Making a difference: from volunteering to employment
Parent Champions are parent volunteers who give a few hours a week to talk to other parents about the local services available to families. They help families in their local area, including isolated or marginalised families, to find out about childcare and services available. The scheme can have huge benefits for the local community – but it can also benefit the volunteers who take part. This blog tells the story of two former Parent Champions – Emma Evans and Bonnie Arnold – who are now Universal Services Practitioners for the City of Wolverhampton Council. Both posts have been funded through the Department for Education as Wolverhampton was one of the 75 local authorities who were successfully awarded funds to join up and enhance services delivered through the transformed family hubs model, ensuring all parents and carers can access the support they need, when they need it.
Emma Evans
Emma Evans first heard about the Parent Champions volunteer scheme when she accessed early help and domestic abuse services at her local family hub. A single parent to two young children, Emma didn’t feel like it was the right time to get involved but, she explains, a couple of years later, “I’d been out of work for so long and I just didn’t feel like myself, and I knew that I had to do something.”
As a Parent Champion, Emma helped run stay-and-play groups at her local family hub and eventually took over as lead in this role. Emma enjoyed supporting families with young children “because I knew what they felt like. I knew how isolating it can be at home with children.” As well as helping families, Emma herself benefitted from volunteering as a Parent Champion:
“I do think it’s given me a lot of confidence. It has given me a big boost. I feel more Emma and not just mum anymore, because there was a point where it was just mum. I was only mum. But no, I am my own person now.”
When a paid position as Universal Services Practitioner came up within the family hub, Reeta, the Parent Champions Coordinator in Wolverhampton, suggested Emma apply. “I’m not really good at bigging myself up,” Emma says, “But I knew I was more than capable of doing the job myself, so I thought, ‘Why not go for it?’”
Now an employee of Wolverhampton Council, the confidence Emma gained as a Parent Champion has followed her into her paid role. The transition from volunteer to employee was smooth because, she says, “I was working alongside the Universal Service Practitioners [as a Parent Champion], so I already had an insight into what the job needed.”