INTERFACE ENTERPRISES LIMITED - Key Persons
Chris has a range of experience in learning development and training. He is a registered social worker and is a Team Leader for a specialist team within the Healthy Young Minds service (previously known as CAMHS). He has worked in child and adolescent mental health for nearly 10 years and is passionate about the importance of working systemically in the mental health setting. Chris's particular areas of interest include Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), mindfulness, self-harm and working with adolescents. He has worked as a Social worker in a local authority Child protection and Cared for Children team which has given him invaluable experience of working with families in very challenging social and personal circumstances.
Chris has worked for Interface providing a range of training including trauma informed practice, motivational interviewing, mental health and supervision training.
As a registered Practice Assessor for student social workers in the Greater Manchester area, Chris enjoys supporting the students through placements and formal training opportunities and developed a number of training packages for patient, families and professionals focusing on specific mental health difficulties such as Self harm, emotional regulation, attachment and mindfulness skills.
Chris is steeped in Whole Family Practice as a way of working and believes relationships are the key to successful working practices. He has worked with young people and families for 20 years across a range of settings including Youth, Family and Community Centres, Young Offenders Institutes, Youth Offending Teams, Children's Homes and Children's Social Care.
Chris has a background in Youth Justice and drug and alcohol support, mental health, dual diagnosis, detox and self-harm and also has experience working in homelessness and education. Chris spent 8 years working with an innovative DFE project designed to work with gangs, knife crime, domestic abuse, CSE and missing children, reducing the number of Children placed into care.
Chris has been working with Interface for 8 years and has extensive experience in designing and delivering training around Adverse Childhood Experiences, Trauma Informed Practice, Motivational Interviewing, Whole Family working, our Level 4 Working with Children, Individuals and Families programme, TAF meetings, SMART plans etc. as well as more specialised training around mental health and substance misuse and care planning.
Chris also works within the Domestic Abuse sector consulting on practice for local authorities, commissioned and non-commissioned services. Working with frontline services, victims, their children and perpetrators, as well as strategic and operational leads, Chris uses a Public Health, System Change model to improve the response to Domestic Abuse in local areas.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Trainer
- Training Manager
Clare is the Training Manager for Interface, she specialises in project development and professional training. Clare has created and delivered many training programmes for Interface including our Children, Individuals and Families Level 4 Programme which is widely delivered across the Country.
Clare has trained many professionals from a wide range of settings including family support, children social care, police, health, probation, voluntary sector etc. She creates and delivers programmes to suit all levels of ability and prior knowledge.
Clare has worked with organisations to scope the needs of the workforce and written and developed packages of training based on individual needs, service/area needs and the policy agenda. She has designed train the trainer models and provided supervision, mentoring and support to trainers to implement the training in their respective areas.
Clare has worked with local authorities, schools and the voluntary sector following both a targeted and universal agenda. Her professional background was in offering specialist parenting assessments and interventions. Her interests and passions lie in direct work with families including attachment and relationship issues and working with whole families and communities. She was a strategic lead in developing and implementing a parenting service across a large 2 tier LA that saw the take up of parenting groups soar in her area with excellent results.
Clare has a strong base knowledge and understanding of Children Social Care, the Early Help and Troubled Families Agenda. She has worked closely with areas to ensure the workforce needs are being identified to maximise the change in culture and to meet the needs of the vulnerable children and families following government policy.
Clare is trained to deliver a number of parenting interventions and a trainer for the Solihull Approach and the Solihull Parenting programme. She has worked with a number of schools and children's centres training staff and supporting them to embed parenting interventions into their organisations.
Clare is a qualified trainer who has developed and written many training programs for multi-agency workforce including health, social care and education. She created Working with Children, Individuals and Families Level 4 Programme and supported the creation of our Level 5 leadership course.
Clare is a qualified assessor and has a Diploma of Higher Education in Working with Young People and is trained in a number of parenting programmes including triple P, Webster Stratton incredible years and Mellow Parenting. Clare is a qualified Solihull trainer. She is currently studying for TQUK Level 4 Award in the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Processes and Practice (QCF).
