Two Decades of Serving Vulnerable Populations

I have been involved in working with venerable people for over twenty years and have worked within many different settings. As part of my work, I have worked with people within sheltered accommodation to more recently, working with vulnerable families living with poverty and deprivation. I have mentored young people who were at risk of being excluded from and often had chaotic home lives, some with Special Educational Needs. Due to the nature of my work, I had needed to have a high level of interpersonal skills and to be approachable to people from all areas and backgrounds of society be they parents, governors to social services or the police.

Within one of my most recent positions I worked in one of the most deprived areas of Bristol.

Here, I mentored children and young people who were at risk of exclusion, had chaotic home lives, some with Special Educational Needs. Some of the children were signposted to me through senior staff or teachers who asked me to mentor a student.

I am often privy to sensitive information from social services and the police. Moreover, I have also been involved with issues of restorative justice between families, talking through past issues of sexual abuse and needing to report issues of neglect to other professionals. Subsequently, I am aware of the importance of working within safeguarding procedures, risk assessments, action plans, equal opportunities and confidentiality.

Throughout my work history I have predominately worked within volunteer based organisations. Subsequently, I have had to build, train and co-ordinate these teams as well as grow the projects themselves. Due to leading teams of mainly volunteers I have had to be aware of their time commitments therefore prioritising tasks have been key. Furthermore, I have line-managed paid workers and have had to be aware of external issue upon staff such ill health and family issues as well as helping and guiding them with their future development and career goals.

Within my work I have develop and implement many projects that have engaged with the local community.

For example, I lead a mid-week ‘Open House’ that was featured in ‘Youthwork Magazine’ for its inter-generational work. The project provided a relaxed place fr the local community to meet, play games, learn new skills and short each other. Moreover, I weekly take students in an elderly community meal that was aimed to continue to build relationships between generations. Amongst other projects, I am was involved in facilitating a gardening project, breakfast club, community cafe, and a boys reading group. I have developed, planned and implementation several children and young people holiday clubs that have been attended by over 50 children with teams of volunteers. Previously, I have facilitated and implemented numerous youth camps including international trips to Nice, France and Dublin, led an area-wide ‘Battle of the Bands’ that was attended by over 200 local community member. This project worked closely with the local police, securing a small grant, as well as other local community groups. I developed a project that encouraged rural based young woman to become more involved in politics this included a weekend trip to London to interview protesters outside the houses of parliament and secured a grant of £3000. The project lead to an evenings presentation to the local community and suporters. This also included feedback of evaluation of the project.

Previously, I

worked for a charity where my main role was starting and leading a youth cyber café. Here I organised and trained a team of over 20 volunteer workers to help run and lead the café. The cafe opened 4 nights every week and at the time had over 200 young people from the local area as members.

When leading a team I have often developed in-house training. This has included leading training in safeguarding, diversity and best practise. Moreover, with my NVQ level 3 in Adult Education I have had the opportunity to run teaching days for undergraduate and postgraduate university students this role inevitably helps with training and developing volunteers.

I have had significant experience of working in managerial roles as well as leading and participating within teams. However, I have also had to be in positions where I am often required to work alone and take initiative. Within working to deadlines, I have had to be self motivated and self-managed and prioritise work load.

Throughout my work I have had to produce required paperwork. This has included grant applications, report writing, budgets, implementing risk-assessments and presentations to stakeholders that also includes evaluation of proectects. I am very competent with ICT skills from using Microsoft office, Mac iWork and Google Drive. Moreover, I am very competent with the use of social media.