Case study: Seema Sodhi, HomeStart Southwark
Interview, 11.9.14
Primary outcomes –
2.2 PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT: As a result of the organisation’s activity, local
voluntary organisations and community groups are able to access high quality support,
advice and facilitation to help improve their performance.
2.3 LEARNING: As a result of the organisation’s activity, local voluntary organisations and
community groups benefit from learning opportunities that support the personal and
professional development of their workforce.
2.4 LEADERSHIP & GOVERNANCE: As a result of the organisation’s activity, local
voluntary organisations and community groups benefit from opportunities to develop high
quality leadership and governance in their organisation.
Secondary outcomes –
4.1 FORESIGHT: As a result of the organisation’s activity, local voluntary organisations and
community groups are better informed about the potential impact of emerging policies, plans
and practices on their organisations and beneficiaries.
4.3 ACCOUNTABLE REPRESENTATIVES: As a result of the organisation’s activity, local
voluntary organisations and community groups have genuinely accountable representatives
who are participating on behalf of the sector in policy and decision-making structures and
processes.
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1. Who is the case study?
Home Start was established in 1973, Home Start Southwark (HSS) is a registered
charity (since 1995) with its own management committee, but works within the
guidelines set out by Home-Start UK, including the overall vision, mission and
values.
Home Start Southwark work with any parent living in the London Borough of
Southwark, who has at least one child under five and is finding things tough, for
any reason, such as loneliness, ill health, isolation, relationship difficulties, postnatal illness, poverty, multiple births, disabilities, bereavement, mental health
problems, children with special needs etc.
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As well as various groups and workshops, the main aspect of Home Start’s work is
matching volunteers up with the families who would like support. The volunteers are
trained and then work with the families to improve the situations they find themselves
in through tailored one-to-one support.
Seema Sodhi is the current CEO/senior manager.
2. What development support have they received from CAS? To address what
issues?
Seema came into HSS following a period of crisis and uncertainty, as the new
CEO/senior manager. She inherited an organisation without a strategic direction or
plan, in financial difficulty and with a culture hostile to change, with staff who had
been through a lot of difficulties.
Seema originally contacted CAS to discuss a fundraising plan to address the
immediate funding crisis. After a brief discussion it became clear that support with
strategy and leadership would also valuable for a more sustainable future [2.4].
Seema has received one-to-one support in CAS Sustainability Surgeries and followup meetings with a Development Officer. CAS delivered a day’s consultancy,
facilitating a strategic away-day with both staff and trustees and providing a written
follow-up report with recommendations from the day [2.4]. Seema and Home Start’s
Chair (Pippa) have attended the Business Planning training course [2.3]. Seema and
the Home Start Southwark manager are working with the CAS Evaluation & Impact
Support Officer to improve impact measurement [2.3]. And Seema regularly attends
the CAS Children, Young People & Families forum [4.1].
3. To what extent did this support improve their leadership and governance,
performance or staff development?
Through a combination of the CAS support outlined above, Seema believes that
HSS now have a workable strategic plan that staff and trustees have bought into
[2.4]. The best piece of advice she received from CAS was –
‘to involve staff in the strategic planning process. This has both encouraged buyin and has been a staff development activity. It has also started to change some
of the culture in the organisation, moving away from the past. The board were
very impressed with the strategic plan produced’ [2.2, 2.3, 2.4].
Information provided on full cost recovery (FCR) helped Seema to overcome her
own worries and look at her budgets with more confidence. [2.3].
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CAS support has also helped Seema to become more established as a leader
through feeling a lot more confident. The board ‘sat up and listened when I
introduced the strategic plan ideas after the away day whereas previously they had
not seen the need.’ [2.4]
The away day also helped all staff and trustees to start recognising the need for
change in the organisation and reduced resistance to the changes being introduced,
such as a new perinatal project which has now been incorporated into current
workloads with less resistance than in the past. [2.2]
The module helped Seema and Pippa understand the difference between strategic
planning and business planning. Seema found the post-it notes on a 3-year timeline
exercise –
‘really useful, and I re-thought my own plans, thinking about the elements that
change rather than what stays the same’ [2.2, 2.3, 2.4].
