A passion to help even in retirement

This has not been the case with Parveen Brigue, who continues to work just as hard in retirement as she did during her 35 years in public service.

She retired from the Probation Service in 2017, but has not stopped working since as she has thrown herself into the different services and organisations she is associated with.

This includes her role with Interfaith Wolverhampton, an organisation dedicated to bringing communities together in the spirit of community cohesion and for which she has been involved with for over a decade and current serves as chairperson, having been elected in 2016.

Parveen’s journey to this stage began when she moved from India to England in 1965 to join her father, a move she described as a huge culture shock as she spoke no English and struggled to adapt to the weather and the new culture she found herself in.

Going to school in England as an ethnic minority in the 1960s could be a difficult experience and Parveen did suffer from a lot of racism and bullying from other pupils at the girls-only Graiseley Secondary School, with her poor English skills hindering her learning.

She said: “I never got any abuse from the teachers, but the pupils did do a lot. They probably didn’t see that they were doing it as there weren’t that many Indian children in my school and there was that level of not understanding.

“I coped and adapted as best as I could. I was very close to my father and he helped me set up some coping mechanisms to get me through and I grew up inside a short space of time.”

She did begin to make friends, meeting other girls from the Asian community and building a support network from there, and her determination to improve herself shined through in her English studies.

She said: “I just wanted to learn English so that I could understand what was going on and I remember doing extra English classes and how amazing it was to have teachers like Mr Flavell to help me along. He pushed me along and said “I will teach you”, and I had that determination to progress.”

Following school, Parveen worked as a production controller for an accountancy firm, as well as helping to train people alongside the chief executive, but she looked at doing more, having always wanted to work with people, and when the firm closed, she moved into the public sector in 1976.

She said: “Because my father wanted me to work in an office job, I did that as it was seen as the thing to do, but after I got married, I was able to have more freedom and I made a career change by going into the probation service and, from there, I never looked back.”

Parveen balanced life, work and family during this time, studying the certificate of qualification in social work at Birmingham University (Now the University of Central England) while also raising her daughter Rekha, sometimes writing her assignments in the early hours of the morning after putting Rekha to bed.

The hard work and long hours paid off for Parveen as she got her qualifications from the University, then came back to Wolverhampton to work full time for the Probation service, eventually becoming Senior Probation officer, a role she held for 18 years and for which she received many awards for community engagement.

In addition to her work with Interfaith Wolverhampton, Parveen works closely with the Punjabi Women’s Writing group, Wolverhampton Homes, and many other groups in the city, providing them with a valuable resource for working within the community and showing that the passion to help is still there.

She said: “I just love working. It feels like I’m 21 again and I’ve got that drive and just want to share my experiences of where my journey started. Everything is just so doable and we just need to commit ourselves and focus on certain aspects of our lives to achieve it.”