Helen Dearden - Director
Background:
Helen's experience encompasses the voluntary, local government, private, academic and national government sectors, working specifically to build sustainable models for voluntary support. She has worked as a researcher, trainer, consultant, policy developer, development officer and Director with a focus on the development of community focussed working and supporting vulnerable groups. As an activist and volunteer, she has been a volunteer director of the Federation for Community Development Learning, Community Development Exchange and Community Development Cymru. She has also previously contributed significantly to the agendas for training as a member of the Education Training Standards Board for Youth and Community Work and on the predecessor to the Sector Skills Council, Paulo Cymru.
Her initial experiences of leadership came within the voluntary sector as Acting Chair of Community Development Cymru which she then went on to develop further in other roles. She has a familiarity with national level policy and strategic debates and has been successful in communicating with and lobbying senior level civil servants and government Ministers. Helen is always quick to pick up on the ‘win-win’ situations in order to get results all round. Despite having a business-like approach to negotiation and partnership building, Helen has a very strong commitment to the principles of the voluntary sector which she operationalises in her working career, constantly striving to to improve learning and share understanding.
Helen thrives on being engaged in high level policy and strategic planning debates, and has spent a great deal of time on this during secondments to the Welsh Assembly Government . She has also worked as an academic, consultant and trainer/lecturer in housing, social enterprise, participatory appraisal and development of the foundation degree in community development. She leads the way in developing business plans, participatory appraisal with very diverse groups, organisational evaluations, housing needs assessment and community visioning. As well as working at the local level she has presented findings to national committees and contributed to European conferences on a number of occasions.
Within her current role she is politically aware and well practiced in lobbying, negotiating and briefing the democratically elected. This is juxtaposed with a great deal of experience in assisting individuals and groups whose voices are often ignored, overlooked or undervalued.
Duffryn Community Link requires Helen to be constantly working to sustain the organisation. In contrast to running million pound research programmes for the Welsh Assembly Government, the local social enterprises rely on Helen to secure ongoing funding for 35 staff positions and sustaining a wide range of projects recognised nationally for good practice. The Welsh Assembly Government now recognise the Tredegar Park Ward Communities First Partnership, for which Duffryn Community Link is the secretariat, as ‘excellent’. As part of the review we used key change management techniques which assisted in members of staff and Trustees feeling ownership of the process.
Helen is a good leader promoting motivation, setting the direction, evidence-based debate, providing headship but also negotiation, diplomacy, sensitivity and developmental principles. Helen is a little over-enthusiastic about management concepts and generally learning about how people behave. In the voluntary sector, conflict can provide a dynamic atmosphere and produce energetic innovation, however, there are times when it needs to be managed and resolved. She leads teams to work with partners in a very transparent way to ensure that communication is not only high quality but includes, involves and is frequent and thorough. This is dually important for Helen in brokering relationships between staff and the Board of the company she ensures that the role of the Board is respected and has facilitated many sessions between the staff team and the trustees to ensure that everyone understands and respects the importance and difference of governance and management. She provides the buffer for the organisation to work to the principle that whilst organisational and local politics can useful to the debate, the outcome should be the best for communities we serve - and therefore the processes should be open and accessible and promote participation from the community. This has sometimes been challenging, particularly when working on projects where there are a number of participants all facing a range of multiple access difficulties or societal barriers. However, this is such a positive way to work to push engagement within communities and organisations beyond the easiest to reach in order to benefit and value the most vulnerable.
Helen gets a great deal done by working with partners on a cross-Newport basis, particularly promoting the the interface between service provision, strategy and the needs of local people and organisations, especially with the challenges that working in the voluntary sector provides, and the results that can be achieved by providing the mechanism by which all community voices have the potential to be heard, listened to, and valued through action. She facilitates forward planning involving all partners in the ward and is involved in the development of the Newport-wide framework for the future of Communities First, which brings together a range of partners. Further afield she has been fortunate to engage with the Gwent High Sheriffs past and present and gain their ongoing support for the project.
Localised achievements:
Helen's role within Duffryn Community Link is sometimes quite invisible although high impact. There are many staff members who manage to get out into the community; although Helen is keen to get as hands on as possible when she can through outreach to meet people and identify their priorities for the organisation, taking children on bike rides, sitting with parents and empathising over a cuppa and reading stories to children in Rainbow class (nurture programme) and in the three playgroups run by Duffryn Community Link.
