Recognising Potential, Encouraging Independence, Achieving Self-Worth

Meet the Chief Executive

John Neel

I am originally from Zimbabwe and emigrated to South Africa when a very young child and spent most of my formative years there, in 1996 I emigrated to England and my arrival I joined the largest privately owned relocation and removal company in England which has approx. 45 offices and warehouses nationally, as their International Sales and Corporate Development Manager.

I have two children, our son loves to travel and see the world and our daughter (who used to be one of the care home’s Life skills trainers) is married and has blessed us with two grandsons.

I have served the Lord for close on 30 years and I have felt we had a calling on our lives and while living in Cape Town. I responded to that calling and trained as a Trainee Pastor with the Assemblies of God and attended evening classes at the Tygerberg Bible College for a number of years.

In 2003, I was introduced to Crossways Community by my late wife Irene who was already employed at the care home as a Residential Support worker and I slowly became more and more involved with Crossways which resulted in me becoming a friend of Crossways Community. It was in the summer of 2004 during a Crossways’ residents’ holiday in Wales that was a turning point for me as I felt at that time that maybe God was calling me to work at Crossways. In-fact it was Ian Lees (the previous manager at Culverdale) who originally sensed this and spoke to me, but I did nothing about it as I was very comfortable where I was. In the Autumn of 2004 after I was approached by Martin Granger, I got thinking about what God was saying to me so, with lots of prayer and some very wise council from Brian Woodgate, a very good friend of mine, that I realised that this is what God wanted of me and that this was a calling from God and so I resigned and moved out of my comfort zone and joined Crossways Community as the Manager of Culverdale. In November 2010, I was made Chief Executive, taking over from Martin Granger.

Meet the Admin Staff

Steve Howcroft has worked at Crossways since July 1989 when he came as a full-time Residential Support Worker whose duties also included basic bookkeeping and administration. Over the years the administrative responsibilities have increased to the point where he ceased to do any care work in 2002.

Although some of the work is delegated to his two assistants, he is responsible for local authority contract and Supporting People negotiations, legislative compliance, budgeting, end-of-year accounting (getting Crossways’ accounts ready for audit), salary reviews, job applications, stationery ordering, IT advice. As a Criminal Record Bureau Countersignatory he also verifies and countersigns CRB Disclosures for Crossways’ new staff and for employees of other employers. He is also a member of the Crossways Community Management Team and gives finance and administrative briefings to the Directors’ Meetings. He is also pioneering and with the help of others. leading and overseeing the new project Mental Health Awareness project, helping to encourage people to promote better mental health and to de-stigmatise mental illness.

Michael Eastwood joined in January 2002 and took over from Steve the responsibility for the computerised accounts, paying invoices, petty cash reconciliations and payroll. Although he mostly only works two days a week, he is particularly popular in that he makes sure that people get paid on time unlike his predecessor.

Judith Falkner started in June 2005 on a fast learning curve as her first day was a conference on Supporting People Accreditation. Her responsibilities include policy review and revisions, Supporting People compliance and resident, staff and stakeholder consultations.