Zest

Simon was born in Sheffield and has grown up and lived in Upperthorpe for over 40 years, his father came to the UK from the Caribbean in 1955 as part of the Windrush Generation.

Currently he works as a Team Manager, within Sheffield City Council (Children Services) and he has over 20 years of experience of working with children, young people and families from all backgrounds and particularly those that are disaffected or vulnerable within communities.

His vision is for every resident to have access to comprehensive information about their community, but, much more importantly for them to have access to link up with people of similar interests and join with them in making decisions about their local area, so as to make it a better place to live and work. And he believes that the best way for this to happen is by public, private, academic, community organisations, children, young people and families working together to bring all their resources to bear in a common strategy, by sharing their experience and working together collaboratively in all sorts of creative ways.

He has current experience of leading a team which has been funded to undertake a Department for Education project designed to look at outcomes for vulnerable families.

He is very passionate about community development, and has created and delivered a Community Initiative in the North of Sheffield (in 2019) to help empower disaffected children, young people and families to make decisions and plans in relations to providing solutions to reducing criminal exploitation in their community.