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| The UITC team at a Management Meeting last April (left to right): Laura Davies, Caroline Preedy, Luke Shuttleworth, Ruth Walkden, Nick Vaughan, Mick Loader, Lee Symonds (and Rob Ellam behind the camera!) |
Ruth became Chair after Nick Vaughan who had led the organisation for several years stepped down after taking a post at the FA.
So how did Ruth get involved?
"It's quite a story actually," said Ruth.
"What happened was a couple of years ago we were still living in Bolton following HFC from afar and Andy, my other half, spotted that UITC were asking for trustees.
"Bearing in mind that we had just put the house on the market to move down here and there were lots of things going on in life, I said I can't do that, I haven't got the time.
"Having thought about it I was just looking at the UITC website and I had a little conversation with Nick Vaughan who was the chair then.
"I told him that I had done a lot around safeguarding during my working life. 'Would you like me to draw you up a safeguarding policy'?
"In my various jobs in the voluntary sector I've sat on both children safeguarding boards and adult safeguarding boards and I've sat on case reviews.
"There's a lot of things in life I know nothing about but safeguarding I know my stuff.
"So Nick said yes please and then he asked me about being a trustee. I replied I can't do it, ask me again when we've moved house.
"So I started writing this policy for UITC and then I saw an article on Bulls News which said I was now a trustee which came as a little bit of a surprise!
"So I got in touch with Nick and he said it's alright, don't worry about it.
"I finished the policy and took it to the Hereforshire Safeguarding Board for ratification because that's the right thing to do and the guy got back to me and asked had I done this sort of thing before! So that was all sorted.
"Then Nick said can you have a look at our other policies and I said that's fine. I'll do them as and when I can with my work commitments.
"That's how I became to be a trustee.
"Later Nick needed a vice-chair because of his other work committments so we were struggling. By this time I was based in Herefordshire so that was how I became vice-chair.
"Nick recently changed jobs and now works for the FA and it became essential that he could no longer be a trustee because of potential conflict of interest although he remains
very supportive and responds to any questions I have. So that's how I got as far as here."
Did Ruth realise what she was taking on when Nick asked her to chair UITC? Did she know the wider scope of the organisation?
"I do think sometimes what have I got myself into! There are lots and lots of challenges. We've worked very hard to get the organisation on a sound footing. There are still challenges to come but we've worked hard with, for example, getting all the right paperwork in place and doing the governance.
"Whereas it's not very exciting, not very sexy, it does at least mean if an issue arises then you've got something to fall back on.
"For example if someone was to complain about something we can talk to them. Do you want to make an informal complaint or a formal complaint, here is our complaints policy. To have this helps the organisation and I think it's one of the things that we achieved in the last twelve months."
What other achievements spring to mind?
"I think UITC, particularly since Luke Shuttleworth our community manager came on board, is that we've been able to develop a lot of community work.
"Whereas most people will know about our teams, they don't know about our community work. A lot of people I've spoken to recently don't know we have a disability group at Central Park on a Tuesday morning that running in conjunction with Aspire, an organisation that supports adults with learning disabilities.
"I was there the other Tuesday watching them running about, the goal celebrations and whatever. It's just great that we can support them and help them."
What's the arrangements between UITC and organisations like Aspire?
"Depending on the organisation, they can just use our facilities at Central Park in that way or we can provide the coaches. Some of the community activities that we do like the work in schools we use our coaches, soccer schools we use our coaches but if they've got the people to run an event we're quite happy."
How can UITC afford to do what it does with coaches to pay and Central Park to look after?
"We are very lucky to have sponsors whether it's the individuals or small companies who put their hands in their pockets for player sponsorship for the under 18 teams, both the boys and the girls. People who sponsor the perimeter boards at Central Park.
"And then the big firms like Cargill and Central Roofing. Without their support we couldn't operate."
"The pitch up there is in excellent condition and it's well looked after by Ben Bowen who also looks after Edgar Street for HFC. He mows it, does the various treatments over the summer which I don't understand!"
Who else is involved in UITC?
"Lee Symonds, formerly well known in the office with Hereford United, is vice-chair. His particular role is the football side of UITC and the coaches. We have regular coaches meetings which he goes to.
"Caroline Preedy does the fundraising helped by some volunteers. She is the driving force behind the raffles and the bingos and whatever she thinks of that will raise money.
