The Help Hub Team
Board of Trustees
Ruth Chaloner (Founder and Chair)
Ruth trained as a therapist in 2004 in Cambridge. After some years, she followed her need for adventure and moved to the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia where she worked in front line conservation for two years. Upon her return she moved to Oxford to continue both in conservation with the Pew Charitable Trust and also to develop her practice in West Oxford. She now has a flourishing counselling & psychotherapy practice. Ruth is Registered Member of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and abides by the BACP’s Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling & Psychotherapy. She has a particular interest in supporting those who find themselves alone and works extensively with clients suffering from anxiety and depression.
Dominic Hare (Treasurer)
Dominic Hare was born in Liverpool and studied Law at Oxford. After qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG, he spent the next ten years in corporate finance and investment banking (with Paribas and Barclays Capital), specialising in the media and telecoms sector. He is proud to have helped DJ Chris Evans buy Virgin Radio but also to have helped Bob the Builder buy both Thomas the Tank Engine and Barney the Purple Dinosaur. For 13 years, he served as Finance Director at Blenheim and is now the Chief Executive Officer at Blenheim. At Blenheim, he and the team are delivering an energetic vision of the evolved role of a landed estate today, not an historic anachronism but on the powerhouse of the local economy, custodians and innovators in carbon management and the heartbeat of local life. He joined The Help Hub as one of the founding Trustees in 2020.
Silvia Elsner
Silvia Elsner, originally trained as a geneticist, developed her interest in psychodynamic psychotherapy through a variety of psychotherapy and counselling trainings in London and at Oxford. In the last 20 years, she has practised as a psychodynamic counsellor in the NHS, in secondary education, at the Oxford University Counselling Service and currently in her private practice. For some years now, she has been a tutor at the training programme for psychodynamic counsellors at Rewley House, Oxford. She is also a supervisor of counsellors working in schools and in private practice. Among her particular interests are the emotional problems of trauma, migration and cultural assimilation, the interaction of therapist and client with different native languages and cultures, the development of persistent depressive and anxiety states, and the question of compassion in therapy. She is accredited with the UKCP.
The Rt Revd Colin Fletcher OBE
After reading History and Economics at Oxford, Colin went on to do his ordination training and served his first curacy in the Bradford Diocese. In 1993 Colin became the Domestic Chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, travelling with him on many visits in England and abroad. He went on to Co-Chair the committee that advised the government on all the faith aspects of the Millennium Celebrations for which he received an OBE. Following a move back to Oxfordshire in 2000 Colin became the Bishop of Dorchester. Since retiring in 2020, Colin maintains his interest in schools acting as a School Governor to a local West Oxfordshire school. He continues to also support the interface between faith communities and the public and voluntary sectors. A keen ornithologist; Blenheim walker; a trustee of the Creation Theatre; and Chair of the Bible Reading Fellowship, based in Abingdon, The Help Hub was delighted Colin could join as Trustee in December 2021.
Advisory Panel
Gillian Forrest
Gillian is a retired child psychiatrist, married with two grown-up sons and a founder trustee of Seesaw.org.uk. She trained in paediatrics and psychiatry before working as a consultant at the Park Hospital for Children in Oxford for 25 years. Gillian specialised in bereavement and provided staff support for the paediatric oncology team at the John Radcliffe Hospital and at Helen House Hospice for many years.
Christine Arjun
Christine Arjun comes to us with a background in Education and Human Rights. Originally from Fiji, Christine has worked for DFID, the Third Sector and most latterly the Statutory Sector. Prior to moving to Woodstock, Christine worked within the Welfare Rights Team, under the auspices of the Social Work Dept of Dundee City Council, in Scotland. Her work involved advocacy and support for a cross section of clients with physical and mental health issues struggling to navigate their way within society, the welfare benefits landscape and tribunal system. Her work was built on establishing trust particularly amongst clients who had histories of anxiety and depression and she worked with a variety of cross disciplinary teams to ensure her clients received holistic support.
Christine is committed to improving the lives of people who have been disadvantaged and discriminated against. The focus of her work has critically been in her work to alleviate poverty born of inequalities pertaining in the main to gender, mental health and socio economic status.
The Team
Rebecca Davenport
Rebecca joined The Help Hub in July 2021 as the charity's Programme Manager. She graduated from Kings College London with a BA degree in Religion, Philosophy and Ethics in 2008 before working in the financial services industry in London. With a background in project and operations management and extensive executive assistant experience at Board level, Rebecca oversees all aspects of the day to day running of the charity.
To contact the Programme Manager, please email operations@thehelphub.co.uk