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Staff & Board
Staff
Liz Watson
Having originally trained as a social worker, Liz has worked for more than 20 years in voluntary sector organisations of all sizes, in a variety of roles from Development Worker, Policy Officer to Chief Executive and Board member. She has experience of working with a wide range of service user groups, including looked after children, people with learning disabilities, homeless young people, deaf people and women who have experienced domestic abuse. She also spent five years as a trainer within the NHS. Currently she is a Director of both Scottish Womens Aid and Perthshire Womens Aid. Out of work interests include cooking, polytunnel gardening and keeping chickens.
liz@befriending.co.uk
Sam Rospigliosi
Sam has been the Information Officer at BNS since 2004, writing newsletters, keeping the website up-to-date, answering queries and wading through all the e-bulletins she subscribes to as well as the internet to track down research that might be relevant to befriending. She loves being asked things she doesn't know, having to read through and summarise large documents and loves the fact that her role encompasses so many different client groups. Before this, she was an editor in book publishing for 13 years, working on a variety projects, from creating indexes for large reference encyclopedias to commissioning illustrated fiction for children with dyslexia. She is passionate about befriending and the impact it can have on people's lives and has in the past been a befriender for children's and older people's projects. She also loves reading, cooking and anything to do with knitting and spends a considerable amount of time thinking of different ways to hide wool under the bed so that her husband doesn't find out how much she has.
sam@befriending.co.uk
Martha Lester-Cribb
Martha joined BNS in 2007 to fill the newly created post of Quality Officer. BNS offers its members the opportunity to apply for a quality award and Martha is responsible for promoting, administering and assessing this award, as well as supporting member projects as they go through the application process. She is currently developing a new befriending-specific quality award (Quality in Befriending) which will replace the Approved Provider Standard for BNS members in summer 2010. Martha also wrote the revised version of the Befriending Code of Practice which was launched in 2009. Previously Martha has worked as a carer for people with disabilities, been a researcher at the University of Stirling working with people who have severe communication difficulties, and co-founded an Edinburgh-based charity (Pass IT On) which adapts donated computers for people with disabilities. As she only works 3 days a week for BNS, much of her spare time is still spent volunteering at Pass IT On and providing 1:1 computing tuition for people with disabilities. What's left of that "spare" time is predominantly spent playing the cello (and touring internationally!) with the notorious Really Terrible Orchestra, indulging her passion for photography (particularly the low-tech film and dark room variety), and gardening (aka trying to keep her extraordinarily long and high privet hedge under control and removing seemingly never-ending tons of rubble in an attempt to create pretty flower beds).
martha@befriending.co.uk
Alison Chapman
Alison has been the administrator with BNS since August 2008 and will help with membership queries, training bookings, chase you if you haven't paid, etc. Born in Brighton, she's gradually worked her way north, arriving in Fife in 1999. Having worked for Capability Scotland, as administrator for its Community Based Services Fife, she decided to do what she didn't do when she was 18 and went back to school, graduating from Edinburgh University in 2006 with an MA (Hons) in Philosophy and English Lit. The next plan was to take a post-graduate Archivists' Diploma, but she couldn't face any more studying, so here she is back in the world of work and thoroughly enjoying it! She's at BNS for 15 hours a week and when she's not here, is secretary of Aberdour Shinty Club (she tried playing once, but it was far too scary). She has teenage twins (and is an identical herself) and an assortment of animals. She likes poetry, brass bands, and reading the Fortean Times.
alison@befriending.co.uk
Sandra Brown
Sandra's first involvement with a befriending project focused on the isolation of the elderly during undergraduate fieldwork in Social Anthropology in Namibia in 1989. This was a continuing theme through postgraduate studies and expanded to include mechanisms for the social and educational inclusion of physically impaired adults when teaching in Supported Learning at Inverness College. Sandra became the Local Co-ordinator of the Heart Failure Support Service (Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland) in Lothian in 2007, offering volunteer befriending, quarterly forum meetings and regular newsletters to people living with heart failure in the community. Streamlining procedures and policies (and undertaking APS along the way) means that this service 'model' is now operating in Lanarkshire and is imminent in Glasgow, the Western Isles and Highland, forming Sandra's 'exciting and absorbing challenge' over the next few years!
sandra@befriending.co.uk
Board of Directors
Wendy Bates
Wendy has worked and volunteered in the voluntary sector since graduating from Aberdeen University in 1995. Roles include working with CSV, NCH Action for Children, Quarriers and ChildLine. Wendy has been Service Manager with re:discover, health in mind since 2001 and now also manages Altogether Better Befriending Service, part of another health in mind service. Re:discover is a recovery-focused befriending service for adults with experience of mental health problems operating in Edinburgh, Midlothian and the east of the Scottish Borders. Altogether Better befriending service is for parents and carers living in South Edinburgh who experience low self esteem and self confidence. There are over 50 volunteers involved as befrienders within health in mind. Wendy joined the Board in October 2009.
Liz McLeish
Liz is a fully qualified accountant who has been working in a variety of roles for the NHS over 20 years. Over that time she has had significant experience of both Management Accounts and preparing final statutory accounts. Liz joined the Board in November 2008 continuing a link with NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde which has provided Treasurers for BNS since 2001.
Professor Stephen Platt
Stephen Platt is Professor of Health Policy Research at the University of Edinburgh. For over 30 years he has pursued a research interest in mental health and suicidal behaviour, co-authoring many academic books and articles on socio-economic, epidemiological and cultural aspects of suicide and self-harm. Stephen is also involved in policy development and analysis relating to public mental health and mental health improvement, and has extensive experience of successful collaboration with policy planners and practitioners working in these areas. He currently serves on the Mental Health Improvement Policy Evidence Group, the National Suicide Prevention Review Group, and the Scottish Government Self-harm Working Group. He has been a trustee of the UK Mental Health Foundation and is currently a trustee of UK Samaritans. He has published on conceptual and methodological aspects of well-being and is co-developer of the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS).
David Shipley (Chair)
David has had a varied career comprising of nineteen years with BT, five years as a church minister and the last eleven years working in the voluntary and charitable sector. Now in his early 50s, David works for Age Concern Newcastle as the Volunteering Develepment Manager. Having amassed a wealth of knowledge about volunteering both in theory and in practice, David is often asked to lead seminars and workshops, particularly with regard to issues around older people. David is particularly proud of the fact that he was one of the first members of Befriending Networks.
Elaine Smith
Elaine is the Service Manager of the Volunteer Centre East Dunbartonshire Befriending Service. She has been with the project since July 2000 where she originally began as Project Assistant. The project support older and disabled adults facing social isolation with one-to-one befrienders and it also runs a telephone befriending scheme. It has recently developed a birthday card/letter writing scheme and has also been successful in encouraging those traditionally excluded from volunteering because of disability, age or being housebound, to be trained at home and provide telephone befriending to socially isolated older people.
The Board additionally has access to Stephen Leach, Head of Human Resources at Baillie Gifford (Investment Company) in Edinburgh to advise on any personnel issues on an ad hoc basis outside of Board meetings.
