It came as a bit of a shock over the weekend to realise that I would be winding up (to a certain extent) in the Hand in Hand office at the end of next month. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year.
I will still be helping out whenever asked of course, but on a day to day basis I’ll miss Jennifer and Deirdre. (Whether they’ll miss my big grouchy head first thing in the day is another matter.)

Dee began coming in as a volunteer in October and went full-time under the JobBridge scheme in May; and if I were a religious man I’d say that she is a Godsend. I’d also say that her misfortune in having been made ‘redundant’ (that awful word to apply to a human being) has been without a doubt Hand in Hand’s gain.

As I’ve indicated before, this is a happy office to work in and I only mention these two specifically because I see them every day. Since our volunteers and voluntary Board members have other jobs it’s just not possible to meet everyone.

One of the small pleasures of being here is when Jen begins to stare into space for a while. It generally means that she’s going to come out with a nugget of interesting or even obscure information and I find myself cautiously reaching for the notebook. Not all the time, mind. Sometimes she’s just gone blank. It’s an age thing, I do believe.

So when she went off on one this morning, my ears pricked up like a less-cute version of a startled Bambi.

“You know,” she said, “it’s been a lot of work; but getting to the point where we are close to being fully and completely in accordance with the Code of Governance has been a journey well worth taking. We’ll soon be able to state on everything that we’re in complete compliance now.”

She is talking about the Governance Code for the Community, Voluntary and Charitable Sector. And since I’m a little vague on it, she explains to me as if she were talking to a five-year old; which is rather unfortunate, since at this hour of the morning I’m not quite that far advanced.

“Well, as they point out on their own website there hasn’t up until fairly recently been hard and fast guidelines on how charities should be run; and there has obviously been a real need for strict guiding principles for fundraising. That’s why some of us [fixing me with those steely eyes of Arctic coldness] have been working so hard to show exactly what we’re doing.

“Because we get no State funding, it is really crucial for us to be clear on what is being spent and where. We depend on public support and that public has taken a good few knocks in recent months when it comes to trust in charities. People have never stopped being kind, but their confidence has taken as much of a battering as ours has, because of a handful of individuals.

“So, to answer your question, the Code of Governance is to prove that we can stand behind what we do, that we’re effective and that there is no waste of time and money.”

It reminds me that I couldn’t have started at a worse moment for the charity sector. Ironically, I began with Hand in Hand after a five-year stint of writing a weekly political column for New York’s ‘Irish Examiner USA’. I recall saying to Jennifer that first day that it was going to be a bit of a relief to escape from politics for a while. I didn’t understand the wry look she gave me. Now I do. I cringe when I think how naïve I must have sounded.

On a personal note, I think that it is simply shameful that Hand in Hand has to fight constantly for funding. You expect a bit of a struggle and that goes with the territory, but to be rejected with mind-numbing regularity would wear down anyone’s spirit. In fact it has been said to me off the record that we would have a better chance if we had a waiting list.

Am I the only one that finds this utterly insane?

It is precisely the same as being penalized for never turning any needful family away.

It is precisely the same as being penalized for being good at what we do.

It is precisely the same as having our heads patted and congratulated, but being told in the same breath that since we’ve hung on so far we clearly don’t need any help.

Well, we do need help. We badly need it. I have great hopes that the new Health Minster Leo Varadkar will see what we are contributing. I really have desperate hopes for him; because desperate is just where we are now.

When I started here only ten months ago, there were eight counties with families being assisted by the charity and at that point Jennifer was pretty much running the office single-handed. Today there are twelve counties; and the time is coming when the charity will indeed be turning families away.

And to everyone engaged here that is an appalling prospect.

Those, however, are just some personal observations of my own. So I’ll let Jennifer leave you on a positive note.

“In a lot of ways this has been an exhausting time but if it ensures us giving the fullest that we can in complying with the Code then it has been worth it. And whilst I see you scribbling there I’d like to give special credit to our current chairperson Aiofe Waters. She has done an absolutely sterling job on this.”

And with that Jennifer went back to quietly staring into space.

Charley Brady for Hand in Hand