Our Team

Meet the team

  • Volunteer

    All our work simply wouldn’t be possible without our volunteers, who play a crucial role in everything we do. To find out more about how you can become a volunteer with Parent Action, click here 

    Parent Action NI

    Ms Orla Fitzsimons

    Nurse Consultant Parent Carer Advocacy/CEO

    Orla is a Community Childrens Nurse (1) Community Children’s Nursing – Samia – Bing video and a parent carer. Along with a team of equally passionate parent carers and supporters, Orla founded Parent Action in 2014.

    Orla’s job as Nurse Consultant Parent Carer Advocacy in Parent Action, is all about

    • providing Independent Advocacy support to parent carers,
    • managing the Parent Action Connects service and the Independent Family Advocates and volunteers working within it,
    • working with our Board and parent carers and public service professionals to develop our other services in Parent Action, and
    • network and negotiate with funders and other organisations in NI, to make parent carers lives and needs VISIBLE to people in power in public services, and the NI public

    To hear more of Orla and Parent Action’s story, follow the link below to Orla’s podcast with Social Enterprise NI Podcast | Social Enterprise NI

  • Our Board
    Parent Action NI

    Dr Graham Gault

    Chair

    Dr Gault is Director of the National Association of HeadTeachers NI (NAHTNI) NAHT > About Us > NAHT Northern Ireland and has worked as a teacher, principal and vice principal.  Dr Gault holds a number of governance positions in NI organisations, and advocates strongly every day for the sake of our children in all educational sectors and settings.

    Parent Action NI

    Ms Shaunagh Kane

    Vice Chair

    Ms Kane is a parent carer advocate and campaigner with extensive lived experience and expertise, in fighting for her children’s human rights in vital public services in NI. Ms Kane is a champion for parent carers voice for many years and is passionate about ‘using my learnt experience to help mould services for other parent carers in the future’.

    Parent Action NI

    Mr Sean Bruen

    Director

    Mr Bruen is the founder and director of Kith and Kin Financial Wellbeing social enterprise About us – Kith and Kin Financial Wellbeing (kithandkinwellbeing.org) , a financial advisor and a parent carer of a child with additional needs.  Mr Bruen is also Treasurer of the Parent Teacher Association of his child’s special school, and has been a parent carer advocate and campaigner for many years in NI.

    Parent Action NI

    Mr Mark Breslin

    Director

    Mr Breslin is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the charity Informing Choices NI Who We Are – Informing Choices NI  and has worked for the last two decades with people with learning disabilities/difficulties and their parent carers to ‘ help develop resilient and informed individuals’ through developing and delivering specialist and personalised training and support. Mr Breslin believes Parent Action’s values and mission, ‘are what we should all be striving to achieve in our society, a society of welcoming, not exclusion’