OUR STAFF
Wynford Ellis Owen
Specialist Counselling Consultant
Carol Hardy
Service Manager
Dee Lally
Addictions Project Worker
Nick Shepley
Addictions Project Worker
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.
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 concentrates on training and educating people about addictions in general, and introduces the appropriate skills necessary to help those in recovery.
In 2015 helping to ensure the maintaining of good service standards offered at the Living Room were added to her responsibilities.
Dee Lally is a student addictions counsellor, studying at Action on Addiction at Bath University. She has been with us since February. She is a fan of the outdoors.
She has been on placement with the Living Room since February 2015.
Nick has volunteered at the Living Room Cardiff for the past four years and is currently studying a foundation degree in addictions counselling at the University of Leicester. Nick is a freelance writer and has published several books, 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.
Recently he has set up the Living Room’s recovery podcast, which is being downloaded around the world, sending messages of hope, encouragement and advice to addicts struggling with addiction.
