Celebrating staff at special event

Our staff are based right across Greater Manchester and Lancashire working alongside local people in our communities.  Here, Patrick O’Dowd, our director, tells us more about our latest event to gather everyone together, celebrate what we’ve achieved and look forward to the coming months too… 

One of the challenges for a charity like ours, which has a wide geographic reach as well as a diverse range of services, some of which operate 24 hours a day, can be to ensure that staff have the opportunity to hear directly about the wider aims of our work and the developments that are making a positive difference to people’s lives.  It’s also really important to ensure people have the opportunity to connect with one another, share their work and support effective collaboration. 

We’re really lucky at Caritas to have almost 100 staff who are all dedicated to supporting people locally who are facing acute crisis.  They work hard to not only be there at that time of crisis, but also to work with them to help them transform their lives for the long-term too. 

Whether staff are working front-line in the services we offer across Greater Manchester and Lancashire, or are in one of our departments that help us drive forward our charity in other ways, we’re all really proud to work together as one extended team. 

As an organisation, support for our staff and volunteers, as well as regular training and development opportunities, are extremely important and as part of that commitment, we were really pleased to hold our annual conference for all staff earlier this month. 

Gathering everyone together was a great opportunity to hear about progress and successes, as well as focussing on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.   

As a charity, we aren’t complacent – we operate within a landscape that is ever-changing.   

The cost-of-living crisis is still hitting the communities we work with hard and demand for our services is higher than ever.   

But, as an organisation we aren’t immune to those financial pressures either and it’s really important we continue to stay focussed and efficient.  We need to keep the needs of local people at the heart of all our decisions, and make sure we are constantly adapting to remain relevant and able to support them for the long-term too.  That’s why collaboration and events like our annual conference are so important. 

At the event we were also host to Dr Louise Egan who provided a really informative and important session on providing trauma-informed support.  It will prove invaluable to teams across Caritas and we’re really grateful she was able to join us and share her expertise. 

One of the highlights of our annual conference is always to say thank you to staff and to award those with long-service as well.  It’s fantastic that so many of our staff remain with the organisation for so long.  Their knowledge and experience, combined with other team members who have joined more recently and bring their own unique skills and expertise too, means we are lucky to have a team that is incredibly passionate about our work and the impact it has in our communities. 

It’s set to be an exciting few months and years for Caritas as we continue to develop, evolve and – most importantly – to support as many people in Greater Manchester and Lancashire as we can. 

Huge thanks to all of our staff and volunteers for their dedication and enabling this important work to continue, and also to everyone in our wider community that supports our work in such a multitude of ways.  

It really does help us support people to change their lives and we’re genuinely grateful. 

Thank you.