From Monday the 2nd November 2026 Birmingham Settlement’s Money Advice service will no longer be operating form Alma House in Newtown. Staff will be based at our Sports and Community Centre in Kingstanding.

This move supports the integration of Birmingham Settlement’s wider services and will help us to provide a better offer for the thousands of people we support.

This will not affect the delivery of Money Advice and our advisors will continue to be available at libraries and foodbanks across the city.

For the full library timetable click here.

Our AQS-accredited money advice service operates on an appointment only basis. If you would like to speak to a trained advisor for free money, debt, and / or welfare advice, please call our main switchboard on 0121 250 0777.

Meet AJ, one of our Community Action Workers here at Birmingham Settlement! We sat down and asked him a few questions about his work…

AJ stood in front of the multi sports Playzone at the Sports & Community Centre.

What is your role here at Birmingham Settlement?

“I am a Community Action Support Worker which means that I support the [Sports & Community] centre by delivering sessions to service users from a variety of ages, backgrounds and abilities. I also help to plan sessions and support staff by covering and helping around the building with general tasks.”

What does a typical day look like in your role?

“There is not really a typical day here for me, due to being part-time and doing a lot of work here during the evenings, every day is different. Most of the time I come in, set up my session, deliver it, then tidy up and leave. However on some days I am onsite during the evening whilst we have room hires and I occasionally do gym inductions which have been booked in during my hours. In any time I am not in a session, I am planning for future sessions.”

What inspired you to become a Community Action Worker?

“Prior to becoming a Community Action Worker, I was a Volunteer for a year and a half. During this time I was in college already studying around sports, which coincides with the activities I was helping with here. From this I saw the opportunity to do sports-related sessions with people in the community which was a win-win for me as I was seeing people happy, engaging and getting to know each other and it was through an interest that I shared with them. There is also the fact that every session has different service users which makes everyday different as I am working with different people non-stop.”

What are some of the main challenges young people face today?

“Young people face many challenges, especially due to stereotypes made about the youth of today. Many people feel intimidated or threatened due to news which only provides a view on the negatives. Because of this, young people don’t get given many opportunities to do things. Additionally, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, many young people missed out on meeting new people and developing hobbies. There is also a sense of anxiety due to both of these with many young people as they feel they wont fit into a group or have doubts and are unwilling to try new things.”

What benefits does our youth service have on the young people attending the sessions?

“Our sessions provide numerous benefits for young people. Many have said they have made friends by attending our sessions who they now see outside of the centre. It gives them a sense of belonging as this is their community. They have consistency here with sessions being every week, so they always have something to look forward to and they get the chance to try activities, games, or sports which they have never tried before.”

What is your favourite part of your job?

“My favourite part of my job is delivering sessions to the community no matter what age, background or ability. When people are engaged in a session and genuinely having fun it is great, especially when I know I was part of giving that experience or teaching them something new within the session.”

With £20 million available for shaping the future of Kingstanding, have your say on what you would like to see in your area.

Do you live in Kingstanding? Maybe you work here? Or do you spend a lot of time visiting the town, such as at our Sports & Community Centre? We want to hear from you!

Thanks to Central Government as part of the Pride in Place programme, there is £20 million available over the next 10 years to develop Kingstanding South East. We are collecting ideas and priorities from local people to find out your thoughts on the area and what you would like to see in the coming years. This feedback is incredibly valuable to the Pride in Place programme, showing what the local community actually want to see in their area. We also have paper feedback forms available at the Sports & Community Centre if you prefer!

Open to ages 11+

Complete by 14th October 2026

In August, 15 children and their parents/carers were invited to take part in a special play session at our Sports and Community Centre as part of a collaborative research project The Power of Loose Parts Play (POLPP), led by UCL and The Centre for Research in Early Childhood (CREC).

POLPP focused on exploring children’s interactions with loose parts materials within informal settings, aiming to understand how such play supports early learning and development including:

• Social and emotional development
• Curiosity
• Creativity, and
• Imaginative thinking.

Research methods included observations with loose parts materials and play interactions with peers and adult carers, informal conversational interviews with children about their play experiences and the graphic illustration of children’s lived experience during play through a graphic illustration produced by illustrator Juli Dosad.

 Children and families joined our Community Action Worker Lou and the research team on the hottest summer day of the year to play and discover with loose parts.

Over to Lou to tell us more!

What was your involvement in the play session?

As a Community Action Worker at Birmingham Settlement, I deliver sessions with children, so I brought together several local families I know that would be interested in participating in the research project. My role was to help explain the process and purpose of the research, and during the activities I invited families into a designated play area that I created to provide calming, reassuring, familiar surroundings. During the session itself I remained with older/younger siblings who attended but didn’t take part in the session, or children that became overwhelmed during the session. I was there to provide additional support to the CREC team.

