Kirstie Cook, the CEO of the King's Arms Project walks us through a week in her life.

King’s Arms Project was started over 30 years ago, as a response to seeing people sleeping rough on the streets of Bedford. Founded on the Biblical mandate for social justice, we have grown into a charity which works with the local community and National Government. We provide professional advice, innovative solutions and person-centred care to those at risk of homelessness and social isolation as well as those who have been displaced.

___________________________________________________________________

Monday

As a lover of the outdoors, my day starts with a run over the fields accompanied by our delightful if not slightly scatty springer spaniel. I find exercise and fresh air does me the world of good before I tip headlong into work and this daily habit gives me the headspace to set myself up for all I need to do. I usually keep Monday mornings free for study time and to do some reading around the sector, but this week I have a meeting in a local coffee shop with the recently elected portfolio holder from our council for housing. Good working relationships with key decision-makers in our town is a key part of what I do to ensure that as a charity we are making an impact where it is needed, supporting others where we can, challenging practice and spotting the gaps. We have a good catch up about the bigger picture issues of budgetary challenges and priorities and how to bring some other stakeholders on board in the borough, as well as the more personal questions of how to tackle balancing family life with busy work schedules and deal with criticism from within our teams and from the public when we must make tough decisions. I then head back to the office for my weekly meeting with my EA.

I am very fortunate to have a fantastic team to work with and key to that is the support I get not just administratively but also to help sense check my decisions, test the temperature of the charity through another pair of eyes and float ideas and concerns. I regularly find myself breathing a sigh of relief after these meetings that our schedule is under control, I am not missing anything, and I have everything lined up for the week ahead. After a quick cuppa I jump online for a meeting with our marketing consultant to review our up-and-coming billboard campaign in the town. This is a new strategy for us to raise our profile before launching a new campaign in the autumn and I had some fun choosing from a collection of great designs and chatting through our objectives and how we would measure them. Fundraising is obviously a key activity for us, and I play my part in building our network of major donors, galvanising the support of local churches and writing the odd bid.

Tuesday

I spend most of the morning preparing for a team away day we are holding tomorrow. This involves writing a talk going back over our ‘why’, looking at our strategic objectives, our values and then devising some exercises to expose what our culture currently looks like and what we want it to be. I check in with other team members who are doing sessions then grab some lunch and try to apply myself to the Octordle league I am in at work. This is an online word game and some of the team are frighteningly good and highly competitive so I only throw my hat in the ring when I am feeling on top form!

In the afternoon we have a strategic leadership meeting which I chair. This is made up of managers representing all areas of the charity and we meet once month to work on things such as internal health checks, next steps for various areas of service delivery, ensure compliance with external legislation and to support each other with the various challenges we are facing as well as taking time celebrate the breakthroughs. I then head home for any early dinner as I have an online meeting scheduled for later in the evening with two other CEO’s from charities based in Glasgow and San Fransisco. Although we are in very different locations, we run services with similar vision and values and so it is a good learning opportunity for us to exchange ideas and see how different needs are being met and hear about the various initiatives emerging.

Wednesday

Our team away day! I meet my EA at the local supermarket first thing to do the final bits of food shopping then we head over to the venue we are using which is a retreat centre in a village about 20 mins away from our office base in the town centre. We have just under 50 staff across the charity and majority of them will be coming. We can still just about manage to cater for this ourselves and I like the ‘pitch in’ approach to getting a nice brunch ready. We enjoy some unhurried time getting to reacquaint ourselves with colleagues who work in different locations we don't get to see as often before kicking the day off with a time of reflection led by one of the managers. We are a Charity founded on Christian values and many of our staff hold this faith as their own, but not all and some are from other faith backgrounds. Times of Christian worship and prayer are optional, but we find most join with us and it provokes interesting conversations across our wonderfully diverse team.

The day progresses with interactive teaching sessions, various group activities as well as plenty of time for a long lunch and a few games thrown in. As an introvert I am shattered by the end of the day, but I absolutely love the time we get together and all the things I get to learn about people from the incidental conversations we wouldn’t otherwise have. I am constantly humbled by the passion, commitment and creativity across a group of people who care deeply, often at a cost to themselves and regularly go the extra mile in pursuit of the best for our clients. It is such a privilege to lead our team and days like this remind me of that all over again.

Thursday

My day starts with a much-needed coffee and a catch up with a colleague who used to work for KAP but is now at a charity in the north. She is back in Bedford for a week and wanted to meet as they are developing a new service in her area, and she had some questions. We talked through her plans and then I picked her brains on some changes I have started to think about making at KAP. She is someone who historically has had good insight into the direction of the charity and I find wisdom from people who sit slightly outside our daily life a useful contribution, so I was grateful for the opportunity to share. Then back to the office to welcome a new member of staff who is joining us having been a volunteer for quite a while.

I then met with our Head of Operations to discuss a current project which we have been considering making into a social enterprise. As an ex-business advisor, Matt brings a lot of experience to bear in these situations and I rely on his steady, detailed approach. He is the more risk adverse of the two of us and we usually balance each other out well in terms of working out which new ideas to forge ahead with and which will probably not be good for us. In this instance he persuades me that whilst we are looking for an opportunity to start a social enterprise this is unlikely to be the one and I am happy to bow to his wisdom on it, so a no it is. After putting together a brief plan on how we continue the project as it is and who communicates what to the relevant staff, I grab some lunch (try and do Octordle again) and then head off to one of our venues where we teach our ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). We don’t yet have our own dedicated building for these classes, and they are currently using a local Hockey centre which is empty during the day to run the classes and creche from. I try and get round to visiting once a term to show my support and meet some of the learners and the children.

ESOL is such a vital part of resettlement for our refugee families and really is the key to successful integration and long-term independence. We have devised a model which removes as many barriers as possible to improve engagement and it is wonderful to see the progress being made.

On my way home from ESOL I go to visit the CEO who runs the foodbank in Bedford. They have just moved to new premises which are much larger and allowing for better storage and distribution. We discuss the challenges of modelling the culture and values we want to see in our organisations when we have a diverse range of volunteers and then also the food landscape in Bedford. There are several small organisations who deliver food relief mostly on the street but some in other contexts as well. There is a group working together on this led by the CEO of our local voluntary services and we are trying to ensure good practice, as well as getting a feel for who is using the services and why so we can be targeting support from other services where we can.

Friday

An early start for a breakfast meetup with a long-term friend who is a CEO of a National Charity as well as doing our web design and maintenance. We get together once every 6-8 weeks to chew over the on-going development of his Charity, thrash out some challenges in the sector for our respective areas of focus and think about how we message what we do as well as we can.

I am then in the office for a while to catch up on some admin from the week and to pop into our weekly language club which runs in our town centre building on a Friday morning and to touch base with the outreach team to hear how things have been on the streets that week, before heading out to visit our local Emmaus. I chair the Bedford Homeless Executive Partnership which is a group of stakeholders in the borough that comes together to discuss the challenges across the town, share ideas, offer support and contribute to the council’s housing and rough sleeper strategy where we can. Emmaus is a member of this group, and I value being able to see the charity in action and get time with their CEO who is fairly new in post but very experienced in the sector. They are located in a village just outside the town which has the River Ouse flowing through it and so as a keen wild swimmer I take the opportunity for a pretty chilly dip at the end of the afternoon to wind down from my day and indeed the week.

---