Chair-designate Home-Start Spelthorne

Do you want to help improve the lives of parents and young children by taking the lead in our charity?

You could be the next Chair of Home-Start Spelthorne, a local charity in NW Surrey that gives every child the best possible start in life.

What will you be doing?

Set up in 1996, we offer "a lifeline", a free family support service to families with at least one child under the age of five, provided by volunteers who are parents themselves, to support other parents. Our home visiting service is unique in Spelthorne, providing compassionate, confidential and non-judgmental help and friendship to local parents struggling to cope with the daily challenges of family life.

Our income in 2024/45 was £134k, and although we are affiliated to national Home-Start UK, we are an independent local charity responsible for our own governance and securing our own funding.

We face an exciting & challenging future, externally with Local Government reorganisation and internally with major staffing changes, and are looking for enthusiastic leadership of our Board in order to provide more of our services as demand increases.

Our Board includes people with experience and skills in supporting parents, and we'd expect new trustees to have empathy with our cause and our beneficiaries, but you don't have to be a parent.

Our long-standing Chair is stepping down from her role, and will hand-on those duties over an extended period of up to six months to enable your induction and continuity for the Board and the charity, although her knowledge and experience will continue to be available. At the same time, it is the intention that our staff team will change and increase to better support the volunteers who themselves support our beneficiaries.

To add to that, Spelthorne Borough Council will be subsumed into a new West Surrey Council by April 2027, and our Home-Start countywide consortium, of which our Chair is a trustee as well, may change to reflect those new structures.

Although we don't insist on prior charity trusteeship, previous leadership and committee experience will be essential, with abilities to steer the organisation through these changes, and a strong strategic focus. Full induction to our organisation will be provided, plus specialist support as a new trustee including access to external training.

If you can think strategically and plan long-term, you have the primary skills needed by our Chair; you'll also need to be able to work collectively with other Board members. Support from our paid employees is always available, as they will deal with the day-to-day running of the organisation.

We are a charity not a business, but we apply business principles to governing our organisation. We are looking for people from a variety of backgrounds to join our charity. We want to expand the diversity of our Board, in all meanings of the word, and strongly welcome applications from people from less-represented groups.

During those six months as 'designate', we ask for about ten hours per month, which will rise to fifteen hours/month as Chair. These include all meetings, discussions, etc., and will slightly increase at Year-End and AGM times. Many of your duties may be carried out online and by phone/video, as well as face-to-face.

What are we looking for?

Here is some of what we would expect from our trustees; we appreciate you may want to develop more in some of these areas: training available.

• Clear commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, valuing differences to make better decisions and deliver better outcomes
• Understanding of the needs of our beneficiaries is desirable, an empathy with them is essential; experience as a parent is obviously useful, but not required
• Ability to cooperatively lead the team of trustees, bringing impartiality and objectivity to decision-making, with the ability to bring people together to build consensus
• Strategic vision; good, independent judgement; ability to think creatively, tempered by pragmatism and reality
• Experience and abilities to navigate and steer organisational change, both internally and in the external environment
• Grasp of local political changes and the ability to navigate those for the benefit of the organisation
• Ability and skills to effectively manage meetings, including the ability to listen, even to dissenting views
• Willingness to speak your mind and to challenge other trustees and employees with good intent; able to make unpopular recommendations to the Board, if necessary
• Skills to analyse proposals, examine their strategic consequences and make concise recommendations
• Secure personal access to digital communication and able to competently use those resources
• Commitment to the organisation; willingness and ability to devote the necessary time & effort
• Experience of committee work, with an understanding of the role of the Chair in effective (charity or corporate) governance, would be highly-valued
• Some experience of employee and/or volunteer management, support and appraisal would be valued
• Availability to meet the Scheme Manager on a scheduled and ad-hoc basis to provide advice and support, including as part of an appraisal process; willingness to be available to meet other employees to provide advice and support, as needed
• Having appropriate personal and professional contacts & networks, with willingness to draw on those as needed

What difference will you make?

What do we get?

• Your strategic skills, knowledge, understanding and experience
• Your abilities to influence plans for our charity's future
• Your navigational help through exciting changes, both internally and external to our organisation
• Enhancement to our overall governance and the Board of trustees and in our operational growth
• Your participation in our collective decision-making, contributing to all areas of our charity work
• Your enthusiasm

What do our beneficiaries get?

• The ability to continue our support for parents with young children
• A forward-looking and agile organisation, with a well-informed and well-led Board of trustees

What do YOU get as a volunteer trustee with our organisation?

• An opportunity to exercise your strategic leadership skills, probably in a different environment or context
• An opportunity to influence and collectively-lead an organisation supporting young children
• A chance to expand and implement your understanding of our work, especially in this period of major changes
• A chance to augment your experience of charities
• A boost to your career and CV, if needed
• Satisfaction of helping an organisation that supports parents and children, thus giving something back to your community