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FORMER MEDICAL INDUSTRY MD MENTORS FAMILY SUPPORT CENTRE
Arriving at The Accord Centre in March 2006, Barbara Majumdar was looking forward to working directly with the families who were recommended by the courts and local authorities to need supervised child contact. However, the Centre had been without a director for five years and was in desperate need of re-organisation and a systems overhaul, and Barbara found herself facing an unexpected new challenge.
A timely intervention came in July 2006, when Barbara was offered an opportunity by the Big Lottery Fund to work with an experienced mentor. She jumped at the chance and PrimeTimers member, Dr Alan Cousens, came on board. “What I liked about Alan from the start was that he was neither going to do the job for us nor impose his ideas on us. He really helped me to achieve and maintain a sense of perspective and ensured that we were continuously working towards our mission and goals” she explained.
The Accord Centre provides the facilities and expertise for supervised child contact with a parent or parents who no longer live with the child. Estranged families are referred to the Centre by the courts, solicitors and local authorities. Staff monitor the sessions and make detailed reports with recommendations which then go back to the courts.
“As the providers of such an essential resource, it was important that the Centre was running more efficiently with the full support of its staff. In this respect Alan ran some really productive sessions that ensured we were all moving forwards together” Barbara continued.
Successful mentoring relies on the crucial matching process of mentor and mentee which PrimeTimers, who have a membership of over 120 highly experienced business people, spend a lot of time focussing on at the start of each mentoring assignment. This Big Lottery Funded mentoring project began in 2004 and aims to get a number of organisations to a point where they can successfully function as a social enterprise.
Having just taken time off to complete an MSc in Economics at Birkbeck – his fifth degree – Dr Alan Cousens' career history has included being Managing Director Medical of Oxford Instruments plc and Managing Director of a division of Smiths Industries, Smiths Industries Medical Systems. He has also undertaken a variety of project work in the third sector for PrimeTimers, Community Action Network, The Evangelical Alliance and Centre 33, a charity working with young people in Cambridgeshire.
“It was clear from our first session that the most pressing need was to review the organisation's strategy and help them to formulate a business plan” Alan said. “Barbara's background at the National Association of Child Contact Centres meant that she knew the sector extremely well but needed support with the strategic thinking. Obviously I did not know the sector but I really enjoyed the facilitation role and helping them to structure their business plan. It was important that Barbara and her staff ultimately felt ownership of the plan which did, in fact, end up being the main thrust of the mentoring project.”
Once the business plan had been developed, a new problem arose with the tenancy of the Centre and it became necessary to look for new premises. Alan encouraged Barbara and the team to re-examine their mission and objectives to make sure they were working towards them and meeting the needs of their primary stakeholders – the people they are helping. They realised that existing office space had a number of large meeting rooms which were not all used and a new site became available that had smaller rooms, ideal for family visits which is what they needed.
Also at this time, Barbara found that a substantial amount of her day was being spent on trying to secure new funding as the local council's existing funding had been withdrawn. It was apparent to Alan that the organisation, in attempting to find other sources, were trying to match their activities to the funding on offer instead of finding the funding which would be applicable to their services. “I referred the team back to their business plan to ensure that they kept themselves targeted towards their mission” he explained.
“Moving across the sectors from science to social has been extremely interesting. I've thoroughly enjoyed this mentoring experience and will be more than happy to take on some more projects” he added.
“I found the mentoring experience invaluable and by concentrating on the new business plan we were able to take the organisation back to its roots and start building it up again from there” Barbara commented. “We've found that the plan is a powerful working document which helps us to agree on what to communicate and to make the right decisions to take the organisation forward.”
Background notes:
This three year big Lottery Fund (BLF) mentoring programme began in 2004 and was delivered by Community Action Network (CAN) and Yorkshire and Humber Development Consortium (YHDC). For the last two years, CAN has worked with PrimeTimers to match experienced mentors with organisations who have the potential to move towards a social enterprise model.