Seema feels really supported by CAS and knows she can phone any of the team
when she needs to talk through any issues. After a discussion about trustees in
which a CAS Development Officer suggested looking outside the pool of people they
already know, Seema at first felt ‘a bit taken aback but after thinking on it I realised
how useful that might be and contacted Trustee Works’, from which she has now got
a trustee with expertise in marketing. She said she appreciated –
‘the honesty and openness of CAS’ approach, giving advice that is not always
welcome immediately but has always retrospectively been the right thing for
Home Start’..
She also feels as if the HSS chair is ‘beginning to feel more comfortable in her role
and more secure now that the organisation has a direction’ [2.4].
‘There is a sense that the staff also feel more secure, there seems to be less
worry about the funding situation and more action especially as the staff are
being developed though the strategic planning process and through working on
evaluation and impact, they are having to re-thing what they do and how they do
it’ [2.2, 2.4].
Seema has also found she is more confident writing funding proposals. The initial
one-to-one sessions looking at HSS’ unique selling point, identifying what Home
Start does and what projects they work on, has really helped in writing more
funding bids. ‘Simply having an outside eye has been really helpful.’
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4. Has there been or will there be an impact on service users, as a result of this
support?
Yes. Through the skills/knowledge/confidence gained, Seema has been
‘able to make key decisions such as keeping the perinatal programme, looking at
new ways of delivering services, such as a semi-structured format for the
volunteers going into families, so that they go in with a core set of indicators and
areas, as well as discussing with the parents what they would like’ [2.2, 2.3].
They are also looking at co-locating workers into local community centres that
families already use.
The support has also helped them to make a decision about the service user
demographic. They are moving towards a more targeted services and will start
working with the siblings of the under-5s they currently work with [2.2, 2.4].
5. What value did CAS add? How would you have otherwise improved in these
areas without CAS?
CAS provided an outside eye and asked the difficult questions as well as providing a
timeline. Without CAS Seema said she ‘had personal contacts she could have
approached but would have had to have used consultants at a cost to the
organisation.’ She thought she could use NCVO and others for training but again this
would be at a much higher cost to HSS. She was ‘not sure where else she could
have gone to get the one-to-one support she needed, especially not local support.’
6. How could CAS support be improved?
The only part of the module Seema didn’t find as helpful was the mix of people in the
room during some of the training and support sessions –
‘perhaps having a module for start-ups and young organisations and a separate
one for larger and/or more established organisations would be more useful for
peer support as the issues are very different for these groups.’
7. To what extent do CAS events (e.g. forums) and bulletins improve her
awareness of relevant policy, commissioning or funding developments?
The Children, Young People & Families forum helps her gauge where HSS is in
relation to other organisations. CAS is the only local source of information;
Seema felt that the council have become very inward looking, that they do nor
respond to groups or provide the information needed with enough time, if at all,
especially to children’s organisations [4.1].
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CAS is good at getting the right people in the room. Seema felt that CAS ‘plays a key
role in knocking down the council’s door and helping to build relationships with the
right people’ [4.1].
Seema has found the new joint forums not as useful as the single issue forums, as
she finds –
‘far fewer children’s organisations attend these, and while meeting organisations
working with young people and adults is useful, I would like to have more time
with children’s organisations.’
8. How aware is she of voluntary sector Reps and their work?
Yes. Seema knows the Rep for the Children & Families Trust (Natalia) and reads the
Dispatch reports published on the CAS website. She feels if there is ever an issue
she needed brought up, the Reps system is a good way to raise it and a good source
of information. She still attends some of the meetings herself but finds that the Reps
take away from her workload as she knows Natalia will have attended and will feed
back. Overall she thinks ‘the Reps do a great job’ [4.3].
Interviewee contact details
Seema Sodhi, Home Start Southwark [E]
seema.sodhi@homestartsouthwark.org.uk [T] 020 7737
7720 [W] http://www.homestartsouthwark.org.uk/
Community Action Southwark - 1 Addington Square, Camberwell, London SE5 0HF | t: 0207
7358 7020 | w: casouthwark.org.uk | e: info@casouthwark.org.uk | Twitter: @casouthwark | Reg
charity no: 1105835 | Company Ltd by guarantee no: 5090324
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