Shola is a Chartered Forensic Psychologist who brings experience from working with young people and their families over the past 15 years within various contexts including the criminal justice system, housing, social care, NHS and voluntary. She has strong skills in clinical practice, change management, research, service evaluation and project management. She has delivered a range of training packages to managers, staff teams and volunteers. Shola has previously worked in the London Boroughs of Lewisham, Merton, Islington and Croydon.
Shola is currently delivering a programme comprising of Trauma Informed Practice, Adverse Childhood Experiences and Motivational Interviewing (MI) to a range of staff within the Children's Trust in Cheshire West and Chester (CWAC). She has previously rolled out delivery of a whole systems MI approach in Hertfordshire and Bracknell Forest to Children Social Care practitioners.
Shola has experience of using MI as a practitioner within Children Social Care and supervising staff using MI as a manager. Shola previously managed services designed to address the needs of complex families and improve young people's overall outcomes with a focus on reducing offending and anti-social behaviour, improving school/college attendance, increasing the likelihood of employability for adults within the home, improving housing tenancy stability and increasing finances within the home. She has also undertaken training in the AMBIT mentalisation approach to complement her existing evidence-based approach to facilitate high quality case management. She has also completed train the trainers for assessing parenting capacity to change (C-Change).
Fiona's early career spanned the early years sector working in private nurseries, creches, primary schools, children's centres and working abroad as a nanny and playworker. She used these varied experiences to move into teaching in further education where she primarily worked with young people wanting to gain vocational qualifications in the early years and health and social care fields. She also taught on foundation degrees in classroom support and health and social care and spent 1 year with the teacher training team.
Fiona has spent the past 6 years focusing on training adults and as a trained adult trainer, brings many skills to this area of development.
Gráinne has over 20 years' experience of successfully leading innovative cross sector change programmes. She is passionate to make a real difference and has a history of developing and sharing new ideas, approaches and practises both regionally and nationally. Her career has been underpinned by strength practice, relational work and early intervention and prevention. She has created and run a number of innovative projects for families experiencing structural disadvantage and complex difficulties, from domestic abuse to homelessness.
Gráinne was Early Help Practice and Partnership Lead at Newcastle City Council and developed and led a team who enabled partnerships, services and families to work together effectively by building positive relationships and resolving any difficulties or conflict using strengths-based techniques. She supported her team to use models such as Solution Focussed Practice, Solihull approach, Family Group Conferencing, Appreciative Inquiry, Systemic Practice, Reflective Practice and Video Interactive Guidance.
Gráinne led the Trailblazer project that developed the Signs of Well Being Assessment tool and developed the first successful approach to whole family working in partnership with Substance Misuse Services. She also managed Early Help at the front door and helped develop a range of working processes and projects.
Since 2019 Gráinne has worked as a consultant and has supported, developed and evaluated a range of projects. They include;
Gráinne has also recently provided training around parental conflict, domestic abuse, trauma informed practice and working with dads and male carers.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- SEN Co - Ordinator
Ivor is passionate about developing others and empowering them to achieve their goals. He has extensive experience in leadership development; effectively utilising coaching, mentoring and training to enable middle and senior leaders to develop and achieve success across a range of settings. Ivor was recognised by Ofsted as providing inspirational and outstanding leadership as a headteacher ensuring that the whole school worked together effectively as a team.
Ivor has worked successfully in the education sector for over 25 years in a diverse range of roles including: Executive and Leadership Coach, Headteacher, Educational Psychologist, Assistant Headteacher, SEN Co-ordinator, Science Leader and Class Teacher. He has worked in primary, middle and secondary schools, catering for the needs of children aged from 3 to 16 years.
As a headteacher, educational psychologist and SEN Co-ordinator, Ivor has worked with children, families and professionals from a range of agencies to develop provision to successfully enable young people to overcome barriers to their learning. In addition, he has developed and led training on a range of social, emotional, behavioural and learning needs.
