Shared Lives Plus welcomes Jayne Wilson as Director of Development

An announcement from Alex Fox:

I’m delighted to announce the appointment of Jayne Wilson as our new Director of Development.  Jayne will be providing strategic leadership to our communications, Homeshare UK and Family by Family development work, major partnerships, and strategic advice and support work; while also increasing and diversifying our sources of income, to help us reach our goal of financial sustainability.

Jayne has been part of the Shared Lives Plus team for the last few months leading our ambitious Shared Lives expansion programme, but for those of you who haven’t met her yet, I’ll let her introduce herself in her own words.

Jayne says:

“My work has always been about supporting people, especially the most vulnerable. I started out as a community and youth worker in Merseyside, and huge part of that role was about co-production of services with local people.

After that, I went on to manage youth work programmes for a range of national charities, improving the quality of their delivery to young people – and bringing in money from large corporate sponsors, commissioned services, and trust and foundations. Some highlights include a corporate partnership with O2 worth over £1m, and a corporate challenge on Merseyside which raised over £1m in three years.

Before joining Shared Lives Plus, my previous role was as CEO of Petty Pool, a college in Sandiway (just outside Northwich in Cheshire) which provides vocational education and outdoor activities for young people with learning disabilities.

In my five years at Petty Pool we grew the charity so that it doubled both in staff size, and in the number of people it was able to support. Some of the young people I met there benefited from Shared Living arrangements and I saw for myself the difference it made. The more I found out about the work of Shared Lives Plus, the more I wanted to be involved, so I was really pleased to be able to bring my development experience to the organisation when I joined Shared Lives Plus as co-ordinator of the expansion project in 2020.

My own recent experience of navigating the adult social care system for my elderly parents, and choosing to care for my mum in my own home, while she lives with dementia, really motivated me when I realised the opportunity that Homeshare offers. The work the team and UK network do is invaluable.

When the new role of Director of Development opened up, I jumped at the chance to get even more involved. I’m particularly looking forward to getting to help grow our  Homeshare UK network,  strategic advice offer, Family by Family programme and continue to raise awareness of shared living options and membership.

And even though I start just as our former Executive Director Anna McEwen leaves, I’m not replacing her (after all who could?). My job as Director of Development is to build on the excellent work that she did, and to develop Shared Lives Plus as a sustainable organisation, so that we can support more people, in more places, in more ways.”