The Scottish population is becoming increasingly diverse and the charity MECOPP (Minority Ethnic Carers of Older People Projects) identifies and supports minority ethnic carers in Edinburgh and the Lothians. It works with carers from Hong Kong and mainland China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Africa and African-Caribbean countries, the Middle East and Gypsy/Travellers.
One carer who can’t thank MECOPP enough says: “I come from a Chinese and Western background and when my mother was diagnosed with myeloma I found it extremely difficult to explain a lot of terms and meanings that were associated with cancer.
“MECOPP’s Macmillan Chinese cancer link worker was able to interpret all the terms in Cantonese and Chinese. She took us through the steps of each treatment and accompanied my mum to all her doctor’s appointments.
“From knowing her, my mum had the reassurance, confidence and support to carry on with treatment and life. Not only has she been there for my mum but for the rest of the family and life could have turned out differently if we did not have this kind of support.”
Managing growth was one of the main challenges facing the organisation, says chief executive Suzanne Munday. MECOPP had started out as a local organisation but after it was recognised by the Scottish government as a national carers’ organisation, national funding started outstripping local funding.
“We also needed to tighten up internal processes, such as governance, and look at our financial procedures.
“The blunt questions from the Pilotlighters forced us to think about issues, for example, how much funding we could manage. We learnt to think through whether a funding stream would add value to what we do. On the back of the Pilotlighters’ advice we decided that future applications for funding would have to meet our strategic objectives and new funding would not be pursued simply because it was available.”
With the Pilotlighters’ help MECOPP put together a five-year strategic plan. The Pilotlighters also proposed creating a senior management team from the project managers to free up some of Suzanne’s time.
An idea they are considering in the longer term is creating a strategic board and a carers’ board. “A carers’ board would harness their experience and knowledge, but because carers don’t always have the strategic experience the two boards would run in tandem. This was another idea from our Pilotlighters.
“I would recommend working with Pilotlight 100%. It is a lot of work and that shouldn’t be under-estimated but very rarely do you get time out to think about longer-term strategic objectives and this process gives you that time so it’s incredibly useful.
“The thing that really impressed me was how extraordinarily helpful my Pilotlighters were. They come from a different sector with a fresh pair of eyes to ask the questions that needed to be asked. I wouldn’t have swapped the experience for the world.”
Jan Welsh, head of annuity operations at Prudential, was one of the Pilotlighters on the team – which also consisted of corporate members from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP and HBOS.
“Suzanne is a fantastic chief executive and very influential. But the biggest issue for us was that she had no team around her to delegate to, she did everything herself. So if something happened to her the charity wouldn’t have been able to carry on,” explains Jan.
The second issue was with the board which had little involvement in day-to-day operations. A number of actions were put in place to resolve these concerns, including installing the senior management team and recruiting new trustees with different skillsets.
“We have left MECOPP with a much more structured organisation that can continue to operate in an effective way without the chief executive having to be involved in every decision,” says Jan.
“The Pilotlight process leaves charities with something lasting, a new set of skills, food for thought and a plan to work on. I would definitely encourage other people to become a Pilotlighter. You feel like you have helped someone and, at the same time, learnt a lot about yourself. You can’t lose if you are prepared to give the time.”