At Teesside Hospice, we rely on a Board of Trustees to help with the running of our services. With a board of many different professional backgrounds and experiences, our trustees offer their expertise to ensure that the hospice operates as efficiently and successfully as possible. Here’s what our Chair of Workforce Development Committee, Carole has to say about her experience on the board.

“I’m Carole Langrick, and I’ve been a Trustee at Teesside Hospice for the last four years!

As a trustee, it’s an important role because Teesside Hospice is a charity, and as a charity, it has to be registered with the Charity Commission. The Charity Commission requires every charity to be managed by a group of managers and also to have a number of trustees.

Those trustees are there to work with the management of the charity, in order to make sure that the charity fulfills the purpose that it was set out to do. 

I became a trustee here at Teesside Hospice four years ago. As a resident of Middlesbrough, I had always known about the hospice and indeed have had friends who have benefitted from the services at the hospice. 

I had worked for a long time within the NHS, within the area, and so had experience of working alongside the hospice, and was therefore very supportive and interested in what the hospice does to enhance the services that are available to support people and their families who are dealing with a terminal illness or a long standing illness. 

I wanted to help in whatever way that I could. Because of my background, I thought that I've got skills that I could offer to the hospice, a clinical, managerial and a governance background, business, managerial, and I thought that if those were of use to the hospice, then I was keen to put something into the hospice and back into the community in which I live. 

So I put myself forward to be a trustee, it is an application process that you are interviewed for, and I’m pleased to say that I was successful in that interview, and was invited to be a trustee.

As a trustee, there are three things that you really need to have. The first one is that you need to have some time to be able to give to the hospice, the second is interest in the operation and what is going on, and the third thing I would suggest is a passion, to be involved and committed, and to want to be here. 

Some trustees may well visit the hospice regularly, some trustees visit the shops to meet staff, volunteers and service users on their travels, to give them a better feel of what’s going on and how well it is being done, in order to be able to exercise those trustee functions better.”

Thank you, Carole, for sharing your expertise and insight into what being a trustee at Teesside Hospice can bring to your professional and personal development. Without your knowledge, we couldn’t do what we do!