Chloe’s progression in Southwark

I came to Southwark Council after spending the first decade of my career in the Community and
Voluntary Sector in North West England. I had been on the delivery side of services for disabled
children and adults and had experienced many frustrations working with the local authority. When I
relocated to London I decided that I would seek to broaden my experience in order to gain a greater
understanding of how other parts of the health and social care system operate.

I saw the External Funding Officer post advertised and felt that it would be a good first step into the
Local Authority world, whilst drawing on my past experience of bid-writing, fundraising, partnership
working and service development.

For the past 4 years I have worked in this role, writing and developing proposals with colleagues and
partners for external funding. I have also had the opportunity to work on some key campaigns such
as Laptops 4 Learning, a Southwark-wide crowdfunding campaign which raised funds to keep
children connected to their education during the pandemic, and our local Cost of Living response,
delivering workshops to hundreds of partners and colleagues to ensure people could access vital
sources of support and funding during these challenging times.

More recently I have worked with colleagues and local partners on a £1 million bid to the
Department for Education’s Short Breaks Innovation Programme. Following a successful outcome I
applied for a secondment to be the Programme Manager to oversee the resulting projects and was
appointed. This has allowed me to draw on my past experience of developing and managing services
for disabled people in the voluntary sector. It’s nice to be involved in seeing something through from
inception to delivery again!

I did not think I would last in the Local Authority when I joined 4 and a half years ago – I was
accustomed to working in a very agile and responsive voluntary sector and had found the local
authority where I worked previously hard to navigate and engage. There have been some challenges
in adjusting but there are also great opportunities for influencing and affecting change and I have
been pleasantly surprised by the amount of autonomy that I’ve had in my roles! I have also been
able to get involved in more strategic work with a range of partners – giving me a far greater
understanding of the wider systemic issues at play – I have learnt a great deal and continue to do so
every day!

Thrive-to-25 Programme Manager | Children and Adult Services

Undergraduate degree | BSC Psychology