Our Senior Team

Thomas Keaney

CEO / Schools' Proprietor

TC Education Service’s Chief Executive and Schools Proprietor, Thomas Keaney, is a Qualified Social Worker with a Post Graduate Diploma in Therapeutic Child Care.  Thomas has 20 years of management experience, both in the public and private sector, including managing Local Authority Children’s Homes with Education, Social Work Recruitment Agencies and a Therapeutic Community.  In these management positions Thomas has been responsible for the financial management of the companies as well as the marketing and management of the businesses.

All of Thomas’s management experience is in the field of Social Work and Education services, thus providing TC Education Services with the benefits of his extensive and successful management experience. Thomas has been managing TC Education Services from its inception as a Social Care Company to its transition into the niche market of education for pupils with special educational needs. The Company has evolved in its focus over the past decade from an initial provider of alternative education services to one of the larger providers of Independent School Education in London and the Home Counties.

The Company celebrated the opening of a newly refurbished stateof the art School building on 12/01/12 at its North West London School with the school opened by Professor Lord Winston. The new school in North West London follows on from our new East London School Annexe building opened in Newham in September 2011. Two more new buildings in Essex are set to come on line in the Spring and Summer terms in Essex. These new buildings together with a substantial investment in specialist staffing with a new Principal Clinical Consultant, a new Pupil Counseling service, Company Curriculum Leads and Literacy and Numeracy coordinators across all of our schools reflect our absolute commitment to continuous improvement and the pursuit of sustained excellence in all aspects of our services.

As the Company moves through its second decade Thomas is very pleased that all of the TCES' Groups' three schools are 'Good' with many 'outstanding' standards and features, with the March 2011 inspection of the Essex Fresh Start Independent School resulting in a report, which confirms that this school is in the top 2% of Independent Special School in the country. Equally to be proud of is the fact that 84% of our pupils are in education, employment and training six months after leaving us in year 11 - an achievement that is considerable when considering these young people's starting point.

The opening of four new Autistic Spectrum Condition (ASC) Centers in the academic year 2011-2012 attached to all of our schools is further testament to the continued investment in our school provision and will ensure that the TCES Group Schools will be nationally recognised 'Centres of Excellence' and 'Outstanding' schools over the decade ahead. Our pupils deserve nothing less.

Christina Buckingham-Hack

Commercial Director / Company Secretary

Christina joined the Senior Management Team at TCES in 2009 as Commercial Director and currently leads the Commercial, Financial, and Strategic Operations which allows the company  to develop at scale by designing efficient business processes and solving strategic business problems.

Her teams tackle projects such as resource allocation and investment analysis, operational strategy and readiness for emerging and growing business areas, internal operations improvements, recruitment and organisation design. Under her leadership, TCES has dramatically scaled its infrastructure and broadened its educational offerings whilst maintaining a culture of  innovation to improve the delivery of education to our students.

Christina comes to us with over 20 years of experience in the Financial and Private Sector, holding several concurrent directorships.  Her experience in business  management  at a  commercial, strategic and operational level makes her an ideal person to support the company’s business plan for growth in the coming years.  Her arrival was well timed to take forward some pressing projects and to add further focus and success to our future.

              Mark Jordan

Jacqui Twitchell

Head of ASC Services

Jacqui joined the TCES team specifically to spearhead our ASD/C Services. She brings a wealth of experience in developing and managing specialist ASD/C provisions and has led on the development and implementation of these centres from the outset.

Jacqui is educated to degree level specifically in ASD/C (children) and works as a regional tutor for Birmingham University on their autism programme. Her role in supporting undergraduates with their coursework and marking pupil dissertations ensures her knowledge of research and theoretical developments in autism, and related areas, remains up to date.Jacqui has experience of managing a large provision in mainstream school for children with autism, severe learning difficulties and challenging behaviours and has extensive experience in managing and developing staff specifically to expand their skills in working in this field.

More recently Jacqui has worked as a Local Authority Inclusion Advisor in Barking and Dagenham. This role included:
 
• The development and delivery of training programmes and other continuing professional    development for teachers and other staff from health and social care
• Advising senior school staff regarding inclusion issues and meeting the needs of young people with ASD/C and other complex needs
• Working with Social Care, Health and Voluntary Groups to produce an autism strategy for the Local Authority

Jacqui is supported by a staff team with experience and training in ASD/C including Teachers, Higher Level Teaching Assistants and Teaching Assistants. The services also benefit from other specialist input from experts including Education Psychologists, Speech and Language therapists and Occupational Therapists. Staff are trained to understand the nature of high functioning autism and Asperger Syndrome and in strategies to ensure that the pupils’ needs are met.

Peter Finn

Principle Clinical Consultant

Peter is a qualified teacher and Group Analyst who works as an independent consultant with expert and specialised interest in consulting to multiagency services for children and young people with complex needs.

He has worked in therapeutic communities to Director level and has experience of leading preparation of family assessments for child care proceedings and as an expert witness to the High Court in civil litigation proceedings. Peter has been a visiting lecturer in therapeutic childcare and psychosocial care to postgraduate level at the Universities of Essex, Middlesex and Exeter. 

More recently he has held clinical roles working with young adults at the London School of Economics and at King’s College London. Peter currently holds a position as a senior NHS psychotherapist at the Maudsley Outpatients Psychotherapy service where he provides individual and group psychotherapy to adults in the community.

For the last ten years he has worked as a consultant to services for children and young people who are excluded or at risk of social exclusion. Peter’s research interests and areas of expertise include service user advocacy and peer support; risk management; communication skills training and well-being and positive psychology.