Categories
news

Who are we

WHO ARE WE

Originally from North Wales. Carol was educated at Dyffryn Ogwen Secondary School and Trinity College, Carmarthen. She has worked for most of her career in education.  For several years has engaged with people in recovery from addictions. She started working at Living Room, Cardiff in 2013 as co-ordinator of the Reaching Out project.  This project trains in educating about addictions in general, and introduces the appropriate skills necessary to help those in recovery.

In 2015 these responsibilities were linked to helping to assure the maintaining of good service standards offered at the Living Room.

Carol Hardy

Service Manager

Dee Lally Osborne

Addictions Project Worker

Dee Lally Osborne is one of our Addiction Project Workers. After 15 years in the civil service Dee decided to retrain at Action on Addiction at Bath University. She spent her placement with us and after graduating in June 2016 became a staff member in July 2016.

She lives in a village on the outskirts of Pontypridd with her husband and two step children and Kit Kat the pet cat.

She is a keen hiker and has been a member of a young person’s walking group since 2004.

Nick Shepley

Addictions Project Worker

Nick is an Addictions Project Worker at the Living Room and has volunteered at the centre for the past six years. During this period Nick has qualified as a counsellor at Leicester University. Nick also works as a teacher and a writer and has used his expertise in writing to benefit the Living Room. He has contributed to the Living Room’s Reaching Out manual and has helped to develop the centre’s communications strategy, making sure its values are understood locally and nationally. In his work as a counsellor Nick has specialised in motivational interviewing, cognitive behavioural therapy and voice dialogue therapy to help clients process difficult emotions and feelings. Nick has been in recovery from addiction for thirteen years and lives in Cardiff with his wife and son.

After a 40 years career as a writer, actor and director working in theatre and television, Wynford returned to college in 2006 to study for a Fd.Sc. degree in Addictions Counselling. After graduating in the summer of 2008, he worked briefly as an addictions counsellor in Rhoserchan, the drug and alcohol treatment centre above Penrhyncoch, near Aberystwyth. On the 1st of October, 2008 he started work as Chief Executive Officer of the Welsh Council on Alcohol and Other Drugs, and a corner-stone of his 3 year strategy was the establishment of Stafell Fyw Caerdydd/Living Room Cardiff, a community based Recovery Centre supporting people with addiction problems in Cardiff and surrounding areas. He was awarded the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellowship for 2010 and visited some of the new recovery community centres in the U.S. which have achieved long-term recovery from severe alcohol and/or drug-related problems. A network of such centres is to be found in Vermont, Connecticut and Philadelphia, Washington D C and Virginia. Visiting these centres provided Wynford with very useful ideas on how to better build a strong “peer culture” into the Stafell Fyw Caerdydd/Living Room Cardiff project, which was officially opened on 8th September, 2011.

​

Having recently stood down as Centre Head & CEO, Wynford is focused on rolling-out the Beat the Odds programme throughout Wales, and setting up Living Room centres in West and North Wales. Currently, he is a Specialist Counselling Consultant to CAIS Ltd., Living Room Cardiff’s parent company, and is also responsible for delivering and overseeing Cynnal, the counselling service for clergy and ministers of religion and their families; and Enfys, the bespoke counselling service for qualified medical doctors. He’s also responsible for delivering retreats – of which there are three every year – and three modules on Addiction & Recovery Coaching, in conjunction with the University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

​

Wynford is married to Meira, has two daughters, Bethan and Rwth, and is a very proud grandfather to Begw, Efa, Bobi and Jac. He lives in Creigiau on the outskirts of Cardiff.

​

Wynford is in recovery and his sobriety date is 22nd July, 1992.

Wynford Ellis Owen

Specialist Counselling Consultant to Living Room Cardiff & CAIS Ltd. (Living Room Cardiff’s parent company), and founder and former Chief Executive Officer Living Room Cardiff.