Most recently Ivor has been working extensively with school leaders and educational professionals across the country to enhance their leadership skills, educational practice and well-being, utilising coaching and mentoring approaches to successfully achieve this.
Jahsynth comes to Interface with over 15 years' experience as a skilled safeguarding professional. As a Qualified Social Worker, she has worked in both statutory and voluntary settings in a variety of roles across London and Essex. She provides both training and consultancy support for Interface.
Jahsynth has experience working with partner agencies to secure positive outcomes including health, education, police and voluntary and community groups. Jahsynth continues to support and supervise student social workers.
Jahsynth is passionate about supporting professionals to safeguard children and vulnerable adults. She is a safeguarding link governor for a primary school, and regularly supports schools/colleges to upskill their staff in all safeguarding related topics via whole school training.
Jahsynth has played a significant role in the development of new services and processes within Local Authorities, including the development of the safeguarding adolescents agenda. Jahsynth has experience of redesigning and developing teams including the adolescent's support team who support young people at risk of exploitation using a contextual safeguarding framework. As an associate trainer with Interface, Jahsynth has delivered training to professionals from Local Authority and residential settings on adolescent safeguarding topics including Child Sexual Exploitation, Child Criminal Exploitation, Child and Adolescent to Parent Violence and Abuse.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Member of the Research & Evaluation Team
- Economist
James is an economist and statistician with over ten years experience of evaluating clinical and public health interventions as well as economic, quantitative and qualitative evaluations across social care and education. As the lead economist for the Commission for Social Care Inspection he was the lead author for annual State of Social Care report and created tools to challenge the quality of care service commissioning by Local Authorities He has particular experience in linking long term outcomes to short term changes in behaviour and projecting potential savings, leading the economic evaluation of Think Family Pathfinders. He has undertaken evaluatory research for Government departments including the DfE and the Department of Health as well as the Scottish Government, NICE, multinational companies and start ups and with charities.
The breadth of James' experience across not only different areas of public policy but also with the academic, public, private and voluntary sectors gives him a deep understanding of the complexity and of public service provision and the knowledge of the right questions to ask and where to find the answers. As an economist he brings an approach to evaluation that provides decision makers with robust information on resource implications and outcomes of a programme in an understandable form.
Jayne comes to Interface with over 30 years' experience of working in, developing and directing programmes that have responded to the needs of individuals, families and communities.
She has a demonstrable track record of converting strategies and high-level objectives into operational delivery and extensive experience of partnership work at a system level across central and local government departments, voluntary and community sectors.
Jayne was heavily involved Sure Start programmes across the North East as regional lead for the DfE overseeing LA performance assessments and developing and delivering regional improvement strategies.
Jayne became a Locality Manager (and Troubled Families lead) bringing about whole scale system change with partner agencies to enable and facilitate innovative ways of working with families and achieving good success. She later became the Strategic Lead for Families programme at Newcastle City Council (an outstanding LA) working collaboratively with senior managers in social care, schools and other universal services to develop the Early Help Strategy. She also led the strategic review and subsequent restructure of the local authority and commissioned early help/early years services.
More recently Jayne was a project lead for Healthy Relationships Hartlepool - one of three national Early Action demonstration projects. Here she worked with senior leaders in public health, children's social care and early help to ensure that learning from the programme was embedded in local strategic priorities. Her work here has been published by the Early Intervention Foundation (see HERE).
Jayne has extensive experience as a children's services leader with experience across the NHS and local government. Her approach is driven by a belief in early intervention and integrated systems delivery as the way to improve lasting outcomes for children and their families.
Her first job was in a community-based children's hospital, where she realised that the majority of admissions were the result of social or environmental factors - totally preventable - and this has had a lasting influence on her work.
After graduating with a history degree from Exeter University, Jayne trained as a nurse and later as a health visitor. Jayne progressed to management positions in the NHS including specialist child protection roles, leading the training and professional development of health visitors and managing interdisciplinary teams. She set up the first Sure Start Local Programme in LB Westminster and since then has worked extensively around developing integrated systems.
