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Leslie-Anne Newton, Northern Ireland Director
Leslie-Anne has worked in the charitable sector for over 20 years, promoting the rights of children and adults in a variety of settings.
She started her career in England as a Crisis Advocate supporting people with a learning disability and then moved into a role empowering children’s participation in service design and delivery with the NSPCC. Before joining ARC NI, she was responsible for all programmes commissioned by Save the Children and delivered through partner organisations across Northern Ireland.
In ARC NI, Leslie-Anne supports stakeholders in the learning disability sector to connect, strategise and collaborate.
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Stephen Walker, Administration Manager
Stephen has worked in the voluntary sector since 1993 where he provided secretarial support to the Chief Executive of The Care Sector Consultancy (CSC). In 1999, ARC UK awarded a contract to CSC to establish if there was a need for a branch of its organisation in Northern Ireland. As ARC NI’s membership grew through the consultancy support of CSC so did Stephen’s role and responsibilities. In 2005 he officially became part of the ARC team when appointed PA to the ARC NI Director. Stephen is now the Administration Manager overseeing all aspects of administration for the Northern Ireland office including organising meetings and events, maintaining the ARC website and producing the e-newsletter and bulletins.
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Elaine Russell, Training Coordinator
Elaine has worked in the field of Learning and Development for over 25 years in the private, public and voluntary sectors.
Elaine worked for the Northern Health and Social Care Trust for over 18 years, first as the NVQ Learning and Development Officer, delivering accredited vocational qualifications including Customer Service, Support Services, Assessor and Verifier Awards. She then moved on to become the Organisation Development Learning and Development Manager, responsible for the Trust’s Leadership and Management Training including ILM Level 5 in Leadership and Management, QCF Level 5 in the Management of Leadership and Development as well as developing in-house leadership and management programmes.
Elaine is an accredited coach and Myers Briggs practitioner.
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Louise Hughes, Telling It Like It Is (TILII) Coordinator
Louise is responsible for facilitating ARC NI’s groups of self-advocating adults with a learning disability, TILII.
Lou also supports the development of good quality practice through the facilitation of training. Louise previously led the ‘Lost for Words’ Project and coordinated the Getting Started Project, a pre recruitment-training programme encouraging people to consider working in the social care sector.
Louise has worked for over twenty five years with children and adults who have severe learning disabilities and or serious mental health issues; this has been predominately in the area of education and training. She was inspired to work in this area by her younger brother, Wayne, who had severe learning disabilities and sadly died at the age of 25. Louise feels that being Wayne’s sister has given her personal insight and empathy from a family’s point of view. Louise is committed to helping ensure that people with a learning disability are supported to lead a full and valued life.
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Charlotte Smith, Telling It Like It Is (TILII) Project Officer
Charlotte joined the ARC team in October 2019. She supports the work of our ‘Telling It Like It Is’ (TILII) members – helping to ensure that people with a learning disability are directly involved in the planning and delivery of the services they use. The main focus of her work with TILII is to facilitate the creation of accessible information through ‘TILII Translates’, a new and exciting social enterprise that creates and reviews Easyread documents.
Charlotte comes to ARC with a rich background in the Third Sector, having previously worked for humanitarian and peace and reconciliation NGOs. She is an experienced event manager, project coordinator and communicator. Charlotte continues to work as a frontline staff member for a local care provider and is a passionate advocate for the rights of individuals with a learning disability.
ARC UK has a Strategic Leadership Team lead by Managing Director and consists of: