Investors in our people
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About a year ago a couple of people from CFL were invited to go to a brief presentation about an accreditation scheme called “Investors in People”. Most of the managers here had heard about “Investors”, and most people will recognise the little plaques that you often see in reception areas of offices and businesses.

At the initial presentation, it was explained that to attain the standard, an independent assessor would visit the organisation and speak to a selection of staff to see if various criteria were met. There would be approximately 120 indicators they would be looking for! It was also explained that a consultant would be assigned to each organisation to help prepare, where necessary, so that when the assessment date was fixed, they would be ready.

Investors is aimed at enabling companies and organisations to look at how they look after people who are involved in the work at all levels; also how opportunities are provided to develop new and existing skills. Furthermore, it promotes the idea of people being able to offer their ideas, where possible being involved in implementing changes.

We were fairly confident that many of the suggested practices where already in place, however having an independent group look at how we actually function can only help us to improve our relationships and communication with our staff and volunteers. Tim and Flo, who oversaw the Investors in People accreditation process, also felt that by looking at some aspects of what Investors proposed, it would assist Caring For Life in better equipping all those involved in this important ministry, caring for very vulnerable people.


Peter, our CEO, with two people being supported by Caring For Life
We believe that the care we offer at Caring For Life is good. We seek to do our best, for the glory of Christ and for the sake of all those who so much need our help. The impact of simply sharing the love of Jesus is enormous and we can only try to emulate the example that Christ has provided. However as a growing organisation, we must always look at how we care for our staff and priceless volunteers. We wanted to implement a few new systems that we felt would help in this area and would also help when we were assessed.

Our initial date for being assessed was going to be in June 06. However after a lot of work and thought we brought the date forward to April.

Our assessor arrived early on Friday 31st March. He knew about our type of organisation, along with the difficulties that charities generally face with funding and so forth. This helped us to feel confident that we would get a true and fair assessment.

Throughout the day he spoke with a range of different people: staff, volunteers and one of our trustees, but he also very much wanted to speak with people in our care. Again, this was very reassuring, as the assessor understood that ultimately, no matter what we had in place to look after staff and volunteers, it was the recipients of our care who can actually tell someone how valuable this ministry is.


Danny and Tim Watts pictured here with
two of the people who spoke with the assessor
He finished seeing people at around 4pm and had some time to get his thoughts together. Peter, Esther and Tim were then de-briefed with the conversation starting with, “To put you out of your misery, I have no problem at all in recommending you for the Investors in People standard.”

The relief was enormous. We were so pleased to have received the acknowledgement from an external person, who specifically looks at organisations, to say that we were doing something right! He then made some very useful remarks on a few areas and was very complimentary of our staff, volunteers and the assistance he had received from those in our care.

We received formal acknowledgment a couple of weeks later and will be receiving a plaque in early May.

We hope that this is just the beginning of much more to come. We have much, much more to do and ongoing improvements to aim for. We hope that achieving the Investors in People standard will show people that we as a Christian organisation are not only doing an extremely valuable job in caring for some very needy people, but are also caring for our staff, volunteers and anyone who helps us, as a Christian organisation should!