Trustees

Our dedicated volunteer trustees bring with them huge amounts of experience, skills and knowledge to feed into our activities. We always welcome new trustees so if you would like to play an active part in ensuring sheltered and retirement housing in all its forms meets the needs of older people, come and join our welcoming and lively board. All you need is an interest in the sheltered and retirement housing sector, feel you can make a useful contribution, and a willingness to commit to around one day a month. For an informal chat, contact current chair Ann Karas at sarakant16@gmail.com, or our chief executive Rebecca Mollart at ceo@erosh.co.uk. To apply please contact Rena Karadogan at info@erosh.co.uk

Ann Karas Chair

Ann has spent 25 years working in the social housing sector, the last 15 of which were managing the retirement living (sheltered housing) accommodation for a local authority.

She has seen at first hand the benefits of sheltered housing and is passionate about the role of erosh in promoting it and advocating for the sector. She wants to see the UK provide more high quality older people’s housing services to cater for the growing numbers of older people wanting to live independently and well.

Trudy Hawkins Vice-Chair

Trudy has worked in social housing for over 25 years, with leadership experience in Housing, Support and Customer Service management.  Passionate about collaboration, and customer driven success, she has a proven track record in developing a tenant led quality culture, adopting a ‘right first time’ approach and promoting continuous improvement.

As the Head of Customer Experience for Longhurst Group, Trudy leads a team across the business’s front line customer and engagement services.

Emily Lewis Treasurer

Emily has been working in social housing for the last 6 years and is currently Head of Finance at RHA Wales Ltd.

Prior to beginning her career in finance, Emily worked as a domiciliary care assistant within the community which gave her a first hand appreciation of how important supported housing is for the quality of life of our older generations.

Other Trustees

Emma Quansah

Emma is Head of Partnerships at leading business consultancy 4i Solutions.

She supports contractors and clients on contracts across the UK in the housing sector. Emma has 15 years’ experience in social housing both in housing associations and as an asset maintenance service provider. Her roles have always been customer and people focused and she is passionate about empowering organisations to create health, wealth and resilience.

Emma believes that driving improvement to the standards of housing of older people has a huge part to play in achieving community objectives.

Chris Thomas

Chris has worked for Trivallis for the past 5 years. His work has been within the Neighbourhoods team, working with staff and tenants and the main focus of his work has been around supporting Trivallis in maintaining the service standards they have achieved, as well as searching for new ones.

Chris was also the Safeguarding Training Lead for Trivallis, supporting the business with training both staff and tenants on all aspects of Safeguarding.

Chris chaired the RESPECT team at Trivallis which is their Equality and Diversity staff group. This has given Chris a better understanding of the variety of ways in which EDI needs to be part of everything we do and how we support our tenants, especially those in older peoples accommodation.

Prior to working for Trivallis, Chris ran a successful business with his husband for 6 years, whilst studying to pass his BA Honours in History through distance learning with the Open University.

Chris Stephens

Chris is a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing and has worked in Social Housing in a variety of housing management roles for over 30 years.  This includes working for a housing association, rural and urban local authorities and a London Borough.

Chris currently works at Wealden District Council, where responsibilities include the management of the Council’s rented and leasehold retirement living stock.

Chris wants to raise the profile of sheltered housing, and promote its benefits.

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