Steve Kenny

Steve went into a Barnardo’s children’s home in St Anne’s at three months old. He stayed until he was ten, when his mum moved up and he went to live with her. One placement, one move, and — as he puts it — really happy memories.

He is still in touch with some of the people who looked after him, close to fifty years later. That is not a detail he mentions in passing. It is the whole reason he does this work now.

Why one placement matters

Some of the young people he works with today have been through six or seven placements by the age of thirteen or fourteen. He had one, and good people inside it. He is clear that this is the difference, and he does not pretend otherwise.

Twenty-six years in the police

He joined Greater Manchester Police a month before his twenty-fifth birthday. Oldham first, then promoted to sergeant in Tameside in 1997, and early retirement in 2015 — around twenty-six years in all.

Long before he left, he had started volunteering as a mentor at a school in Stretford, which borders Moss Side and Hulme. A lot of the young people there were already affiliated to gangs. He expected to be judged for being a police officer. Mostly he wasn’t.

What he does now

After retiring he thought he would go into mediation — in his words, resolving conflict rather than creating it. Then he was offered the chance to work with young people near Preston, and found it suited him.

In 2018 he set up UCAN North West, a community interest company, working with schools, colleges and children’s homes, and with social work and psychology students at Manchester Metropolitan and the University of Manchester. Parent 999 was set up at the same time as the out-of-hours side: the bit for parents, at the hours when everything else is shut.

“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