As Head of Early Help within Westminster City Council, Jayne developed an early help service twice rated as outstanding by OFSTED. As part of the Early Help system, she was involved in the set-up of the first Family Hubs in the country and has provided a regional lead role in advising other Local Authorities on developing hubs. She has played a key role in transforming services for children 0 - 5 within family hubs and used trauma informed practice as a common language between schools and other professionals to prevent school exclusion. The latter was short listed for a Local Authority award.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Social Worker
- Registered Social Worker With Social Work England
Judy is a qualified social worker with over 45 years' experience including frontline practice, practice improvement, training and management positions.
She began her social work career In Liverpool where she worked as an unqualified social worker and a research assistant in a voluntary organisation, before moving to undertake her social work qualifying course at Leicester University. She remained in the Midlands where she held various frontline roles with local authorities before moving into management.
Judy has managed a variety of local authority children's social work teams including an "edge of care" team, adoption service, youth offending, and leaving care. She developed skills in service re-design and project management, such as designing and delivering assessment centres for residential social workers and managers as part of a restructure of children's residential services, leading on the disaggregation of services as part of Local Government Reorganisation, setting up a Youth Offending Team, and working as Programme Manager of Leicester Children's Fund.
She subsequently spent ten years in Action for Children, a national charity, managing projects in the East and West Midlands. These projects were responsible for delivering Children's Centre services, young carers projects and Family Intervention Teams.
Over the last 12 years Judy has worked on an interim basis as a case file auditor and quality assurance advisor in Cornwall, Cambridgeshire, Leicester City, Redbridge and, most recently, Hull. In this capacity she has worked alongside managers and frontline staff, observing practice and examining written records, to identify areas for development and suggest improvement actions. She has also undertaken supervision audits which involved observing supervision practice. Judy is an accredited safeguarding peer reviewer with the Local Government Association and has participated in reviews of local authority practice in several different areas including Sandwell, Sunderland, Teesside, Herefordshire, Liverpool and Newcastle.
Judy regularly delivers practice workshops to local authority social workers on subjects such as analysis and critical thinking in assessment, identifying and responding to neglect, assessing parental capacity to change and developing professional curiosity. She has also worked with local authorities to design and deliver customised learning packages. She is committed to working from an evidence-informed standpoint. She also delivered safeguarding training to school staff for a period of five years. Feedback from delegates consistently describe Judy as engaging, knowledgeable and clear in applying theory to practice.
Judy's extensive experience of managing services and workers, combined with her recent experience in practice improvement roles, has provided her with a sound understanding of what good practice looks like. Her focus, in her training and also in feedback following audits and practice observations, has always been to support frontline staff to build on their strengths in order to develop their practice.
Judy is a registered social worker with Social Work England and a member of BASW. She holds a BSc in Sociology and Social Administration, a Certificate of Qualification in Social Work and an MA (Social Work). She also has a Masters in Business Administration.
With over 15 years' experience in safeguarding and direct work with children and their families, Katie's main passion is ensuring children get the best support. Up until the end of 2020, Katie was also the Assistant Principal of a large primary school, leading on all aspects of safeguarding, wellbeing, behaviour and school attendance. She brings this experience to her training and support for Interface. Katie's passion for developing professionals so that they can support children and their families comes from a desire to ensure all children and vulnerable adults are safe from harm and have well trained, confident staff to go to for support.
Also an accredited Safer Recruitment Consortium trainer, Trauma Informed Schools trainer and MHFA England Youth Instructor, she has a wealth of experience in trauma informed practice and safeguarding which enables her to support organisations to develop a culture of safety and support for all. Katie is a firm believer in reflective practice and supervision and has developed school wide approaches to supervision to ensure practice is safe and effective.
