Directors

Meriel Harrington

BA Hons, HND Professional Youth and Community Work, MLF (Hay Group) and Principal Trainer and Consultant.

Hi, my name is Meriel and working with children, young people and their families has been my lifelong passion! I’ve worked on the frontline in youth and community work, progressing at this stage in my career to Senior Community Education Worker. At the heart of our work was supporting social and emotional development, on a value base of children’s rights and having a clear voice in the programmes we developed. You can’t understand the issues faced by young people without involving them in meaningful dialogue about their future.

From here I moved into early help and social care as Service Manager for Coventry City Council. Managing one of the three Targeted Locality Teams and a Citywide Team supporting our key local authority agencies and partners, was intense but incredibly rewarding. It was during this time in my career I took the lead for our service in the development of citywide practice in response to child sexual exploitation. I co-chaired our child sexual exploitation operational group with the police, and it is work I’m still very passionate about today! It’s a specialism and I now take a keen interest in criminal exploitation, peer on peer abuse and domestic violence and abuse.

Starting Connect 2 Families with Louison has enabled me to channel my experience and skills into training and consultation. I was training whilst working in Coventry and loved it. Sharing my experiences, knowledge and facilitating a learning environment is something I feel very honoured to do.

Currently, we’re working in partnership to open a family residential assessment centre and we are very excited to be nearly over the finishing line to open to families. Learning never stops, and taking part in this project has been incredibly rewarding.

If you decide to work with us as a company I look forward to meeting you, virtual or face to face!, and having an opportunity to share our training and coaching programmes and hopefully you’ll be inspired to involve us in your learning journey.

Louison Ricketts B.Soc.Sc.Sw -Double honours degree in Social Policy and Social Work, MSc in Criminal Justice Management, Practice Development Assessor, MLF (Hay Group) and Principal Trainer and Consultant.

Hi, my name is Louison I am a fully qualified trainer and consultant, I enjoy working with and developing people to enable them to acquire new skills and to reach their full potential when working with others in their community.

I am a qualified Probation manager and Social Worker with extensive experience in Early Help and Prevention and Social care. I have widespread knowledge and experience of working with complex families and have led strategically and operationally in these areas whilst employed as a service manager in Coventry; and supported the development of this work regionally and nationally. I also managed Early Help Targeted Locality Teams, delivered a wide range of staff development programmes within both the public and private sectors and jointly developed interventions to improve performance at individual, team, and organisational levels.

During my time with the Local Authority, I led on various programmes such as the One to One Domestic Violence programme, Family Intervention Projects for Anti-social Behaviour, Youth Crime and Female Offenders and piloted Community Engagement and Co-Production work.

​As a Probation manager with a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice Management, I worked in this field for over 15yrs which enabled me to demonstrate a high level of knowledge and skill in work with offenders. Throughout my time in the National Probation Service, I gained detailed and broad ranging knowledge and experience of risk assessment and risk management across all aspects of the work and took this forward into Children’s Social Care, Child Protection and Early Help before leaving to start my own business called Connect 2 Families.

Since starting Connect 2 Families, my colleague Meriel and I have channelled our joint experiences to build a successful training and consultancy business and expanded to work in the private sector, third sector and with faith groups. We are currently working in partnership to open a family assessment centre. We are very excited about this new prospect and look forward to the challenges and opportunities this will bring.