Key Features Of The CCG - 3. Patrons - 07/04/20

Key Features Of The CCG - 3. Patrons - 07/04/20

Apr, 7 2020


~Welcome to ‘Key Features of The CCG’. Each week I’ll be reminding members of the excellent aspects of the website you can view on the homepage. This week I’m looking at ‘Patrons’. You will find this between ‘Members’ and ‘Allied Organisations’

To start let’s determine the definition of a patron. It is simply an individual  who gives financial or other support to a person, organization, or cause.

Now that’s clarified let’s find out how many and the identity of the patrons.

The CCG currently has two patrons, they read as follows:-

1. Lady Milena Grenfell Baines MBE
2. Stephen Sloss

Learning about both of them will help us build a big picture of the person and their contribution to The CCG.

Lady Grenfell-Baines M.B.E become the 25th person to be awarded the title of Honorary Freedom of the City of Preston.

Her longevity as a proud citizen of Preston dates back some 50 years or so and she has strong links with the following organisations:-

  • The Preston Friends of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
  • The Harris Charity
  • Twinning Committee

 In each role she has brought dynamism, generosity of spirit and love of culture that shines through with each respective organisation.

Lady Grenfell-Baines M.B.E is also an excellent chef and has demonstrated such skills over several decades.

For Preston Guild 2012 she continued her commitment to fostering and promoting artistic talent, with her involvement in ‘The Young Musician of the Guild’.

This was also the time when The CCG was born which led to the following three titles:-

  1. Honorary Fellow University of central Lancashire
  2. Honorary Freedom of the City of Preston
  3. Patron of the Creative Communities Group UK

Moving on to Stephen Sloss:-

Stephen started out in the social care sector with young adults with enduring mental health conditions. He then explored work within children’s services over a ten year period before returning to social work as Strategic Director of Adult Social Care.

In 2010 Stephen co-founded Salvere,  a community interest company and social enterprise focused on the following:-

  • Personalisation self service platform solutions
  • Brokerage
  • Direct payments advice
  • Support planning.

The company has so far grown to support the development of community brokerage and citizen directed support in Lancashire and Wigan. He is currently CEO at Salvere. You can find out more information by accessing the following website:- www.salvere.co.uk

Stephen’s other professional roles include the following three:-

  1. Director and Trustee for Skills for Care
  2. Social worker
  3. Associate of the Association of Director of Adult Social Services.

At the time of the post Guild 2012  Stephen became co-founder of  The Creative Communities Group. As a fellow patron he has learnt that The CCG consistently aims  to empower people, locally, nationally and internationally for positive change through volunteering and community engagement. Although many of our usual events have had to be cancelled we still have the tremendous support of our patrons to see The CCG sail through this and beyond.

^Alex Ashworth CCG UK Blogger