Chance UK

Chance UK was set up by policeman Russ Horne who was working in Islington in 1995. He worked with young offenders, and noticed that many of the children he encountered went on to be early entrants to the youth justice system. He started with the belief that with better role models, people who nurtured the child's best qualities and believed in them, young people could be steered away from a life of criminal and anti-social behaviour.

A small amount of pump-priming funding, just £28,000 to cover the first years costs, was received from the Cripplegate Foundation and Sir John Cass Foundation. The steering committee, made up of Russ and a number of others, drawn from the Educational Welfare Department, the Police service, and Neighborhood Service, recruited Dave Conroy as its first employee. He set up the charity and designed its 'solution focused' approach to early intervention, based on the pioneering work of Steve de Shazer and his wife Insoo Kim Berg. Additional funding was received at the end of 1995 through a Home Office 'reducing criminality' initiative which enabled the fledgling charity to pilot its approach over the following three years.

Dave ran the charity from February 1995 to October 1999, supported by two co-ordinators, Jenny van Dyk and Bev Light, several social work placement students and some irregular volunteer office support. For the first several months CHANCE UK operated from a desk located in the offices of the Safer Islington Partnership. As Dave says, 'on my first day I turned up and was shown a desk, phone and empty in-try, nothing else existed but Russ's idea!'. From 1999 Balwant Singh was Chief Executive Officer, finishing in 2001 when Gracia McGrath O.B.E. took over as CEO of the charity.