About
He has seen where it ends up.
Parent 999 is run by ex-police officers and family support workers. Between them, decades of turning up at the point where things had already gone wrong — and a shared view that it didn’t have to get that far.
Steve Kenny · founder
Ten years in care. Twenty-six in the police.
Steve went into a Barnardo’s children’s home in St Anne’s at three months old and stayed until he was ten, when he went to live with his mum. He is nearly sixty-three, and still in touch with some of the people who looked after him.
That matters to the work. The young people he sees now have often been through six or seven placements by the age of thirteen. He had one, and good people in it — and he is clear that this is the difference.
He joined Greater Manchester Police a month before his twenty-fifth birthday. Oldham first, then sergeant in Tameside from 1997, and early retirement in 2015 — twenty-six years. Long before he left, he was volunteering as a mentor at a school in Stretford, working with teenagers already pulled towards gangs.
“We’ve all been unlucky in life, and it’s not difficult to get into trouble. So there’s no judgement from me.” Steve Kenny
He set up UCAN North West — a community interest company — and Parent 999 in 2018. UCAN works with schools, colleges, children’s homes and the universities in Manchester on multi-agency approaches to community issues. Parent 999 is the out-of-hours side: the bit for parents, at the hours when everything else is shut.
- 10 yrsin Barnardo’s care
- 26 yrsGreater Manchester Police
- 2018UCAN North West founded
What we hold to
Four things, always.
- 01
No judgement, ever
You get the same answer whether it’s the first time or the fiftieth.
- 02
Small, doable steps
Anything we suggest has to be possible on a Tuesday night when everyone is tired.
- 03
Honest about limits
When something needs a doctor, a therapist or a social worker, we say so.