My Journey
My name is Paul Lavery and I have been supporting young people in various capacities for over 23 years. I first started my learning at 16 as a Sales Assistant in a small shop, the owner was big on customer services, and he showed me the value in taking time and looking after people and providing a high standard of service. People remember how you treated them or made them feel, not always what you gave them. This stuck with me!
I started refereeing and coaching and moved into youth work. I then started to do street and outreach work, and this gave me a wonderful insight into real youth work. I worked in so many different areas accumulating knowledge and experience in this field. I worked as a project worker and manager at a BESD private provider, I ran the whole companies’ residential projects (over 20 sites in the UK) in the Peak District.
I became a behaviour support officer at a HCC specialist school and started and ran their first school holiday activity program for disadvantaged young people.
I then moved into being a self-employed specialist mentor working with amazing professionals and even more amazing young people. I grew this for 2 years and started Paul Lavery Support, this is an agency that supplies high quality mentors to support our young people in Herts.
I have a wealth of knowledge and experience in this field but am also humble enough to know I do not know it all! I want to use this knowledge to create an amazing provision led by a professional, experienced and caring team of people to help me on the next stage of my journey which is Positive Expressions.
Positive expressions is a life & social skills-based alternative provision designed to meet the needs of young people in our communities. We offer a relaxed and supportive approach to developing young people’s confidence and supporting them to realize their potential by making positive choices. Please read/download our e-brochure on the above tab for further details. If you wish to book a place for a young person, please use the contact tab above.