Role: Trustee And Board Member
Company: Victim Support NI
Track Record:
The ability to mentally ‘takeoff and land in a small space’ is a real asset, says Brendan about his job.
What does your job entail?
Being a trustee and member of the board of Victim Support Northern Ireland entails using judgment gained during a lifetime of public service delivery.
It also requires employing the necessary work-based knowledge to ensure the best governance, financial management, legal compliance and operational quality of a major charitable organisation operating all across Northern Ireland.
Is it 9-5?
No, the trustees do meet on scheduled days and deal with business items but then there are some sub-committee responsibilities — mine being finance and general purposes — together with ad hoc meetings with senior staff and external stakeholders, such as our main funder the Department of Justice.
There are opportunities to see the work being delivered locally and to meet key staff and hear what they think of the day-to-day challenges of working for victims and witnesses of crime.
How did you get into this line of work?
I worked for 34 years in the delivery and management of children’s services and decided to retire last year in order to support my remaining parent who is in her eighties .
I was very fortunate that I planned to retire before I was 60 but did not want to go straight from full-time work in to full-time consultancy. I saw the board position for VSNI advertised in the Belfast Telegraph and was interviewed and accepted.
I do some work as a voluntary trustee for two Northern Ireland charitable trusts, one of which is Victim Support NI.
Outline your career to date?
For 34 years I have worked in the field of children’s services. My first job after university was as youth worker at the Finaghy Youth Centre at the end of the 1970s.
In the early 80s, I gained promotion and worked in English local authority education and social care departments. I worked my way up to county manager and then director, and for the last 20 years I have managed and led children’s services departments in local authorities in England.
My last post, since the end of 2009 was as group director for learning, skills and children’s services at the London Development Agency where I was accountable to the Mayor of London and worked across all 33 London boroughs.
Before that I had a wonderful four years as director of operations for learning and schools in the Olympic borough of Newham in East London. I helped to plan the learning facilities for the Olympic Park in Legacy — a steep learning curve but I would not have missed it for the world.
Tell us about your qualifications/training.
When I was 19, I studied for the professional diploma in youth work training between 1975-78 at the University of Ulster. I studied for an MA in education at the University of East Anglia and then undertook my management training on the job when working in Norfolk and Cheshire County Councils during the 1990s. I have undertaken a great many task-specific training courses around financial and human relations issues.
What qualities are required for your job — personal and professional?
Any board-level position requires fine judgment first and foremost. I believe that judgment comes with experience and of course as the result of having made mistakes along the way!
As we have to be able to deal with a constant stream of data about finance, performance, policy and political developments, it helps if you are well organised. IT-based information systems are everywhere now and it is easy to be data rich but analysis poor. It helps if staff provide the analysis which you believe will help you make informed judgments. A great quality in a trustee is an ability to get on with staff at all levels. One day you may be in the office with staff or key stakeholders such as the PSNI, the next at Parliament dealing with politicians and civil servants.
The ability to mentally ‘take-off and land in a small space’ is a real asset.
What are the biggest challenges and rewards of your work?
I get a great deal of satisfaction from seeing the organisation grow and the contact we make with witnesses and victims of crime.
This means keeping a group of trained volunteers updated with skills and attitudes.
To do this, our full-time staff work very hard and sometimes they just need to be told that they are doing a good job — I think this is a very pleasant task to undertake.
Our worries stem from the uncertain financial landscape and always trying to do more with less.
Our staff, like many others, have not had a pay rise for over four years — this of course means that they too are having to make sacrifices at home.
They need to know we understand and care that they are under pressure and that we are constantly looking for ways to make the future of VSNI sustainable.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
I only returned to live in Northern Ireland 18 months ago and have been rediscovering the wonder of the place with friends from all over the world who have come to visit us.
I love to walk and it is not unusual for my brother Martin and I to be on top of Slieve Croob in the Dromara Hills with a flask of coffee and a chocolate digestive at 0800 on a Sunday morning — glorious!
For many years I have had a holiday home in Switzerland and I have a deep love of the place. I try to go at least twice a year, winter and summer, and never tire of the enormous beauty of the place.
Tell us an interesting fact about yourself.
I did some work for a struggling charity in the 1990s and afterwards, out of the blue, received an invitation to a small private lunch with the Queen and Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace.
I still can’t believe that those few hours happened but I was hugely impressed by how well-briefed the Queen was and how charming she was towards me.
Who has inspired you most in your life?
Towards the end of my professional life, when I was on the board of the London Development Agency, I had the sheer joy of having Sir Peter Rogers as my chief executive and line manager.
He is a deeply modest man and will hate me for saying that he came from an unprivileged background and has risen right to the top by his own ability. I have never come across anyone with such an in-depth knowledge of public services and such intense critical judgment in a crisis. He left a hugely positive impression on me.