"Rob Elam is the treasurer without whom I couldn't manage because he does all the financial side side of it.
"So we are the four trustees, we are hoping to get some more trustees on board. And then we have volunteers who for example, organise the boards at Central Park and the adverts for the sponsors in the HFC match programme, do the gates when we have matches help out with food.
We are always on the look out for funding for equipment and to improve what we are able t offer If we get something we want to buy or something that needs replacing, awe have a volunteer who will look into where there is a good pot of money we can apply to."
Recently UITC announced that local MP Jesse Norman had become UITC's Honorary Patron.
"He's always had an interest in UITC and he's always been very supportive. When we had our end of season awards barbeque last May, he came and I was looking for him to thank him for attending and found him serving out burgers.
"I think that is great when you have somebody who sees a job needs doing and puts his gloves on and gets stuck in.
"We thought about asking him to be a Patron, we had some conversations with him and he's keen to be active and support.
"He came to Central Park last week and we met with him and we were telling him about all the different things in our offer. He's keen to support us in those and he's keen to support us in new ways about working in the community which, hopefully, we will roll out over the next few months."
Again the question of funding.
"What we try and do is to try and self-fund. So if you were to look at our funding streams you will see we are not dependant on one source of funding.
"The voluntary charity sector has had a real tough time of it these last few years and many big names have had to fold. Our strength is that we are not dependant on one source of funding, we've got a good wide range.
"Some things self fund such as the holiday soccer schools, people pay for those. Cargill help us out with trips.
"Caroline has lots of contacts from the old club. Sam Clucas very kindly sent us some boots which we auctioned.
"No stone remains unturned in looking for money to support our community schemes.
"We all spend a lot of time at looking at different avenues to raise money and our trustee's meetings throw lots and lots of ideas out but we are also dependant on the parents as well because they help selling tickets. We had the big photo shoot a couple of months ago, they buy the photographs. It is a question of everybody chipping in together to keep it going."
Does UITC get any funding from Hereford FC?
"No."
One of the main aims of UITC is to produce players for Peter Beadle's squad.
"There are several at the moment in Beadle's squad. Even beyond that we have Max Harris who has trained with Aston Villa and more recently with Wayne Brown, the former Hereford United keeper, at Oxford.
"We hope that we give these lads a good chance. Several of them played for Hereford against Tenbury last Tuesday."
Currently there is no under 21 team at Hereford FC and so it can be difficult for a player to progress from UITC to Hereford FC.
"I think it depends where the club sits. Should the club be promoted this season, which is what we all want, then the money starts starting coming in to support this. Currently we are doing this on our own and we have to cut our coat according to our cloth."
Ruth told BN about some of the other projects UITC are involved with.
"We have a little group for 18 months to four year olds which is run once a week at Widemarsh Centre called Mini-Moo's.
"We have a parents and tots group once a week at Central Park.
"We go into six schools on a weekly basis. We've just started going into Malvern College. And we've got two more schools engaged which will come on stream next term so this is going in after school running football coaching clubs. Mostly in primary schools.
"The October half term we did our usual soccer schools. 70 youngsters attended those. The recent trip to Wembley certainly went down well and there was a trip to St George's Park.
"At St George's Park there is a wall that's been signed by the great and the good. It was quite interesting to see to whom the youngsters went but Messi has signed it and quite a lot of pictures were taken.
"We've got healthy lifestyle days. We're going to run two of those in November, that's supported by Cargill. That's done in the schools."
How many coaches has UITC got to do all this work?
"We have about 12/14 who work for us. They all have jobs but they come and help out whether it's with the teams or the soccer schools and they all have to be paid."
"People know about our teams. We start with the under 8's who have some six year olds involved and it's goes all the way to the under 18's boys and girls.
"The Under 18's have been able to play at some academies including Newcastle a couple of months ago and slightly more recently at Birmingham City. I think that's a really great experience for them.
"We now use Lads Club for the U18's as they play under lights in the week rather than on Saturdays. We don't have any floodlights at Central Park so we need somewhere and it's so close at Lads Club for the players and parents to support them."
Are there any improvements coming at Central Park?
"We've recently put toilets at the back so that when there is a game on supporters don't have to use the team toilets.
"We've got some ideas for some more refurbishments there
"I don't think we will ever be satisfied with what we've got there, we are looking to improve all the time."