Sarah Gorman Chief Executive Officer

About me

Sarah is a GenerationQ Fellow and Chief Executive Officer at Edberts House, a community organisation in East Gateshead that works with local people to create healthier, happier communities.

Sarah began working at Edberts House in 2010, shortly after its inception, and is the most senior member of staff in the charity. With responsibility for finance, fundraising, marketing and policy, she has increased the annual turnover almost 10-fold and has raised the organisation’s profile in the region.

Sarah has previously been a Board member at Blue Sky Trust charity, and Officer/Chair of Trustees at Oasis Aquila housing charity.

Edberts House in East Gateshead addresses health issues through tackling the wider determinants of health, and seeks to develop joined-up approaches to health care, partnering with public health, the local authority, GPs, clinical commissioning groups and housing development. It looks to design new approaches to engaging with harder-to-reach communities.

Sarah is interested in creating a joined-up approach to social prescribing and health creation across Gateshead that could potentially be replicated in other areas of high deprivation. This has already been implemented in East Gateshead through encouraging public health and CCGs to devolve budgets to avoid possible duplication across social prescribing and health lifestyle agendas.

Sarah recognises that there is a need to develop a more robust system of measurement and reporting, and a strong evidence base, and she is hoping GenerationQ will give her the skills and expertise to achieve this: ‘I am particularly interested in impact evaluation measures, as good use of these is vital if our organisation is going to secure ongoing funding. Peer learning around evaluation techniques would be extremely helpful to me and timely for our organisation.’