Katie's particular strength is around establishing clear and effective systems that support both children and the adults working closely with them. Katie's professional background in education and senior leadership has meant that she has provided leadership to a diverse and multi-disciplinary team. She has also developed training for other schools, Local Authorities and private providers of nursery provision. Her training is precise with a clear understanding of her audience's needs and learning objectives.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Core Team
- Member of the Research & Evaluation Team
- Evaluation Associate and Tender Writer
Kerry brings over 25 years expertise in designing and delivering research based evaluation across voluntary, public and private sectors. Kerry's experience spans quantitative and qualitative methods, and she is a skilled facilitator. Kerry regularly interviews and runs focus groups with vulnerable family members, practitioners, managers and system leaders. Kerry is committed to improving the lives of families and has directed, managed and delivered evaluations for central government departments to influence policy and practice e.g. Evaluation of Social Work Teaching Partnerships (DfE). At a local level she has managed numerous system/service development and evaluation projects for local authorities and multi-agency partnerships across the voluntary sector, CCGs, NHS Trusts and local partnerships.
Kerry also brings experience as a senior manager in an upper tier local authority, developing policy and strategy for children, schools and families, including strengthening the strategic partnership infrastructure for early help.
Kerry's most recent projects with Interface include Evaluation of Strengthening Parental Relationships (Hants); Family Hubs Needs Assessment (Bedford); Opportunities to work differently for the 0-3's (Flintshire); Consultancy support and stakeholder engagement to develop a family hub model (Gloucestershire); Family Hubs Feasibility study in Central Bedfordshire and a Review of the Integrated Wellbeing model 0-19 (Stockton on Tees). Kerry has also evaluated leadership programmes and multi-agency workforce development initiatives.
Leanne comes to Interface with over 25 years' experience, skills and knowledge, working in a variety of roles and settings with children and young people, adults, families, volunteers and professionals, within both the voluntary and statutory sectors, on a local and national level.
She has worked as a practitioner, coordinator and Service Manager, delivering and developing a variety of services which include supporting families with neglect and safeguarding concerns, through to developing counselling and bereavement support services, coordinating a national homicide peer support service, for families bereaved by murder and manslaughter, coordinating services for families experiencing domestic abuse and more recently within early help and support - managing a Family Outreach & Volunteering Service, within a strategic partnership with a local authority. These services have involved supporting families with many different issues which include mental health, domestic abuse, emotional well-being, poverty, housing, relationships, finances, bereavement, social isolation, attachment, neglect etc.
Leanne has extensive experience of effective multi-agency working, including creating effective networks in Operational Partnerships, Bereavement Advisory Groups and Domestic Abuse Partnerships. She is highly practiced in encouraging working together and establishing positive relationships with colleagues from Police, Health, Education, Specialist Services, Voluntary Services, Social Care, etc within meetings such as Strategy Meetings, Safeguarding Reviews, Case Conferences, Child Death Overview Panel, Serious Case Reviews, Domestic Homicide Reviews, Specialist Domestic Violence Court, MARAC and Suicide Prevention Task force, where working in a one team approach, has a positive impact on service delivery and better outcomes for the children, families and vulnerable adults.
Leanne is passionate about making a real difference to the lives of vulnerable children and families and ensures the child and family have a voice and remain at the centre of all service delivery, service development and strategic planning. Leanne believes in restorative and relationship-based practice and works in a trauma informed way. Bringing real, lived experiences to the training room, she actively encourages professionals to explore the impact they have and the difference they can make -empowering them to work more insightfully, with a considered confidence, to better understand and support vulnerable families, in order to work effectively and achieve positive outcomes.
Leanne is passionate about people - all people… and believes that connection, relationships, culture and shared values underpin everything we do and how we do it - With the most important approach of all - being a human one!
Lesley is a qualified social worker with 35 years' experience in social work, family support and service development. She has held several key roles including Parenting Commissioner, Area social work Manager and Integrated Service manager. Lesley was seconded to the Families at Risk Team (DfE) as Regional Advisor where she worked with Wendy. She led locally on several key policy initiatives including Family Intervention, Children Centre's, Family Pathfinders and Community Budgets.
For the last 10 years Lesley has worked for an outstanding Local Authority leading the Supporting Families programme. She has been instrumental in shaping Early Help including development of Early help hubs, strengthening multi agency partnerships and service transformation.