What did you learn?

As a recent Youth and Community graduate I am a firm believer that children learn through play. I also promote this during our twice-weekly ‘Little Settlers Stay, Learn & Play’ sessions at our community centre in Kingstanding. Education can be fun and this research project showed that as children built confidence (talking/ taking turns and becoming actively involved in their own activities). The session was designed and delivered taking into account each child’s uniqueness.

 What do you think children enjoyed the most?

The build-up to this activity, not knowing what to expect with tables designed for surprise activities, it was a suspense filled session with laugher from both families and the children as they uncovered their activities. The children loved their secret play sessions!

 Why do you think play is important?

Children are very inquisitive and giving them something that challenges their mind whilst being fun is a great way to build confidence, resilience and keenness to redo over again, using play breaks many barriers when children lack confidence, understanding or even ability. Play makes things fun and challenges less challenging!

Thanks to CREC and the UCL team and all the wonderful children and families that took part. CREC and UCL will be sharing the findings back with families once analysis is complete. 

On Saturday 12th September, we hosted Stride for the Settlement at the Nature & Wellbeing Centre – a 5k or 10k walk or run around the Edgbaston Reservoir, raising funds towards the new Green Barn activity space.

It was an incredible day of community, connection, and celebration with over 80 supporters joining us either walking, running, or striding around the Reservoir! Everybody put in an amazing effort from fundraising to finish line, helping us to raise that bit extra towards building the Green Barn.

Post-journey, participants received a Birmingham Settlement medal as a thank you for their hard work, and many joined us afterwards for our Family Fun Day, despite the bad weather! Complete with various games and sports, a prize every time tombola, plenty of home-made curry from vegetables produced onsite, our pop-up charity shop, and Green Barn drop in session, we had a great time celebrating our runners and walkers.

On behalf of all of us at Birmingham Settlement, thank you so much to all of our runners, walkers, volunteers, and those who have made a donation towards the cause – your support means so much to us and has made an incredible difference in bringing the Green Barn a step closer.

Following the success of our very first Stride for the Settlement, we are hoping to make this an annual event – watch this space this time next year!

There is still time to make a donation to the Green Barn and to our Stride team – CLICK HERE for our JustGiving page!

About the Green Barn

The Green Barn is the final phase of development at the Nature & Wellbeing Centre; an indoor, all-weather community activity space, allowing us to host even more activities and events for our community throughout the year. Complete with Pizza oven, this new space will make a huge difference to the site as our current spaces do not have the capacity to host larger groups, and in periods of adverse weather often cannot accomodate our activities. Find out more – watch the video below, or CLICK HERE to visit the Green Barn page.

Our Sports and Community Centre in Kingstanding was recently featured in the Kingstanding Local – read all about it below!

Come along to an informal session over coffee to discover the Green Barn and explore how you can get involved, from developing hands-on skills to fundraising! 

• See the Green Barn plans, find out why it’s needed and explore what’s new
• Share your skills to support the project – and grow new ones!
• Find out how you can be involved in building the Green Barn
• Be part of our Community Builder initiative – find out how you can sponsor a brick!
• Find out more about our Community Pizza Days!

No booking needed, various dates:

Weds 9th September 11am and 3pm

Sat 12th September 1pm-4pm drop-in

Thurs 17th September 5.30pm

Sun 20th September 10.30am

Where?

The Red Shed at Birmingham Settlement Nature & Wellbeing Centre, 79 Selwyn Road, Edgbaston Reservoir, Birmingham, B16 0SL

If you would like to talk more about the Green Barn and can’t make the sessions, we’d love to hear from you. Email lizzie.forrester@bsettlement.org.uk 

To conclude her first year of university, Jacinta joined us on a 70-day work placement as part of her studies to become a Social Worker. We sat down with her on the final day of her placement to find out a bit more of what she got up to whilst at Birmingham Settlement.

What made you choose Birmingham Settlement to complete your work experience?

“I didn’t choose the location myself; my university chose it because they felt I had a lot to learn from Birmingham Settlement – most of the things being done here are aligned with social work policies and procedures.”

What was your favourite part of the work experience?

“I have lots of favourite parts! I would say I enjoyed the parts where I got to participate in groups where I would work with adults or young children; participating in lots of activities – I liked them and enjoyed all of those activities.”

Did you learn any new skills during your time with us?

“Yes, I would say that I’ve grown personally and professionally being here at Birmingham Settlement. First of all, my confidence has grown since joining Birmingham Settlement and also my listening skills. I have improved so well in my listening skills and also being able to communicate with people – I think I do that better now than when I first joined.”

What kind of tasks did you do as part of your work experience?

