It’s my birthday…(well almost)

It was my company’s second birthday last week. So, what better way to mark this than to look back on what these two years have brought me…

Rachel Dunford Consulting Ltd was incorporated in January 2019. Before that, I’d been successfully working as a sole trader, but it became clear that when bidding for bigger projects, if you weren’t a company, your name didn’t bring as much clout. It seemed like a bit of an administrative nightmare at the time but - reflecting back now - it’s provided with me with lots of opportunities to work with some great clients on some really diverse and engaging projects.

Over the last two years…

I’ve worked for three Local Authorities, a think-tank, a learned society, three creative organisations, two national organisations that provide professional development to teachers, and two charities.

I’ve interviewed and run workshops, surveys and focus groups with countless teachers, school leaders, school governors and young people.

I’ve helped three businesses to develop evaluation frameworks so that they can start to track the impact of their work.

I’ve provided advice to two very different educational campaigns for students, and to a charity at the very start of its journey to make a difference to the lives of disadvantaged young people.

I’ve evaluated four different educational programmes by myself, and am now employing an associate to help me with the evaluation of an exciting three-year mentoring project for young people who need support with their mental health.

I’ve carried out reviews into the way that schools are using their Pupil Premium funding to ensure that they are bringing about the maximum value for their disadvantaged learners, and I’ve helped them to find strategies to improve the impact of the funding.

And, most recently, I’ve started working for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough combined Local Authorities, helping them with some crucial work to solve a series of important local issues. We’re working on projects to reduce smoking in pregnant women, boost the take-up of routine vaccinations, improve the provision of speech and language and communications development support to families of young children, and to improve joint working between the different groups of professionals who are supporting the same families.

The satisfaction from being able to be part of so many varied projects which are making a difference to the life chances of young people is really hard to quantify. It’s what I always wanted to be able to do when I first trained to be a management consultant all those years ago, but now I get to do it on my own terms, choosing the projects I support and the clients I work with myself.

I can’t wait to see what year three brings…