Your Place recruiting new Chair of Trustees
Your Place are delighted to partner with Distinctive People HR & OD Ltd in the recruitment of the Board Chair.
As a charity dedicated to solving homelessness in East London, Your Place is focused on offering hope, a home, and a healing place to grow. This is a well-run charity with a strong executive team and Board that brings a diversity of skills and professional backgrounds. Operating in an extremely challenging environment with rough sleeping and housing issues increasing in London, Your Place needs to be consistently entrepreneurial and focused on income in order to deliver the vision.
The new Chair will provide leadership to the Board and senior team in further establishing the Your Place vision and strategic direction. We are seeking great candidates with substantial experience of charity governance as a Non-Executive Board Member or Chair and a track record of senior leadership and business achievement. On a personal level, we are looking for a team player with strong ambassadorial and networking skills who encourages innovation and creativity in others. This is a voluntary role, so most important is a values driven purpose, with a strong social ethos and an alignment with the fact that equity, diversity, and inclusion are central to everything that happens at Your Place.
If this sounds like you then take a look at the pack here https://bit.ly/3FVXPeq and then contact Denise Kirkham, our retained recruitment Partner at Distinctive People, for an informal discussion on 07833 475669.
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Q&A with Cate Kirkbride, Trustee at Your Place.
What is the best part of being a Board member at Your Place?
I am extremely proud to be part of the Your Place Board. The best part is being close to the work we do, and seeing directly the impact we make every day one person at a time. Seeing how many people move on and find somewhere more permanent to call home is great, especially when we have 97% of people move on from us and into accommodation for more than six months.
What changes have you seen, both at Your Place and in homelessness more widely, since you have been a Board member?
Sadly, I have seen homelessness sharply rise since 2019. Not just rough sleeping on the street, but people trapped in poor quality temporary accommodation, hostels, bed and breakfasts or sofa surfing. We have a crisis in our housing system with insufficient social housing and a private rented sector that is expensive and often of poor quality riddled with mould or damp. I have also seen the increasing pressures that this places on local councils, particularly in London and Newham. The challenge of supporting our residents to find suitable accommodation has certainly increased since I joined the Board.
There are so many changes since I joined that I’d struggle to list them all here but some highlights for me personally:
- Diversification of our Board – In 2021 we worked closely with the Housing Diversity Network to increase diversity on our Board. This included a development programme for new candidates to create a pool of next generation Trustees with different skills and characteristics. It has been great to see those Trustees grow in confidence and contribute to our work.
- Rebrand to Your Place – Our new name has been a fundamental part of our ongoing evolution as a growing charity. Our focus is very much on each person and their individual needs as they regain a sense of ownership over their lives. Our new brand and name showed that we are here for each person who comes through our doors, a place to feel safe and to start again.
- Last but not least, our work with women – We know that women are less likely to be accounted for in homelessness and rough sleeping data due to the different ways they often remain hidden to avoid abuse on the streets. At Your Place, our strengths-based approach and the investment in our dedicated women’s support workers is going from strength to strength. They really understand the needs of women experiencing homelessness and provide tailored support to address and overcome barriers and achieve their aspirations. As an organisation, we’re learning too, and working together to achieve better outcomes for women is something I’m immensely proud of.
