Blog | Middlesbrough Voluntary Development Agency

More people, more active, more often

30 August 2019 - 2:12pm

Guest blog by Jen Berger, Insight & Analytics Officer at ‘You’ve Got This’ - a Sport England local delivery pilot

All I wanted was something nice to go with a baked potato…

26 July 2019 - 12:17pm

Last night was exceptionally warm; the second warmest day on record in the United Kingdom. I wanted something simple for tea, a baked potato with something nice. The choice was limited at my local Co-op so a went a bit further up the road to a big Sainsbury’s store, but the shelves were oddly empty – all the chilled shelves had been cleared. I thought they were probably just moving the stock around.

A tablet to mask the pain

11 March 2019 - 5:11pm

Prevention is the word on everyone's lips for health and wellbeing, yet why do my experiences suggest we still look to mask symptoms rather than cure them?

The current health and social care agenda has a focus on prevention, the Care Act 2014 stated that there will be ‘A greater emphasis on prevention ‘ - local authorities and providers of support would encourage and assist people to lead healthy lives, reducing the chances of them needing more support in the future’

We need to get prevention back on the agenda!

25 July 2018 - 4:38pm

If I’d known then what I know now!

A few of us at MVDA were having one of those ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now’ conversations last week. We, parents of now adult children, were recounting the very real, and unchanging struggle of parenthood in the context of our awareness of the many things we’ve got wrong with our kids. We shared some things we probably don’t admit too often and things we certainly wouldn’t admit beyond the bond of our developing friendship as colleagues.

Guest blog: Keeping all the plates spinning at A Way Out

26 April 2018 - 10:42am

Guest blog by Sarah McManus, CEO of A Way Out

I am a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother… and, for the last 18 months, CEO of an organisation called A Way Out – a charity now celebrating 16 years of supporting vulnerable women, families and young people in Stockton.

Like so many women, life can sometimes feel like a circus - a whirling carousel incorporating the ups and downs of operating under each of these multiple identities. There are plates to spin and hoops to jump through in order to keep everything going!