Lesley joins Interface with her drive and passion for improving services for children and families, early intervention and asset-based approaches that build social capital. She provides consultancy support -help with transformation, integration and co-production, research and evaluation and training.
She received a richly deserved MBE for services to children and families in 2013.
Lesley is a qualified Social Worker, holds a PGCE and a BA Hons in social work. She also has a post graduate certificate in leadership and education
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Social Worker
- Member of BASW
Michaela is a qualified social worker with over 25 years of experience working with families and organisations throughout the country both within public and charity sectors.
Her experience has ranged from Childrens Residential care, Early Years settings working with specific hard to reach groups, Youth resources to front line Social Work both in Referral & Assessment and in Child in Need teams within the Court arena and Emergency Duty Teams.
It was due to innovative family work as a social worker that Michaela was given the opportunity to research and develop a Family Group Conference service for a local authority in Berkshire and was involved in county wide collaboration and development of practice standards, policy and procedures in line with national and international practice development. Since then, Michaela has offered consultancy to local authorities in setting up and embedding Family Group Conferences within their service provision.
Michaela has also worked as a Consultant Trainer for the Family Rights Group Charity for 5 years which supports the values and principles of partnership working and whole family engagement and has since trained as a trained as a Children's Advocate, Mediator, Restorative Practice & Freedom Facilitator.
Michaela currently divides her time managing a commissioned Family Group Conference Service, working as a facilitator and offering Training in Restorative Approaches, Advocacy, Family Group Conferences and Restorative Conferences. She is particularly experienced and enthusiastic in working with "hard to reach" families and offering a whole family systems approach to understanding and working alongside families in an effort to reduce conflict, enhance mutual understanding, reduce risk and support real engagement and change.
Michaela is a member of BASW and holds current Social Work England registration
Job Titles:
- Contracts Manager
- Finance
- Member of the Core Team
Rowland is our Finance and Contracts Manager.
He has over 30 years experience in the Financial Services sector, where he has held senior managerial appointments specialising in Risk and Project Management.
He is a qualified member of the Institute of Risk Management and has acted as an internal consultant within a main high street bank to support the effective management of their complex operational risk environment. He is also Prince 2 Practitoner qualified and recently undertaken both Programme and Project Management roles within the bank's successful business-wide £35m risk and control transformation programme
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Member of the Research & Evaluation Team
- Registered Social Worker
Sandra is a registered social worker with twenty years experience as childcare practitioner and manager within a number of local authorities. Her work extended into the development of cross sector integrated Early Years services initially at local authority level before progressing to national positions within central government. She played a leading role as a national adviser in early years, working at the interface between central government and local authority partnerships in transferring policy into high quality practice. She has worked to government contracts including the national development of local Early Years provision, Sure Start Local Programmes and the 3500 Childrens Centres where providing local, regional and national workshops and conferences, as well as support and challenge, were inherent within such programme development roles.
She has extensive experience of delivering outcomes focused commissioned services with high levels of accountability, monitoring and reporting. She established and ran an early years service within a consultancy cooperative which focused on evaluating delivery and worked at a local level with service providers and users to develop bespoke improvement plans. She developed the 0-19 Early Help service within a national childrens charity successfully establishing the infrastructure to deliver high quality local provision, training programmes to support practitioners and Quality Assurance processes to secure sustained improvement. She was Safeguarding lead within the charity and was commissioned to review and revise the national Safeguarding procedures. She established and implemented a process which met the needs of the diverse range of childrens services being delivered by the charity which also aligned to local area safeguarding requirements. She devised the training programme to support practitioners in safeguarding and chaired the charity's Safeguarding Board.
She has established effective networks at local and national levels with specific focus on inter-agency service development and delivery and the dissemination of good practice. Through the diversity of her work she has engaged in research, analysis, dissemination, and report writer.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Member of the Research & Evaluation Team
- Nurse
Sarah is a former Head of Strategy and Commissioning for 0-5 year olds, who has a passion for improving outcomes for children. She has 30 years' experience of working within the NHS, Local Government and the Third Sector, the majority at a senior leadership level in a range of commissioning and provider roles.