Since starting with Duffryn Community Link, 3 years ago, Helen has streamlined the process of community engagement and strategic planning. The Link's activities are wide and varied and as with most community development organisations, the focus has historically been on 'doing', which means that the charitable company has a forte in achieving local results. The emphasis on process has now been developed to work in parallel to doing to involve community in setting the company's direction. Helen structured involvement so that local community members developed and conducted the community questionnaire with their neighbours and friends. She then fed the results of the questionnaire through to thematic subgroups (including practitioners, professionals and community members and groups) who she trained in prioritising and project planning. The prioritising stage used the results of the questionnaire in conjunction with local and national statistics and policies (e.g. Local Health Board, Chamber of Commerce, Local Authority, Welsh Assembly Government), and the project planning clearly set out timelines, responsibilities and assumptions and risks. As well as emerging with a 5 year plan, Helen's work promoted joint working, the principles of community participation in planning and helped her to embed her role within the community - as the co-ordinator of the local Welsh Assembly Government Communities First programme. The early stages of community based questionnaire development also enabled many people to develop confidence and skills to move forward and improve their own quality of life; particularly when they were presented with the final plan for them to sign off. The subgroups now report via the local Communities First Partnership Board through to the Welsh Assembly Government on the wholly community-owned objectives.
Helen has been involved with Business in the Community throughout her career and was very happy to re-acquaint herself with the organisation when coming to work in Duffryn. As testament to her negotiation and, to be honest, selling skills she was able to quickly and enthusiastically gain the buy in from businesses as part of the Seeing is Believing work with BITC. As a result the following results have been achieved:
Helen has been effective in team working to lead the organisation to meet expanding demand by extending the childcare provision. In a usual business setting, this would be fairly straightforward, but Helen felt it should be community-led. To do this, she developed an options appraisal and then worked with parents of the children who would be moved to enable them to come to the decision for expansion. The practicalities of the expansion were also a challenging piece of work for Helen who was also due to go on maternity leave at the time, but she ensured that negotiations were complete with the Local Education Authority to gain substantial investment to setup the centre and also to run a bus contract between the settings. The sustainability of the service depended on Helen's communication with the Chief Education Officer to gain their financial support.
It is Helen's recognition of the diverse ways of learning that has been very effective in getting results for our local community. Having not had a straightforward pathway into learning, and being committed to particular theories of education, she is passionate about 'making it easier' for people to learn to learn; and for organisations to facilitate progression as far as possible within the local community. Her model has worked on the very basic level of getting support for confidence, counselling, debt advice and basic skills before people can be in a life stage where they are in a position to learn. To enable this, she has drawn in almost £50k to provide the support at all stages of learning and development. This has included getting support for families to spend time together where there may be difficulties with substance misuse, domestic abuse or mental health. Having this family time means that parents find value in what we do, learn to support their children emotionally as well as educationally, as well as finding their own path to better quality of life. Some of our parents who have had this support, and the support of a volunteer support worker have found their way back into employment. It may have taken a while but they have so many opportunities that Helen has initiated from getting employment experience by volunteering in the office, play group, cafe or bike club; to boosting basic skills by playing pool, darts and scrabble. We have moved some of these individuals onto work experience with our business partners so it really is an organic progressive approach. From one course that has now run for 3 years, on average 80% or more of the participants enter further learning or employment on exit from the course, and some continue to volunteer for us when they get chance. Getting learning at the heart of the programme can even be a non-financial exercise within some of the many groups within the community that she supports. For instance, the move to be out and about in the late evening talking to young people about what they would like to see provided in the evenings, was developed into the Friday night project which not only promotes the use of sport as a healthy and diversionary activity but combines this with a workshop for learning about good life skills and citizenship. The projects that are facilitated by the company regularly attract about 150 people per week from all ages and Helen is continuously working to brand everything that we do. She is also supportive of other smaller community groups and in addition to providing them with support, uses the opportunity to say 'Duffryn Community Link did this'! Some of the jobs are provided locally, and by running 4 social enterprises, there are many opportunities for involvement. Helen currently employs 75% of staff within the social enterprises from the local community and has local employment as a key target within the community plan.
For many of these projects, Helen works in partnership and communicates with a high level of enthusiasm about her team, who she sees as intrinsic to being able to achieve results. As a result of many successes, the team support her in working flexibly but are also well supported by her open door and transparent approach to management. In order to reduce the exposed risk from reliance on Assembly Government funding, Helen has guided the team in order to increase funding from other sources. This has exceeded current targets. There are many more stories to tell, and to talk about the levels of investment that Helen has attracted from organisations and individuals including: