Meet the new Chair of Board at Jessie May, Tiggy Robinson.
I was born in Southmead hospital and grew up in Nailsea, which is a few miles outside of Bristol. I’ve lived in Prague, London and Bath and travelled the world too, but Bristol remains my spiritual home!
Two words. The people! Bristol is a fantastically welcoming, diverse and inclusive city. There is also so much to explore and so much talent to soak up. Art, cuisine, theatre, literary events, wonderful parks, iconic buildings. I could go on and on.
Jessie May is a Bristol-based charity that provides specialist palliative care to terminally ill and life-limited children, and their families, in the south west. The charity provides hospice at home care, and was set up by the parents of Jessica May Purrington, a little girl who died at home aged four months, surrounded by her family and her nurses.
Professionally, I’m a partner at Nine Feet Tall, which is a Management Consultancy based in Bath, and we help organisations to implement change programmes. So, in terms of bringing that experience to the board, I’m used to working with board members and executive teams, exploring strategy, thinking about how we can improve performance and getting the best out of teams.
On a personal level, I’m a mum myself. I have three children. My oldest son has a diagnosis of autism and dyspraxia, which I can completely appreciate is not a life-limiting condition, but in itself has been a challenge. Our experience of trying to access certain services to provide additional support means that I feel that I have some sort of understanding of the challenges that presents for our parents. A service like Jessie May is so vital, not just for the physical support but also for the emotional and mental support that as a parent or carer you really crave, and when you have that access it can make a colossal difference.
It costs a lot of money to provide care for each child, and the charity is almost entirely dependent on voluntary donations. There are many ways to get involved, from choosing Jessie May as your charity of the year to participating in an event or signing up to Amazon Smile. The Jessie May website is full of ideas. In 2022, Jessie May will launch its new five-year strategy following the challenges of Covid and a period of reset and recovery.
The strategy will set out the way we can improve the support we offer to children and their families through our mission of being there for the whole family, for the whole journey – in life, at the end of life and in bereavement. We have supported 190 children this year and want to continue that by increasing the amount of income we raise from the general public over the next year.
I think the Bristol Food Network deserves a shoutout for all the amazing things it’s been doing during the pandemic. It is a network of community groups who are working to reduce food poverty and transform Bristol into a sustainable food city. I would also like to mention and thank our own Jessie May team, who have continued to provide vital services to our families through all the adversity which the pandemic has thrown at them.
I am reading two books at the moment. Radical Candour by Kim Scott, which is a great read about the power of telling it like it is. I have a tendency to sugar coat things to make them more palatable at times and this book explains why that doesn’t help me or the person I am talking to. The other book is Accessing the Healing Power of the Vagus Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg, which is all about your nervous system and how to rebalance it. It is a fascinating read.
If I could have dinner with anyone, it would be my two grandfathers, who passed away when I was little, because I would love to see them again and get to know them.
Be kind and treat everyone as you would like to be treated and of course, leave some room for fun and laughter!
