Penny McKissock, founder and CEO of Southside Family Project, has been awarded MBE in the 2023 New Year Honours List for services to the community in Somerset. This is a great honour both for Penny and for Southside, the charity she founded twenty-five years ago.
Penny said “I am shocked and humbled by this amazing honour. This is due to the people and communities I’ve had the privilege to work with over more than forty years and the incredible team around me at Southside, many of whom started as service users and are now leading our work.”
Penny has been a tireless champion of communities, individuals and families across Bath and North East Somerset over thirty-five years. She managed Whiteway Health Project for five years before setting up Southside, and was a Community Development Worker in Peasedown St John before that. Penny’s local work was also recognised with the B&NES Council Beryl Dixon Community Leader of the Year Award for 2022-23.
Penny’s community leadership and influence has been far reaching, locally and nationally. She continues to lead the development of new projects, empowering people to use their lived experience to advocate for individuals and families affected by domestic violence or abuse, and influence local and national services and policy making.
Under Penny’s leadership, Southside has grown from a small start-up to a deeply respected, therapeutically focused organisation employing over thirty people, supported by a dedicated team of volunteers. Penny also played a key role in establishing the Sure Start Children’s Centre in Twerton and developing family support services. She worked with Professor Richard Velleman to set up the first community counselling services for survivors of child sexual abuse on the Whiteway Estate. This addressed the totally unmet need of deep trauma for people who were excluded from traditional support services. Penny ensured that this pioneering work was ‘trauma-informed’ before the term was developed and the concept recognised.
Penny’s impact can be seen in the hundreds of individuals with lived experience of domestic abuse, mental ill-health, substance misuse, homelessness and debt, who she has empowered and trained as volunteers, part-time workers and advocates. These volunteers from local communities across Bath and North East Somerset have often been inspired by their experience to go on to train as full time workers, and are now helping many others through Southside and other organisations.
