Homelessness charity Petrus set to grow under new head

Rekha Patel-Harrison, the new head of Petrus Community

Rochdale-based homelessness charity Petrus Community has appointed a new head following the retirement of Denis Skelton.  

Rekha Patel-Harrison joins Petrus Community following her role as Director of Programme at City Year UK. Rekha originally joined the American-founded charity as Head of Site in 2015 and was instrumental in developing the City programme across Greater Manchester.  

An experienced strategic leader, Rekha has worked with communities for almost 30 years, covering management, training and youth work across both public and third sector organisations. Rekha is also a Master Practitioner in NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) with training in psycho-therapy practice, and still volunteers supporting people in degree level and above education programmes.   

Rekha said: “I am really excited to be joining Petrus Community. The values and aspirations of the organisation to challenge social inequality align with my own and I believe through developing new ways of working and taking risk, we can become even more successful in serving the most vulnerable in society. 

“I have a clear vision on how Petrus can grow and support even more people in our community and I am looking forward to challenges ahead.”