Sarah was one of the first ‘trailblazer Sure Start Programme Managers, responsible for setting up from scratch and implementing the service. Unique features of the programme included the Parent Infant Mental Health Service and volunteer Community Parents Programme, as well as an action research approach to inform ongoing developments. She went on to set up a social enterprise to be the successor body for the local Sure Start programme.
Following on from her success in setting up the Sure Start programme she became the lead for the development of the three phases of the Children's Centres programme working for a large County Council from 2004 to 2015. As Head of Strategy and Commissioning Sarah went on to lead the commissioning of the Council's 53 Children's Centres, which included consultation with stakeholders and staff engagement, getting all the centres ‘tender ready and disentangling them from years of building on existing resources, writing the service specification and being the business lead for the procurement process. This was the largest and most complex commissioning and procurement exercise the Council had undertaken at the time, involved the transfer of over 100 staff to new providers and saved the Council £2.6 million over the course of the contract.
After the contracts were awarded Sarah was responsible for the transfer of all centres to the new contractual arrangements, including the performance management and set up the Children's Centres Network. The aims of the network were to help the new providers shift from a culture of 'competition to collaboration', transform centre delivery, improve quality and Ofsted outcomes. This resulted in a significant increase in parental engagement and greater consistency of approach across the children's centres estate. During this time Sarah was also the commissioning lead for the roll out of the disadvantaged 2 year old early learning childcare places scheme and the redesign of the Early Years' service.
As an experienced clinician and senior operational manager in the NHS, Sarah has an extensive understanding of the Healthy Child Programme and children's mental health issues and has worked across the system in terms of transforming children's services. She recognises the importance of co-production and of involving service users and engaging with staff and stakeholders to achieve transformational change.
Sarah is a qualified Nurse, Midwife and Health Visitor, holds a BSc in Health Care, a Diploma in Health and Social Services Management and an MA in Integrated Provision for Children and Families (Early Years). She has participated in the Commissioning Academy Programme run by the Cabinet Office.
Job Titles:
- Internal Quality Assurance
Sue brings a wealth of skills and experience gained from a ten-year period working with organisations which offer services to vulnerable adults and young people, and those less able to reach mainstream facilities. Each of these organisations have had varying objectives, approaches and lines of impact.
Sue is able to draw on her experiences as a Police Officer and years of multi agency working. She has initiated and supported intervention methods, reduced offending, anti-social behaviour, helped to protect local residents and those visiting or working in and around the centre of Norwich. She has worked with victims of crime, those who were offending, affected by drugs, alcohol, bullying, with suicidal tendencies and mental health concerns. Sue is an advocate of restorative justice and has had great success in using this method. Her most recent work was focused on reducing licensing offences and vulnerability across all age groups around Norfolk from alcohol and drug misuse.
Sue is experienced in providing administrative and business support across the private, public and voluntary sectors. This includes clerical work for a number of governing bodies of Norfolk Schools, and a team within the Norfolk County Council Education Department. Sue has set and carried out fundraising objectives, secured funding through bid compilation, used marketing knowledge to develop and raise a brand profile and increase awareness for a charity providing support for victims of domestic abuse.
Since beginning a career break to raise a family, Sue has been providing internal verification services to Interface and is currently studying for the Level 4 Award in the Internal Quality Assurance of Assessment Process and Practice qualification.
Sue qualified as a Social Worker in 1993 and moved into management in 1996. Her background is in Children and Families work and she has worked in a range of settings which include a variety of Local Authority Teams including Assessment, Family Support Team, Early Help, MASH, and Commissioning; a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service; a British school overseas and a University.
Many of her roles have involved the training and development of a multi-agency workforce. She was one of the first Primary Mental Health Workers appointed in the country where as well as providing training and consultation for local professionals she also developed a Tier 2 Early Intervention Service and co-created local multi-agency allocation groups which enabled co-working across agencies and for families to be supported by the most appropriate service(s) in the area. She later managed both this and the Tier 3 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service.
