Meet The Staff
All staff are trained in mental health first aid, trauma-informed practice, suicide prevention, hate crime prevention, LGBTQIA+ issues and other specialist training.
Robyn Thomas
Founder / Director
Robyn has a background in Person Centred Counselling and has extensive experience in delivering large-scale community projects on behalf of the Home Office and the NHS. Robyn has lived and worked in the West End for over 20 years so has a real understanding of local needs. She used the contacts she had built over this time to gain the initial financial support for our first year as a CIO (this came directly from the NHS and from West End Million Big Local).
Mark Rumer
Operations Manager (Treasurer)
Mark is a West End resident who is passionate about Social Action, and LGBTQIA+ issues. He has a background in mental health care, IT programming and is a very active member of the community. Alongside ensuring the centre runs smoothly, Mark is also determined to build stronger relationships with other services. Mark is always thinking of new projects to develop and ways to reach the wider community.
Olivia Thomas
Youth Manager / Administrator
Olivia has worked within the community sector for the past 12 years. Being Neuro divergent herself, Olivia is passionate about ensuring that young people who are neurodiverse receive tailored support, and benefit from positive role models in the community who have similar life experiences. Olivia is JNC qualified and is supporting the team to achieve the same accreditation.
Olivia is committed to ensuring the service is delivered to extremely high standards of practice and safeguarding.
Lukas Brown
Youth Social Prescriber / Activity Coach
Lukas has worked with the team at Stanleys for 11 years initially as a part-time Youth worker whilst he worked at Lancaster and Morecambe College in student support as the tackling inactivity lead.
Lukas uses his sports qualification to engage community members in a range of activities to improve physical and mental wellbeing. Lukas is also 1 of only 2 Youth Social Prescribers in the area.
Ellie Thomas
Youth Worker
Ellie is energetic, a dancer at heart and always up for a laugh. Most importantly, will always advocate for young people to make them feel respected and appreciated. Ellie has been part of the youth team since 2018 and gave up time to stay within stanleys during covid-19 lockdown to help with food surplus which fed families in need. A skill of Ellies is to take on projects and help make them flourish this being in physical activity and youth led programmes such as the Morecambe bay youth triathlon in 2022.
Katie Haston
Youth Worker
Katie has been with the youth team since 2022, creativity is at the core of everything she does and this stems from previously studying fashion marketing at university in 2019 and she always seeks new ways to connect with young people. Katie also took part in the Morecambe bay triathlon which was one of her first big projects within Stanleys. Young people’s values and ideas are always one of katies priorities and always advocates for them to be heard.
Ashton Kearns
Youth Worker
Ashton was a former young person who joined our team when working on our holiday activity programme. Ashton has a level 4 sports qualification which he gained at Lancaster and Morecambe College. Ashton has represented the UK abroad on several occasions. Ashton is our youngest team member but having grown up in the area is very relatable to the young people he works with. This allows him to use his lived experience and appropriate vulnerability to build trusted relationships with young people.
Meet The Trustees
Louise Stansfield
Trustee (Chair)
Louise is a local resident and ex-Civil Servant who worked at GCHQ and for DWP. She has been a Town Counsellor and has been involved in voluntary work with charities for the past 34 years. Louise first came into Stanleys 8 years ago.
Cary Mathews
Trustee (Marketing)
Cary was a previous leader of Morecambe Town Council. She has over 25 years of experience, within the 3rd Sector both here and abroad. Cary is passionate about Stanleys and has been a long-time supporter, she joined our board a month ago. Most recently Cary led Morecambe’s Jubilee Celebrations which went live on BBC highlighting some of Stanleys work.
Harriet Phipps
Trustee (Secretary)
Harriet is studying for a PhD titled Young People, Food Insecurity and Climate Change: Increasing the Participation of Young People in Food Structures. She is also the Development worker for The Lancaster District Food Justice Partnership, liaising with organisations across the district to provide communities with effective food support. Harriet joined our board recently.
Stephen Jeffers
Trustee (Property Development)
Steve is a qualified pharmacist who had a successful career in healthcare management and property development. Originally from Liverpool and Skelmersdale, he lived near Wigan for 20 years where he was a Councillor at Wigan MBC. He now lives in Silverdale and joined the board earlier this year.
