Vision Care for Homeless People

Why Work With Us / Case Studies

About Hannah’s role and Vision Care for Homeless People:

 Hannah Telfer is the CEO for Vision Care for Homeless People (VCHP), which provides eye care for people experiencing homelessness or at risk of experiencing homelessness. It’s been operating for 22 years and works mostly through three service delivery models:

  • 11 clinics across the UK.
  • Through Crisis at Christmas – an event which supports homeless people.
  • A domiciliary trial where VCHP is visiting day centres and hostels in the Yorkshire area.

Hannah has been in role for 18 months, and when she joined she was clear from the start that she needed VA support to help her with governance, because they were entering a time of significant growth.

She realised that getting a VA on board to support both her and the Board with good governance was vital to support with that growth.

www.visioncarecharity.org

Hannah explains how working with the Indispensary has been vital to the smooth running of VCHP

Why a VA?

“Anna, our VA, is amazing. She’s incredibly organised, calm and aware. Nothing is too much trouble. If I ask her to do something, 9 times out of 10 I don’t have to think about it in any way, shape or form.

“Not only does she do the work for me, but she also keeps me on track with governance during our bi-weekly meeting. So, I can be sure to keep the board on track with everything that they should be doing. A huge benefit for me is that I don’t have to get involved with the detail around organising meetings. Anna just picks it up and sorts everything out seamlessly, without me having to double and triple check everything is going to be right. I can just trust it will.

“Her minute taking is exceptional. We’ve had some really difficult board conversations and her ability to cut through the waffle is genuinely incredible. There was one meeting where I thought, ‘Oh, my word, how on earth is Anna gonna minute this?’ And she just did it so brilliantly. In the past, it could have been six weeks before the minutes were emailed out, but now Anna’s on board, she gets them to me within about two days, so the process is so much quicker.

“Historically, doing the minutes for the meetings would be my job. And I would be the worst possible person to do it! It would take me forever and it’s absolutely not my skill set. It would also mean I’d be concentrating on thinking about minutes and not participating in the meeting in its full capacity.

The Benefits

“Charity Trustees also have full time jobs, their work with us is additional to that. So actually, clarity and simplicity of comms is absolutely key, and Anna understands that. Her friendly demeanour when chasing up trustees when they’ve not done what they need to do is second to none!”

“The biggest benefit for me personally is that it significantly frees up my headspace. I don’t have to worry about the agenda or other organisational details. I can just turn up to the meeting and answer any questions.

“And she really does go the extra mile for us. For example, she recently found us a meeting venue completely free of charge, which as a charity is absolutely amazing. It’s those little things that really are the icing on the cake. You can trust that all those little details will be thought of and taken care of.

“She’s brought so much ease to mine and the other exec’s lives. Everybody needs an Anna, but no one can have Anna because she’s mine.”

“The Indispensary really gets to know their clients and supports them in all sorts of ways – for example, Joanne often tags me in Linkedin stuff that’s useful for us.

“It feels like she’s part of our team, supporting us from the sidelines and cheering us on. She instinctively knows how and when to check in, so there’s no extra effort needed from me. She knows how often she needs to check in, and varies that depending on what we need.

“It’s the skill set of the people working for The Indispensary which allows me to delegate with confidence and reassurance that I know the job’s going to get done, and done really well. In fact, they overdeliver. They do the job, and then they’ll make an improvement to the process to make it better next time. They really understand what VCHP is trying to achieve and how what they do plays a role in that.”

Working with the Indispensary has also helped us to improve our processes and ways of working

“Drawing on her previous charity experience, Anna has helped us set up new and better ways of working. This has included creating a policy control document, so we have far better governance from the Trustees’ perspective. This has enabled the trustees to do more of the ‘trustee role’ and be less bothered with the admin side of things. Therefore, I think they have more time to consider the impact for our beneficiaries. As a result, there are significantly improved outcomes for our beneficiaries in the long run.

“After coming on board to give us last minute support for the launch of one of our new clinics, The Indispensary also helped us create a blueprint of what needs to be done in the lead up to the launch of a new clinic in future. This will make it so much easier to create seamless and high quality launches going forwards.

“So, not only did they help us deliver an exceptional event, they also have made sure that we can repeat that again and again.”

Why Us?

“You get a consistent service, and you don’t have to plan for any of the responsibilities of running payroll or managing an employee. You just have to pay the automated invoice that pops into your inbox, which suits me perfectly. So actually, 10 hours of support really is 10 pure hours of output.

“Also, working with an agency that specialises in charity work is great, because they really understand how the sector works. And I think that’s really, really important. For example, updating the Charity Commission with our end of year accounts. Anna already knows how to do that. Whereas if it was an agency that didn’t specialise in charities, they’d be like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve never done this before,’ and I’d have to spend time going through it all.

“So, that’s a huge benefit. Everything I asked Anna to do, like: updating charity details; updating trustees; removing people from Charity Commission and Company’s house. It’s all just second nature and nothing is ever a problem.”

If this sounds like what you need, we’d love to talk to you.