Susie Dalton: Founder of Barclays Single Parent Network

Hi! My name is Susie Dalton, I am a PA in Talent & Development, and also the founder of the Single Parent Network within Barclays. This is my story.

A few years ago I decided to separate from my partner. At the time our little girl was just 14 months old and I had only recently returned to work from Maternity leave. It was an incredibly hard decision to make, I was under a lot of pressure as my father had passed away 10 days before my daughter was born, and to add to it all we had only just moved house. During this difficult time I also discovered I had breast cancer and so my journey began. I took some time away from work to focus on recovering from the operation and then the grueling treatment that followed.

When it was time to return to work I was very self-conscious about my new single parent status, I felt like a failure and didn’t want any of my colleagues to know. When I joined the Working Families network I asked if they had any support groups for Single Parents - nothing was available at the time, and so I thought 'what if I could reach out to colleagues in a similar situation we could support each other and I wouldn’t feel that I was the only one?' so I decided to set up the Single Parent Network. I will always remember the first meeting - I met some incredible colleagues who had been through equally tough experiences we held an open forum where we shared our stories and offered support to one another.

Our network has grown to over 100 members, it is a mix of Directors, VP, AVP, BA4, male and female colleagues, some have decided to go it alone by choice, some who have sadly been widowed and others are either going through separation or have been Single Parents for years. We meet every Thursday lunchtime for an informal catch up session and we have members who attend on a regular basis and some on an ad hoc basis to ask for advice on parenting, dealing with shared custody or challenges with work/life balance. We discuss our children and try to find solutions or the right places to find support and information for issues that are raised.

What I have learned from setting up the Network is that being a Single Parent is something to be proud of, juggling work and children is not easy but doing it alone is a huge responsibility and therefore an enormous achievement.

Barclays offers such a fantastic range of employee resources and I was invited to attended parliament in January to represent Barclays to support The Parents Promise HR initiative by helping to support families. Businesses can play a critical role by having polices in place to accommodate employees who are going through divorce or separation and here at Barclays we already recognise this as a life event and have developed workplace scenarios and supportive action for line manager to follow which is detailed in the Developing our Supportive Culture Guide (UK).

I am Susie. This is Me.

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