Pen Green Centre for children and their families

Trevor Chandler OBE (September 1951 – June 2025)

Trevor Chandler OBE
(September 1951 – June 2025)

All of us at Pen Green Centre for Children & Families share the deepest sorrow at the news that our former Head of Centre, colleague and friend Trevor Chandler passed away peacefully earlier this month. Trevor’s warmth, humour and fierce commitment to children and families shaped the very DNA of Pen Green; his absence will be felt across Corby and far beyond.

Raised in Northamptonshire, Trevor trained as a social worker and joined Pen Green in the mid-1980s, only a few years after the centre opened its doors. Over the next two decades he served first as Deputy Head and, from the early 1990s, as Head of Centre, steering Pen Green through periods of rapid growth and national attention.

Trevor’s leadership combined quiet pragmatism with visionary zeal. He championed an integrated, multi-agency model that placed families—rather than services—at the centre of decision-making; this approach later became a template for the government’s Sure Start programme. In 2003 his work was recognised with the award of an OBE for Services to Early Years Education in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

A lifelong advocate for fathers’ involvement in their children’s learning, Trevor co-authored the influential chapter ‘Parents’ Means Fathers Too’, helping practitioners nationwide rethink how they welcome men into early-years settings. His writing and training sessions stressed that “the power of abuse lies in secrecy” and that true safeguarding is built on cultures of openness and empowerment—values that still underpin our practice today.

Trevor’s gift for listening—really listening—to parents earned him lasting respect. Reflecting on Pen Green’s evolution, he told the Guardian that government initiatives “helped us develop what we were doing anyway, allowing us to do it in a more comprehensive way.” That spirit of collaborative growth remains our guiding star.

After leaving Pen Green, Trevor continued to influence the sector as a consultant, mentor and trustee, always ready with a story, a challenge and a cup of tea. Beyond work he was a devoted family man, proud grandad and enthusiastic cyclist who never lost his curiosity about the world.

We extend profound condolences to Trevor’s wife, children and grandchildren, and to the countless practitioners who counted him as a mentor.

“The real measure of our work,” Trevor often reminded us, “is the confidence with which a child runs across the playground into their parent’s arms.” May we honour his legacy by ensuring every child continues to make that joyful journey.