OUR PEOPLE
Karen Fagan – Chair
Karen has been involved in the social services sector in the Hawkes Bay for many years. During her working career she has been involved in Community Work, Social Work, Social Science Research and more recently she has been a Lecturer at EIT. Being a lifelong learner, she is currently undertaking a PHD through the University of Queensland. She has two adult children, and she resides with her partner on a small orchard outside of Hastings.
Sue Burns
Ko Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngātiwai te Iwi. Omahu te rohe, Kōnei te iri Tame kārena rāua Taupiri Te Paea Pita ara oku maatua tipuna
Sue has worked in the Hawkes Bay community for over 30 years as a Volunteer, a Social worker, Counselor, facilitator and a Manager of local community and social services agencies.
She has been involved is setting up a number of services specialising in family/whanau work, Child abuse prevention and for the last 15 years has worked with young people who have behaved inappropriately toward others and their family/whanau.
Sue has four adult children and 6 grandchildren. Whilst currently retired Sue continues to be interested in supporting agencies to deliver best practice and the highest services to our tamariki, rangatahi and whānau.
John Dwyer
John worked as a teacher for four years and then trained as an educational psychologist. He worked as a registered psychologist, team leader, supervisor and manager for the Department of Education Psychological Service, Specialist Education Services and the Ministry of Education, Special Education, for many years.
He was for some years registered with ACC as a counsellor for children and adults who were dealing with sensitive issues and he also worked in a doctors’ practice in Napier taking referrals of adults and children for a range of clinical matters. He worked for Waikato University for a year lecturing on the Resource Teachers Learning and Behavior programme. He currently works as a registered psychologist in private practice providing psychological assessments for the Family Court, Oranga Tamariki, lawyers and private clients.
John has worked in the Hawke’s Bay community for over 37 years, he has three adult children and two grandchildren and he lives with his wife in Bay View.
Trish Giddens
Trish has worked, volunteered, and governed in health and social services these past 43 years. Working largely in management her career has been in hospital and health centre services for the older person, local government and in Education.Recently retired, she continues to volunteer and govern representatively at a community and regional level. She is Ngāti Kahungunu, has two adult children and one grandchild and resides in Waipukurau, Central Hawke’s Bay.
Name
Trish has worked, volunteered, and governed in health and social services these past 43 years. Working largely in management her career has been in hospital and health centre services for the older person, local government and in Education.Recently retired, she continues to volunteer and govern representatively at a community and regional level. She is Ngati Kahungunu, has two adult children and one grandchild and resides in Waipukurau, Central Hawke’s Bay.
Kelly Hall
The administration for the Hawkes Bay Children’s Holding Trust is undertaken by Kelly located at BWR
Past Trustees
Bryan King
Bryan was in private legal practice for 20 years and was a partner in Hawke’s Bay firm Langley
Twigg for 15 of them. In 2010 he left Langley Twigg to follow an interest in alternative dispute
resolution.
Since then, after 18 months as Transition Manager for the Ngati Pahauwera Development Trust,
Bryan has developed a mediation/ arbitration practice helping people in conflict find ways of
resolving their disputes themselves. Bryan has continued to take Family Court appointments to
represent children and people with dimished capacity and is also a Tenancy Tribunal
adjudicator.
Bryan has had a longstanding involvement with the HB Children’s Holding Trust. At the time
those organisations merged in 2004, Bryan was a Trustee of HB Children’s Home and Birthright
Napier. Since the merger, Bryan has been a Trustee of HB Children’s Holding Trust and was
Chair of Birthright HB Child and Family Care from 2004 to 2016.
S M (George) Speedy
George qualified as a chartered accountant in 1980 and since that time has been an employee and director of chartered accountancy practices in New Zealand and Scotland until retiring in 2019. Currently he is a consultant to a Hastings chartered accountancy practice.
From 1998 until 2019 he was the general manager of a financial institution based in Hawkes Bay.
He is a director of various companies and trustee of numerous trusts.
Lowana Crawford
Lowana is a child advocate who has worked with children most of her life. Her formative years were with extended family in a small village in Tonga. She moved to NZ to be with her mother who worked with and for children. This was before the advent of general or political acceptance of solo parents.
Lowana initially trained in psychopaedic nursing. She has since raised a family, then worked as a counsellor, social worker and programme facilitator in health and social services. As the founder of Parentline Hawkes Bay, children’s needs were always paramount.
Lowana has six children and three grandchildren.