Meet the Staff: Cai!

Hi, my name is Caitlin Reilly-Scard (although everyone knows me as Cai!) I am a member of the Family Wellbeing Team at NCP, and I’ve been working here for nearly three years now! Here is a little insight into my background and my life at NCP 😊 

Before moving back to Birmingham, I lived in Wales for over 5 years. I enjoyed the mountains and the countryside, but mostly I loved studying Geography at University. After completing my degree, I developed a keen interest in Human Geography, focusing on communities and what makes them thrive. Which lead me to, wanting to further my understanding of the mechanisms of under-resourced, deprived areas. I was very eager to understand the policies and solutions that create better living conditions for communities in marginalised areas, so I went on to complete a master’s in social policy. And from that point on I was really interested in getting involved in Community work as I wanted to be a part of regeneration and growth for disadvantaged communities. 

Fast forward to me starting at NCP, where I originally started as a Community Connector back in 2023, when we were a part of Early Help. Fast forward to today and I am now a Family Wellbeing Advisor, which I have been for about a year. My role has changed a lot in that time; I worked primarily with educational settings and local organisations, upskilling their services and introducing them to Early Help. Whereas now, I am much more hands on with the families, holding my own caseloads, running the parent drop-in sessions, and having direct involvement with the support we provide. Currently there are three of us in the family wellbeing team, one manager, and then two full time family wellbeing advisors. It can be busy at times, but it is good to know we are a presence in the community and people know they can come to us for support. It is great to be able to talk to the families and have a chance to see into their lives and know they trust us, by allowing us to help them. The main goal of our team is to make families lives better, whether that be providing an emergency food parcel, offering SEND support or just being a listening ear for their worries.  

Over the last (nearly) three years working at NCP, I have met a lot of lovely people! I am fortunate to have a lovely team at NCP – all the staff are lovely as well, but I get to meet some wonderful families too. I have made great connections in the community through stakeholder and networking meetings, but mostly through our out-reach events in the community. I often see themes within families, of support trends that are more in demand than others. I then take those trends and look at organisations that offer that support and invite them to our events to talk to families. This is one of my favourite parts of my role, where I can identify needs and find solutions and bring them together.  

Another highlight of working in the Family Wellbeing Team is getting to deliver and run events/drop-in sessions for families. I enjoy planning the events, from the initial concept to running the event on the day. The events can often be very busy with lots of children enjoying themselves, but it is always really rewarding and a great opportunity to share what we do with the local community. To date, I have helped run a lot of family events/fun days/one of drop-in sessions etc. I really enjoyed running the Family Fun Days in Summer last year, they were a lot of fun, and I got the chance to meet a lot of new families and introduce them to our work.