Chief executive of Home-Start UK recognised in New Year’s Honours

Embargo: 00:01am, Friday 1 January 2010

Kay Bews, chief executive of Home-Start UK, has been appointed OBE in the 2010 New Year’s honours.

The award has been given for services to children and families.

Home-Start recruits and trains volunteers to give regular, tailor-made support to parents with very young children. Uniquely, the volunteers visit parents at home. They help strengthen relationships within the family and with the local community. The charity was set up in 1973 and now supports more than 34,000 families and more than 71,000 children each year. More than 15,000 volunteers visit families – parents supporting other parents in a variety of situations including isolation, bereavement, multiple births, illness or disability.

Kay Bews has been involved with Home-Start since 1988 when she started work as a senior organiser at Home-Start Reading. After four years recruiting and training volunteers and matching them with families she moved to Home-Start UK. Since then she has worked as a regional consultant, director for England and, since 2005, as chief executive. She is still based in Reading, though travels the length and breadth of the UK for her work.

On hearing of the award she said, “I was rather surprised and very honoured. My work is just one part of the whole of Home-Start. There are thousands of staff and volunteers across the country who are just as passionate as me about the effectiveness of Home-Start’s work and who can see, every day, the real difference we can make to families. I’m delighted that this has come at a time when I can share it with everyone else involved in the charity, and hope they will all accept a little of the glory.”

“It’s a good time to celebrate the achievements and growth of such a young charity – we are only 35, barely middle aged! But we do face difficult times in the near future. Our work is changing and, increasingly we are supporting families facing many layers of problems – from dealing with the stresses of the recession to those who are very socially excluded, perhaps with children on the child protection register. We are particularly concerned about how to keep each and every one of the 336 local Home-Starts funded, and how to allow the communities that haven’t yet got a local Home-Start to find the money to set one up. It’s our dream to have a Home-Start in every community in the UK.”

-Ends-

Notes to editors

Interviews

For interviews with Kay Bews, please call: 07760 381085
Between the hours of: 9am and 7pm.

Full biography below.

To get hold of Home-Start’s national press office during the Christmas and new year period, please call Annie O’Brian, head of communications: 07917 392130

Further details on Home-Start at its work: www.home-start.org.uk

Photography: igh resolution head and shoulders portrait of Kay Bews available to download from:

http://www.home-start.org.uk/news/image_gallery/high_resolution_images

About Home-Start, Home-Start UK and Home-Start Reading

Home-Start is the UK’s leading family support charity. We recruit and train volunteers to support parents with at least one child under the age of five. Our home visiting work is unique in the UK. The charity was set up in 1973 and now supports nearly 35,000 families and almost 71,000 children each year. More than 15,000 volunteers visit families in their own homes – parents supporting other parents in a variety of situations including isolation, bereavement, multiple births, illness or disability.

Home-Start UK. All local Home-Start schemes are supported by Home-Start UK. Home-Start UK is an independently registered charity that provides the support that local Home-Start Schemes need to carry out their family support work through: up-to-date training for staff, volunteers and trustees; information and guidance on governance; legal and human resources advice; help with fundraising; lobbying of national and local government and funders; running volunteer recruitment campaigns; providing national quality standards; supporting community groups to set up new Home-Start schemes and representing Home-Start on national, regional and local fora.

Home-Start Reading was set up in 1984 and now supports 144 families and 212 children each year. 83 volunteers gave their tailor-made support for the families.

…/end of notes to editors. Full biography follows.

Kay Bews – Chief Executive of Home-Start UK

Career Biography

Summary

Detail

Kay Bews has been involved with Home-Start for more than 21 years. Since 2007, Kay has been Home-Start’s chief executive, before which she spent two years as acting chief executive, eight years as director for England, and a further five years as a regional consultant supporting local Home-Starts and developing a number of new ones in the West Country and Midlands.

Prior to her time with the national organisation, Home-Start UK, Kay worked as senior organiser for Home-Start Reading, recruiting and training volunteers and matching them with families in need of support.