As a Commissioning Manager she held responsibility for introducing the Common Assessment Framework into the area which involved the creation and delivery of a large-scale training programme delivered across the County. She also supported the development and delivery of the ‘Every Child Matters' work strands within the Local Authority. This led on to her having responsibility for the creation of a revised Thresholds document for the Authority and the training and delivery of this across partner organisations.
She has also managed a number of Early Help services and led on the Targeted Mental Health in Schools project (TAMHS). She is passionate about both early intervention and integrated working approaches and used her negotiation and project management skills to co-develop a MASH which she then went on to manage.
Her most recent post has been as a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and the Course Co-ordinator of the post qualifying MA in Applied Social Work Practice at the University of Bedfordshire. Her teaching portfolio has encompassed all aspects of Leadership and Management and Children and Families work and her areas of particular interest are in Supervision, Coaching and Mentoring, and working with managers to critically reflect on their practice and develop their potential. She also delivers a unit which focuses on students completing a Service Improvement Project and regularly supervises Dissertation students.
Suzi is an experienced trainer of over 20 years, specialising in the areas of child sexual abuse and trauma informed practice. She began her career as a drug and alcohol outreach worker and has worked in a variety of sectors during this time including Social Care, Criminal Justice and the Voluntary sector. Suzi has worked as both practitioner and manager and spent much of her career developing and delivering new and innovate services. Suzi became an independent trainer in 2012. Suzi has worked largely with adolescents but has also supported adults and families who were experiencing intra and extra familial harm. Suzi has gained both an award and an accolades for her training and the impact that it has had on social work practice. Suzi recently became a qualified yoga teacher and is training to bring her trauma experience and yoga practice together to support trauma recovery through breath work and physical practice.
Suzi has developed and delivered many courses for Interface including Child Criminal and Sexual Exploitation and Modern Day Slavery, Contextual Safeguarding and also delivers on the Trauma Informed Practice Training. Suzi loves her job and is dedicated to continuing to develop her own practice and to support others to do the same.
Suzi is passionate about the role that high quality training can play in improving the lives of children and families and endeavours to ensure that what is delivered is relevant, evidence based, interactive and fun.
Wendy Weal - Founder, Managing Director
Job Titles:
- Founder
- Managing Director
- Member of the Core Team
- Member of the Research & Evaluation Team
- Leadership Fellow of the Society
Wendy is the founder and Managing Director of Interface. She is passionate about turning around the lives of vulnerable children and families and her strong values can be felt across the organisation and the work that Interface provides. Wendy has extensive experience of working across local and national government at a senior and strategic level, working on various government initiatives and advising government departments on effective practice to support policy making. She has an excellent reputation and track record of working with Local Authorities and the VCS to advise on governance, service design, implementation of projects, monitoring outcomes and business cases. She particularly enjoys strategic challenge, evaluations, coaching and motivational interviewing training.
As the Deputy Delivery Manager of the Family Delivery Team in the Families at Risk division in the Department for Education, Wendy had a national role in supporting Local Authorities and their partners in setting up and running intensive family support services, parenting support and wider reforms around integrated services and whole family working.
She was also responsible for wider reforms around families with complex needs. These included guidance on the development of local protocols between Drug and Alcohol treatment services, Safeguarding Boards and Children and Family services, Offender Management services, Mental Health services and Young Carers. She became national advisor to other Government departments such as Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Communities and Local Government.
Prior to this Wendy worked with the Youth Taskforce expanding youth offending teams in police custody suites, operation stay safe and targeted youth support across the country. Having started her career in Housing, Wendy quickly rose to manage a large housing service consisting of neighbourhood teams, anti-social behaviour teams and tenant participation. She was instrumental in setting up one of the earliest Family Intervention Projects jointly working with partners and in obtaining funding to increase and sustain this work.
Wendy has written articles and provided comments for various publications including Public Servant, The Guardian and Local Government Chronicle. She regularly presents at conferences on vulnerable families.
Wendy is a Leadership Fellow of the Society of Leadership Fellows, St George's House, Windsor Castle, Windsor.