Steve joins Care UK from Paragon Healthcare Group, where he was Regional Director. Before that he held a number of planning, commissioning and operational roles with various Local Authorities.

Mike Parish, Chief Executive of Care UK commented: "We are delighted that Steve has joined our Learning Disabilities team, which is part of our Specialist Care Services division. Our work in this area continues to grow and lead, in terms of quality, innovation and outcomes, and we are confident that Steve's excellent experience and expertise will help us with the development the service."

The home will provide trained specialist staff to support service users to work towards independent living.

The home, located on Deepdene Avenue in Dorking is a large detached house, which is currently being converted and refurbished to meet the needs of service users and is due to open later this year.

Earlier this year Care UK was awarded a contract to work in partnership with Staffordshire County Council to provide a supported living service for four young adults in transition. These individuals have autism and additional complex needs. They are currently living with their parents, have recently turned 18 and left a specialist school and will be moving into their own home in the community for the first time. Care UK are working with Dane Housing Association and work to get the house ready is underway with a view to the service users moving in before Christmas. This service will be the first of its kind in Staffordshire and Care UK are delighted to be working on this new project.

In Lancashire, Care UK has undertaken a new contract which involved the transfer of four community-based homes, supporting 14 service users living in Preston and Chorley. The contract included the transfer of over forty staff currently working within these services by means of a TUPE transfer from two local PCT's. The first two services transferred across to Care UK at the beginning of June and the remaining two transferred in September and all are running well.

Centre status means that Care UK is accredited to deliver the Certificate for Working with people who have Learning Disabilities induction and foundation training programme. All new Care UK staff, working with people with learning disabilities, will undertake the training programme.

Helen Crawford, Group Head of Learning & Development said, "This is great news for Care UK and our staff. Achieving Centre status means we can lead the way in providing high quality learning disabilities development for our staff, which in turn will benefit the business and, most importantly, our service users."

The training programme has already commenced and is expected to be rolled out nationally by April 2005.