Our Staff

CAYSH now employs more than 70 dedicated professionals delivering high quality cost effective services to vulnerable and excluded young people. To maintain the highest standards of delivery and support, CAYSH needs a strong, high quality management team.

Senior Management Team

All members of the Senior Management Team retain independent relations with the Board of Trustees. The Board meets every eight weeks, together with the Personnel and Services Sub Committee and the Finances and Development Sub Committee, which oversee the day-to-day issues of the organisation.

We revised the structure of our Senior Management Team in 2010 to reflect our new approach and priorities, reflecting the need to adapt to changed circumstances in the sector. The most senior people managing CAYSH today are:

Kathryn Uche

Chief Executive

Kathryn's experience in specifying, commissioning and delivering young people's services across public and voluntary sectors makes her ideal for the post of Chief Executive of CAYSH.

Formerly CAYSH's head of Services, Kathryn joined us in January 2009. Kathryn has extensive experience working with vulnerable young people, including managing residential services, educational settings and community-based projects. Kathryn's background is as a Human Resources and Learning & Development Advisor.

Prior to joining us she worked as the Children’s Services Manager for Barnardo’s CYMRU where she was undertook the strategic management the Wrexham's largest provider of services for disadvantaged young people.

Of course Kathryn's primary focus is on service delivery and quality on a strategic level and developing CAYSH services and quality levels beyond that of other providers'. She manages the Service Managers day-to-day, ensuring the very best quality, availability and accessibility of CAYSH services for young people everywhere we work.

David Asafori

Head of Finance

David qualified as an accountant in 1998, and is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Prior to joining CAYSH, he worked in public practice, commerce and industry for national and multi-national corporate organisations before joining KIDS, a national charity for children with special needs, as a Management Accountant. He was Acting Finance Director of that charity for part of his time and in June 2005, he joined CAYSH as Head of Finance.

David's role is to ensure the sound financial management and robust governance of CAYSH. He is responsible for overall management of day-to-day central services function including finance, facilities and communications.

Gary May

Head of Operations (Interim)

Gary has a Masters Degree (M.Ed), has been the director of Integrate Consulting and Training Ltd for over 6 years. He has carried out numerous service reviews and organisational reengineering across the public and voluntary sector. He specialises in new service development. He is known in Croydon for his involvement in the development and implementation of the Turnaround Centre.

Gary comes from and children and young peoples services background where he developed and delivered youth advice services and as a Chief Officer, a Connexions Service. He has worked for Government departments on a number of projects including the establishment of the United Kingdom Youth Parliament and the development of the 13 Connexions Pilots.

Whilst Gary is with us he is managing the services and reviewing the organisation with a view to ensuring CAYSH is a more robust organisation enabling expansion of contracts across South West and South East London.

Core Management Team

The Core Management Team comprises the three service managers responsible for delivery of day-to-day services for young people.

Keith Head

Service Manager - Social Care

Keith brought a fresh wealth of experience to the CAYSH team when he joined in early 2010. His experience in young people’s and children’s social care issues across half a dozen London boroughs and in the third sector since the Mid 1980s demonstrates not just his capability, but also his tenacity and survival instinct.

Immediately prior to taking up his post here, Keith’s role at Shaftesbury Young People as Service Manager for all 16+ services including multi-disciplinary Leaving Care and Supported Housing services. A qualified Social Worker with a good deal of front line family work and managerial experience, he has also been responsible for a number of Supporting People funded services including a Floating Support and accommodation Service and accommodation. Keith’s experience managerially extends to co-ordinating funding bids and campaigns and managing budgets in excess of £1m. Keith has managed Leaving Care Services in Camden, Islington, Suffolk and Wolverhampton.

Post-graduate and professionally qualified, Keith’s documented academic expertise in social work is backed up by a significant professional track record in Haringey, Greenwich, Bromley, Lambeth, Southwark and Camden, before joining us immediately after five years working with Shaftesbury Young People.

After such a long and distinguished career with Local Authorities, Keith chose to work with CAYSH because of what we do that is over and above the statutory provision of Local Authorities for young people facing housing crisis as well as other challenges.

Chennel Lawrence

Service Manager - Advice and Support

Chennel has well over a decade’s experience in the social housing sector in South London. Following a brief stint in the classroom, Chennel began her current career in social housing working with Croydon YMCA helping operate a major hostel (100+ beds for rough sleepers) and 120 places for young people at a number of hostels as a support worker.

Pathway Housing proved to be just that as Chennel moved into what would ultimately become her passion, working with young people in need, in this case providing frontline support to young women who were homeless and vulnerable as a result of domestic violence and/or pregnancy.

Chennel came to CAYSH in 2000 as a Supported Housing Officer and we quickly identified her as a rising star. Moving rapidly through the ranks to Supported Housing Manager and then Housing Advice Manager, Chennel spent a number of years managing our housing advice project for young people (HAP<25) in central Croydon.

During this time, Chennel worked in partnership with the local Authority delivering a programme of good practice workshops and seminars that resulted from CAYSH’s receipt of the Regional Centre of Excellence Award for Youth Homelessness. As a consequence of local research, and the mapping of Croydon’s services that relate to causes of youth homelessness, Chennel developed and delivered a universal family support project.

With the opening of Croydon’s Turnaround Centre in April 2010, Chennel and her team moved in as CAYSH took on management of the Drop in Zone. In addition to managing the Drop in Zone staff Chennel line manages the Family Floating Support programme and plays an active role on the Turnaround Centre Management Board.

Eddie McIlroy

Service Manager - Operations and Development

Eddie heads up CAYSH Concierge Services (CCS), a care-and-security service for Supported Accommodation (both CAYSH’s and others’) and has been with us for well over a decade. Eddie’s career has been in supported housing, working with survivors of domestic violence, street homeless and young people.

Joining CAYSH as a Supported Housing Officer, Eddie’s enthusiasm and intelligence saw him quickly rise through the ranks whilst also initiating CAYSH’s Service User Involvement Programme. As CAYSH grew, Eddie grew with us and his capability for launching new services became formalised in 2010 when he took on responsibility for setting up Sutton Time Out Project (STOP), Croydon Drop in Zone, Croydon STOP and then integrating a host of new Supported Housing projects in Sutton.

During this time of impressive expansion at CAYSH, Eddie developed CAYSH’s Concierge model – first for a discreet Supported Housing service and then later to meet the safeguarding needs of other supported housing projects. In 2012 he generated Concierge contracts outside of CAYSH’s own supported housing and has subsequently taken on the role of developing CAYSH’s Concierge Social Enterprise into a full blown going concern.

Charlie O'Rourke

Service Manager - Supported Housing

Charlie has two decades of experience delivering supported housing and accommodation for vulnerable groups of people. Working across the mental health, ex-offender and youth sectors Charlie’s vast experience in the housing sector enables CAYSH to be confident in our promise to deliver safe and sound housing for young people we work with.

Charlie’s expertise is in an array of matters that are as complex as they are diverse; the benefits system, health and safety, disability and care leavers legislation are just some of his areas of expertise along with the Housing and Children’s’ Acts of course. Balancing this knowledge with his pragmatic understanding of social housing delivery and the needs and realities of the young people CAYSH works with demonstrates Charlie’s capacity for problem solving and flexibility.

In addition to line managing the team of Housing Officers and Concierge staff, Charlie’s background in both Local Authority and Housing Associations as well as the third sector positions him ideally for the work he undertakes in service specification and development.