English and prospects of employment, but it is also providing them with the opportunity to come together and meet other refugees within a warm and welcoming atmosphere.

Liz Denham, MD said “The commitment to the classes has been tremendous and their English has come on superbly. Our dedicated team of teachers and volunteers have enjoyed teaching them and we are extremely grateful for the grant given to us.”

Funding from Waitrose Hersham’s ‘Give a Little Love’ campaign is helping to fund food and refreshments being offered during the course.

“I really am very happy to be part of this group. It gets me out of my flat which is good for me.”

A weekly befriending café, organised by Elmbridge Community Link (ECL), brings together adults with learning disabilities and/or on the autistic spectrum to spend time with friends and learn new skills.

A report by the Jo Cox Foundation showed that half of people with disabilities feel lonely on any given day. Regular contact with their peers, volunteers and support staff at the befriending café gives participants an opportunity to build relationships and grow their independence in a safe and friendly space.

The café takes place at Burview Hall in Walton, one of Walton Charity’s community buildings. During the Covid lockdowns, when face-to-face meetings weren’t possible, ECL had to find new ways to keep in touch with members and bring the group together. Online activities, quizzes and exercise classes all helped members feel connected until they could meet again in person.

Technology still plays an important role in the café sessions as participants are supported to make video calls, keeping in touch with family members they don't see on a regular basis.

The befriending café is just one of the activities run by Elmbridge Community Link. Participants can also take part in weekly art and craft workshops, a youth sports club and sessions at Walton Charity’s community allotment. The participants, and volunteers who support the sessions, love the atmosphere of the groups, and families really see the difference the sessions are making:

“My daughter is spending time with people her own age… she’s getting out and about doing things out of the house, being active, meeting new people, getting new experiences. It’s brilliant but the big thing is that Georgia is doing something herself.”

Tackling isolation and loneliness is one of Walton Charity’s five key priorities. Through our grants programme and our community buildings, we support local organisations and projects that encourage social interaction and help people feel more connected to their community.

~ Video courtesy of Jennifer Bruce Photography ~

Volunteers from Walton Charity’s Community Allotment were thrilled to scoop first prize in the Community Allotment category at Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival earlier this month.

Our Green Spaces Manager, Karen Heynike, garden designer Victoria Mitchell, and the team of volunteers rolled up their sleeves and worked incredibly hard to create a mini replica of their allotment, complete with knitted bugs, butterflies and vegetables – replicating the yarn bombing* that created a real buzz at the real community allotment earlier this year.

The community allotment, in Walton on Thames, is a special place where people from all walks of life come together to socialise and learn new skills. Some of the participants are retired, but many face barriers because of mental or physical health conditions or social isolation. The allotment provides a supportive space for people to join in group activities and feel more connected to their community and it provided a lifeline for many of the volunteers during the pandemic.

This isn’t the first time the Community Allotment volunteers have entered the Garden Festival. They entered the Vegetable Box category back in 2017 winning them a silver medal, giving a huge confidence boost to those who took part.

If you would like to learn more about our community allotment and availability of our land and green spaces for local people and community groups, click here: www.waltoncharity.org.uk/green-spaces.

*A yarn bomb is a form of street art where yarn in any form decorates an object in the public environment. Yarn installations are a bit like graffiti but aren’t permanent or destructive. The craze was started in America by a lady named Magda Sayeg when she covered her doorknob with a knitted cosy and before long started knitting scarves and hats for statues around her hometown in Houston.