Kay’s mission to help hundreds into work

It was fuelled by a desire to escape the corporate world and a belief that she could help make a difference to people who had fallen on hard times.

Her dream was to find job seekers their ideal role and provide them with the skills they needed to be successful.

She soon gathered together a small dedicated team of like-minded people together and began to support those who needed help.

That same organisation now supports more than 3,000 people every year and employs 130 people at 15 sites across the country.

WISE Ability first began its work in Sheffield but Bloxwich-born Kay has always been keen to return to her Black Country roots.

Now her wish has come true as the charity has expanded to offer training and mental health services to people in this area too.

“You can take the girl out of the Black Country, but not the Black Country out of the girl,” she said. “Wherever I travel, my strong Black Country accent stands true.

“I’m very proud of my roots and proud of where I was brought up. It’s fantastic to come back and help people in this area,” added 45-year-old Kay.

It all started a decade ago when she was approached by Australia-based WISE Employment and asked if she wanted to start up a similar charity in the UK.

It was an opportunity former Sneyd School pupil Kay couldn’t turn down and she decided to turn her back on the corporate world, believing she could make a bigger impact by working on her own.

“I was thinking for a large corporate and it was commercially driven and very much about profits and surplus. I was wondering if the work I was doing was helping the most people,” she says.

“I wanted it to be an organisation that’s committed to delivering high class services to help people move forward in their lives. The first day was just me and a laptop working out how to set up a charity. We then had a team of 10 people and now we have over 100 people. Some of the people who were with us when we founded the project are still here now,” adds Kay. Her first contract was to help the long-term unemployed in South Yorkshire find jobs, as a delivery partner on the Flexible New Deal programme.

Following its success, the charity then began spreading out into Yorkshire before moving further afield to Staffordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and Derbyshire. Its teams are now spread out across the country with its latest base opening in Worksop.

“We were looking at where there were people that could benefit from our services and where we could deliver those services successfully.

“If you look at where we are in the country, it looks like a well-thought out plan, but that’s just how it’s worked out,” says Kay.

"The initial vision, support and continued belief of our sister charity, WISE Employment, has been integral in helping us achieve what we have to date," she adds.

One of the charity’s services is offering free training to small and medium businesses within the Black Country and Staffordshire.

It runs a wide range of courses to help companies upskill their staff in areas such as ICT and team leading as well as advising them on how to encourage positive mental health in the work place.

The charity aims to help people who are unemployed to learn new skills that employers now require which will make it easier for them to find work.

“The world of work is changing.

“The standard jobs for people to move in to are becoming harder to get in to. If you go to work in a warehouse now, you need to be able to use technology.

“It’s no longer just about the physical, manual side of working in a warehouse.

“You may need to be able to use a tablet to check jobs and orders which wouldn’t have been the case 10 years ago.

“So we are looking at how we can skill people for the next 10 years and the 10 years after that,” says Kay. WISE Ability also works in partnership with organisations to run the Recovery Hub in Stafford, which helps people struggling with poor mental health.

Kay says she is pleased that awareness of mental health had grown since the charity first grown.

“It’s normalised the fact that mental health affects many, many people,” she adds.

When she first founded the charity, Kay says she never predicted the success it would have which she says is down to the efforts of the team of passionate and dedicated staff.

“I think when you’re positive about something, you enjoy what you’re doing and coming to work is exciting.

“It’s high-paced but everybody has a common goal because they care about what happens. People are very passionate about doing the job well,” she adds.