Amanda Forshaw, head of children's work, Caritas Care

- What is a typical day for you?

There is no typical day and the variety of the job is one of the things that I like about it. Caritas is a voluntary organisation that offers children's services, including a voluntary adoption agency, a fostering service, a daycare centre and a therapeutic children's home. I manage the service managers and am responsible for the running of all services. I also get involved in marketing, budgets and finance. As one of three assistant directors, I have responsibility for everyday staffing issues, policies and procedures.

- What are the challenges?

There is a lot of networking and external meetings to ensure that I'm getting the right information to help our services. Funding is a perennial issue. We have quite a complicated funding mix and all areas are affected in some way: local authorities are increasingly restricted in the services they buy, and donations are affected by the recession, as is trust funding. There is never quite enough funding to match what you want to do.