Staff Members
Margaret West - Chief Officer
Margaret has nearly 40 years experience working with children, adults and older people in social care situations in the statutory and voluntary sector. Coming to VAK in 2001 Margaret saw this as an opportunity to bring this experience together and share it to enable the voluntary sector in Kennet to move forward. Margaret is currently the Wiltshire Consortium rep and joint lead for the Local Area Agreement, one of two elected reps for the Children and Young People's Trust Board as well as sitting on the Kennet and Community Strategic Partnerships board in Kennet. Margaret is also a member of the Compact board.
Ali Perry - Children's Hub Manager
Ali is our children’s hub manager and leads on any work we do within our organisation around children and their families. She has worked for our organisation for the last 6 years. Her main roles at present are: Children’s Centre Manager; working with Wiltshire Council information sharing team helping them to engage with parents on Contact Point and the Common Assessment Framework (CAF); facilitating parenting courses. Ali is a representative of the Children and Families Voluntary Sector Forum and sits on various sub-groups of the Children's Trust Board.
Ali has many years experience of project management and community development. She works hard to communicate effectively and on instigating partnership work with other agencies. This came out strongly in the independent evaluation of a previous project Ali worked on for us, Support to Families in Kennet. She also has many years of experience of working in a multi-agency way and is passionate about ensuring parents are consulted with in a way they understand and can participate in ways that are comfortable for them. Ali feels strongly that to be inclusive and enable parents to participate we have to make this easy and enjoyable for them and show that we value them and their time. Working with Dads is an important part of our work at VAK and Ali has just spent the last 2 years working on a project to ensure we do this effectively.
Ali has qualifications in Management, Information Advice and Guidance and has just completed a Parenting Practitioner course. Ali has just started an OU Foundation Degree in Childhood and Youth Studies.
Val Cragg - Children's Centre Outreach Worker
Val first got involved with volunteering when she was working in the Retail Trade. Two years of involvement with Centrepoint Night Shelter led in time to her working for both Wiltshire and Bristol specialists in fostering. Val then ran a pub for a few years (bag loads of experience of working with difficult situations there!) before volunteering and eventually working for Young Carers. In 2000 Val went to work with the homeless in Devizes and Trowbridge. She has more years experience than she cares to admit to and is a qualified p/t youthworker and Parenting Practitioner.
Louise Oliver - Children's Centre Play and Support Worker
Louise previously worked in customer services within the finance industry before leaving to raise her children. Louise joined VAK as a part-time admin assistant in 2006 and since then her role has developed and now Louise also works for the Children's Centre by helping run the Toy Library, Rhymetimes and Childminder Drop-ins at the library, and at various other events. Louise still provides admin support within the office and writes the Community Action column for the local paper.
Nina Fishlock - Pewsey Children's Centre Administrator
Nina previously worked for the Civil Service, and after having a three year career break to have a family, Nina joined Voluntary Action Kennet in 2003 as support worker to Open Minds for 5hrs per week. In 2004 she took on an extra 7hrs per week to become 'flexible friend' for the Chief Officer. In 2005 she added to her hours with 5hrs more per week as Volunteer Centre Kennet worker. When funding for this post enabled the hours to be extended to 17.5 Nina took on this role but unfortunately had to resign her other posts. Now due to funding cuts Nina has started a new role as Administrator for Pewsey Children's Centre.
Melanie Cooper - Children's Centre Outreach Worker
Melanie is a mum of four children ages 5-15, living in one of the rural villages around Pewsey. Her background is in children and education having worked for the last 9 years in early years childcare and education, with on-going training within early years. She is looking forward to bringing her skills and experience to the Children's Centre.
Lindy Mann - Bookkeeper
Gail Leaman - Open Minds Outreach Worker
Emma Gilford - Playworker
Joanna Pirker - Information Officer
Flo Evans - Children and Familes Voluntary Sector Forum Administrator
