Management Team

Simon Barr

Strategic Development Officer – Founder

Simon Barr

Simon has worked within every level of the children’s care industry for the last 25 years, His passion and resilience for change in the sector has brought together many industry professionals to create WhiteTrees – SureCare into the business it is today.

Simon’s interpersonal skills have been used to train staff to the WhiteTrees approach of therapeutic care. His motivation for the best care that can be given to its young people stems from a life of coming from care himself as a young person. He has worked originally as a volunteer at the ground level, progressing to Home Manager until he sought investment to realise his ultimate dream – creating a care home system that would provide everything he knew that is required to bring the best out of its young people.

Simon’s entrepreneurial flair was evident with his first business venture as a sole trader in the building industry. His skill set within the building trade has been applied to developing each of the homes that have been purchased for WhiteTrees and has meant he has been able to add significant value to each.

Emma Barr

Director of Operations

Emma Barr

Emma is a leading care professional with over 25 years in the sector and childcare services, with excellent knowledge of Health and Safety management and administrative skills.

Emma has been instrumental from the beginning with WhiteTrees, more recently has played a major role in structuring our administrative department and creating, writing and implementing our care policies and invoicing procedures.

Emma’s key responsibilities are: 
     • Overall decision making within the business
     • Oversight of care policies
     • High level HR decisions
     • Business strategy
     • Staff management
     • Sits on board of Governors of WhiteTrees Independent School
     • Responsible person with the regulator OFSTED

Ayshea Praid

Director of Children’s Services

Ayshea Praide

Ayshea joined SureCare in 2010 in its infancy when it had just one children’s home and has progressed through the company from registered homes manager to director of children’s services. Her competency and enthusiasm on growing WhiteTrees – SureCare to be the number one childcare specialist services provider in the UK has been one of her main focusses. 

Ayshea has an established career history of nearly 30 years within the residential care sector. Before WhiteTrees she has worked in the specialist education sector for one of the largest independent providers. Since joining WhiteTrees she has progressed through the business, operating in direct management of children’s residential service roles, including opening of new home provisions, Area Management roles, overseeing several service managers and the defining and delivery of services we provide.  Additionally, she has held compliance roles over the South East of England. 

Ayshea has worked closely with Emma Barr to create and implement the company policies, systems and procedures. Her primary role as Children’s service lead is to meet and maintain statutory expectations/requirements and robust safeguarding procedures, ensuring compliance and in turn providing an outstanding level of child focused residential services.

Ayshea’s Key responsibilities include:
Overseeing of Residential Care Services

  • Creating, updating and implementing residential policies, systems & procedures
  • Ensuring regulatory & statutory frameworks are adhered to
  • Overseeing of quality & compliance/assurance procedures
  • Line management of residential managers.
  • Sits on board of Governors of WhiteTrees Independent School
  • Developing and improving the residential infrastructure
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Placements Manager

Danny Elliott

Danny joined White Trees Group in 2017 as a Registered Manager to open our fourth home, Pathways.

With the many years of experience that Danny has gained in the care sector working as a Registered Manager as well as within the Local Authority Placement Services for The London Borough of Newham, he has not only brought an extensive knowledge of the care system to help drive our service forward, but he has also brought a further understanding and perspective of what Local Authorities expect from us a care provider.

His role now as our Area Manager has developed into three key areas of the business; His main role is to assist the Director of Children’s Services to oversee our 5 homes and with this, he is able to step into a supervisory role when a home needs support to combat challenges with a particular young person whilst also supporting the home managers to improve the care we provide our young people.

As well as being the organisations certified Physical Intervention (NFPS) Trainer and training the 100+ staff across the White Trees Group, Danny also head’s up the Admissions and Discharge Department.  In this role, he works alongside the homes’ managers and Local Authority Placement Services to carefully assess, match and transition new young people into our homes, transition young people away from the service in the smoothest way possible and make sure that during their time with us, that they have every opportunity to grow and develop personally, socially and academically.

Lisa Honour

Head of Recruitment

Lisa Honour

Lisa is passionate about the healthcare sector having spent since 2004 working in the recruitment industry. She has been specifically looking to fulfil healthcare and nursing roles from entry through to director level. She has worked for several London based top recruiters and her last position was as Director of permanent recruitment at a recruitment agency with over 100 branches in the UK.

Lisa’s day to day tasks include the total overseeing of recruiting for all the WhiteTrees Group staff requirement, from interview through to on-boarding and then managing the businesses ongoing HR requirements. She may well be the lady you speak with if you call to discuss a role we have advertised and equally she is as comfortable as part of the senior management team in the boardroom.

We have a support team to help Lisa with the daily workload and they all live and breathe WhiteTrees!

Laura Bull

Executive Head Teacher

Laura Bull

Laura has worked in the education sector since 2000 and joined White Trees first as Deputy Head in 2018 and has since progressed to becoming our Head Teacher in 2019. Early in her career she spent time as a teacher of Physical Education which when coupled with her wider qualifications has put her in good stead for her role at WhiteTrees.

Laura is our operational lead for all things education in the WhiteTrees group. She is supported by a wider teaching team and is equally at home preparing to open a new school building, working alongside the senior management team or liaising with education authorities.

She is very hands on and approachable within the school and in regular contact with parents and care workers in striving to deliver daily a first-class service.

Ruth Gould

Head of Residential Compliance

Ruth Nicholson

Ruth has been part of the Surecare/WhiteTrees management team since 2012. Having started as an independent inspector she progressed to be our training and quality assurance manager and is currently our compliance manager. 

She is passionate about making sure we comply with all the various regulations governing our care homes, monitoring all processes and procedures and checking on document content, so our record of good quality control is maintained. When new legislation is required to be followed Ruth is our go to person to help understand what is needed, develop a process, train the management team and monitor our performance. Ruth will also undertake audits of the companies processes and report back to the management team.