“I helped out at the Dementia Café, the Cyber Savvy Digital Skills sessions, the Wellbeing Workshops, Little Settlers Stay, Learn, and Play, the Learning Disability group, Cuppa & Chatter, and many other activities. There were lots of them! Also supporting the Money Advice team and the Nature & Wellbeing Centre where I participated in the Social Walk and Talk and Branching Out for adults with learning disabilities.”

Jacinta also helped out with the day-to-day admin at the Sports & Community Centre, from supporting on the reception desk – answering phone calls and speaking to visitors, to helping out with printing, laminating, and other creative tasks.

What 3 words would you use to describe Birmingham Settlement?

• “Welcoming
• Inclusive
• Non-judgmental”

Jacinta is the first work experience volunteer we have had in a while and is a bit of a full circle moment for Birmingham Settlement – much of our very early work involved offering work placement residentials and accommodation for training Social Workers in collaboration with the University of Birmingham. This continued throughout the majority of the 20th century, when our sites at Summer Lane (Newtown) and Kingstanding had facilities to house trainees who lived and worked onsite, offering support and activities to our communities.

Our work changes with the times and the needs of our local people, therefore our work experience looks very different to what it once was, however with much of the same premise – to support people in our communities, creating opportunity and choice through action, activities, and shared learning. Jacinta’s story is a great example of how a work experience placement with us can build valuable skills, increase confidence, and open different doors for future career development.

Join us for a day packed with sports, games, and activities with fun for all the family.

PROGRAMME

Available to take away on the day.

Help us raise £50,000 to build the Green Barn, an all-weather space for environmental learning, wellbeing and community activities beside Edgbaston Reservoir.

Over the past seven years, we have worked hard to transform a derelict and inaccessible playing field next to Edgbaston Reservoir into a welcoming place where people can connect with nature, improve their wellbeing, learn new skills and spend time together.

The Green Barn is the ‘final piece of the jigsaw’, shaped by the ideas, experiences and aspirations of the people who use, care for and love the Nature & Wellbeing Centre, a shared vision for a community space which even more people can enjoy all year round.

You can find out more about the plans for the Green Barn here.

Why another building?

The Nature & Wellbeing Centre – home to the Red Shed – has become a much-loved place for so many people to connect, learn, grow and spend time outdoors. However, as more residents, community groups, families and schools discover and use the site, our spaces are struggling to keep up – we don’t always have the room to say yes!

At the moment, we lack a permanent covered building that allows activities to continue comfortably all year round.

Wet weather, winter conditions and increasingly frequent periods of extreme heat can limit current space usage. The Green Barn will replace our temporary structures creating a welcoming, dedicated activity centre where people can meet, learn, create and take part in community activities come rain or shine!

Our Red Shed Community Café has become the heart of the site, but it is increasingly stretched. It often needs to double as an activity room, limiting its ability to serve as a café and putting pressure on staff. 

Crucially, the Green Barn will make our site more accessible and inclusive. It will provide vital shade and shelter for vulnerable people, children, older people, people with health conditions and those who may need additional support.

It will also provide an office for staff and volunteers – anyone who has been inside our current office in the Red Shed has probably seen how cramped we are!

We have planning permission in place, architects plans drawn up – we now just need funding to make it all happen!

The crowdfund target

We are seeking to raise £50,000 through our Green Barn Crowdfunder towards the construction of the building, the final phase of development at Birmingham Settlement’s Nature and Wellbeing Centre.

This crowdfund forms part of a wider fundraising effort – we have already secured £111,000 through the Pride in Place Fund and are actively pursuing additional support from trusts and foundations, social investment, fundraising events, corporate partners and our own funds. In total, we need to raise £450,000 to make it all happen!

And we think we can…but we need your help!

We are calling on you, our community, to be part of this journey with us.

Perhaps you enjoy visiting the Red Shed for a coffee, walking your dog on the field, coming to a yoga class or performing in the amphitheatre? Maybe your workplace has joined us for a volunteering day, you’re a funder, a project partner or a local business wanting to do more for the neighbourhood?

We invite you all to build the Green Barn with us.

Sponsor a piz-za the Green Barn!

At the heart of the Green Barn will be a unique community pizza oven and Birmingham-sourced brick chimney where people of all ages will gather to cook, learn, celebrate and spend time together. We hope it will become one of the most loved features, bringing neighbours together over shared meals, community events and outdoor learning.

Each brick will be engraved with a name or message of our Community Builders – the individuals, families, neighbours, organisations, groups and businesses who came together to make the Green Barn possible, creating a lasting legacy and reminder of the community that sit at the heart of the space.

Bricks can be sponsored by individuals, businesses, or by clubbing together as a group or even a street! 

Once it’s built, our Community Builders will be the first to sample a Green Barn pizza at a special celebratory pizza night!

There are many other rewards available via our crowdfund page from a Community Pizza Day to complimentary room use and wellbeing workshops. All donations no matter the size are very gratefully appreciated.