Home-Start is the leading family support charity in the UK. It recruits and trains volunteers to support parents with children under five years old through situations as varied as isolation, bereavement, multiple births, illness and disability. The charity was set up in 1973 and now supports nearly 34,000 families and nearly more than 71,000 children across the UK. More than 16,000 volunteers visit families in their own homes and a further 2,000 volunteers act as trustees for local Home-Starts.

Kay’s work with Home-Start has brought her into contact with many thousands of families and volunteers and with other voluntary agencies, research groups, local authorities and health agencies. She has contributed to a number of policy forums and advisory groups, regional strategic planning groups and several All Party Parliamentary Groups.

Home-Start UK, chief executive 2007 - present

Home-Start UK, acting chief executive 2005-2007
Kay is responsible for leading and directing the work of Home-Start UK, an independent charity that provides professional support, policy, training and guidance for the network of 336 local Home-Starts. She provides a focus for all 5,000 staff, and 18,0000 volunteers and others connected with the Home-Start network across the UK. Currently Home-Start UK is developing partnerships with a range of other agencies including CLIC Sargent, Turn2Us and the Child Poverty Action Group

Home-Start UK, director for England 1997- 2005
As director for Home-Start in England, Kay had strategic, operational and managerial responsibility for a team of regional consultants and support staff working across England during a period of major expansion and development for Home-Start’s service in England. In 2000 Kay oversaw the re-organisation of Home-Start UK’s regional structure and the introduction of a new set of regional boundaries commensurate with Government regions across the UK. As a member of Home-Start UK’s senior management team, Kay held senior level responsibility for ensuring that Home-Start’s government grants were properly managed and that agreed outcomes and development targets were met. This was a wide ranging role which together with operational management skills, also drew on Kay’s knowledge and experience in partnership work, volunteer development, policy and practice development, profile raising, research, monitoring and revaluation.

From 1997-2002 Kay also held responsibility for the work of Home-Start in Wales, developing a close working relationship with the Welsh Assembly government and with colleagues in the voluntary and private sectors there and building the capacity of Home-Start’s service in Wales prior to the appointment of a full time Director for Home-Start in Wales.

Home-Start UK, regional consultant 1992-1997
As regional consultant for the West Country and Midlands, Kay managed the support of the operational development of the Home-Start service in these regions. She provided high level training, information, guidance and support to new and experienced staff and voluntary committee members in Home-Start schemes across the region, ensuring that schemes worked within the standards set by the Home-Start Agreement. Kay was also responsible for picking up on changes in family’s needs and good practice in the field of family support in the region, and for ensuring that support and guidance to schemes was always up to date and reflecting best practice. Kay worked with a wide range of partner organisations to promote the work of Home-Start in the region and support the development and expansion of the service in response to local need.

Home-Start Reading, senior organiser1988-1992
Responsible for the day to day running and management of Home-Start Reading including: taking referrals, making initial assessment visits with families; matching families with volunteers and the recruitment and training and on-going support of home-visiting volunteers.

Pre 1988
Kay was educated in Reading and left school with A levels, intending to read geography at University, but instead got caught up with the very early computer world at the ripe age of 19.

Kay began work at Reading University on its very first computer, at the time located within the Maths department. She then went into the civil service and the private sector as a computer programmer and systems analyst. She gained various civil service and specialist computer industry qualifications.

In 1973 Kay retired from work to bring up her family.

Kay took up her career again in the mid 1980s during which time she worked in adult education across a wide range of disciplines including creative arts and textiles, computer training return to work courses and training the trainer courses. Kay delivered training vocational and non-vocational courses including GCSE, City and Guilds and A levels, for a number of agencies in the South East including Further and Adult Education colleges, local authorities, the Manpower Services Commission, NACRO, Drug Awareness Training Agencies, the YTS and YOPS. She worked with groups of unemployed adults who had ‘dropped out’ of mainstream community life and for 18 months established and managed a computer centre for adults who had become physically disabled.

Personal
Kay continues to live in Reading, working there and at The Home-Start Centre in Leicester. She enjoys being a grandmother to five lively grandchildren, manages to maintain an allotment with much help from

a more green fingered husband. She also belongs to a book group – and says she “just about finds time to read the chosen books”.

Updated: December 2009

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