Our Team
At AROA STET, we have a team of committed professionals who work together to provide exceptional support to children.
Led by Dr Leanne Short, our Senior Educational Psychologist and Director, our team brings a wealth of expertise and experience to every assessment and intervention. Leanne, who founded AROA in 2022, has a strong background in educational psychology and has worked extensively across England.
She leads the team with a focus on providing high-quality, personalised psychological services and ensuring that every child’s needs are met with care and professionalism.
The team continues to grow, with each member bringing a unique set of skills and a passion for supporting children in their educational journey.
Mr Chris England
Creative Director for Aroa SEND & Inclusion Consultancy and Team Manager of Aroa STET
Chris England NPQH is an experienced school leader and SEND specialist with over 18 years’ experience as a SENDCo and more than 10 years in senior leadership.
Having served as Head of School at Knotty Ash Primary School, he holds the National Professional Qualification for Headship (NPQH) and has extensive expertise in inclusion, safeguarding, school improvement, curriculum development and supporting children and young people with complex SEND needs.
Chris is passionate about helping schools develop inclusive practices that enable every child and young person to thrive and achieve.
Sophie Duxbury
Neurodivergent Specialist and Team Manager of Aroa STET
Sophie is an experienced educator, Team Manager, Neurodiversity Specialist and Designated Safeguarding Lead (DSL) at Aroa STET, with a strong background in supporting children and young people with diverse special educational needs and disabilities.
Her work sits at the intersection of neurodiversity, trauma informed practice, safeguarding, education and therapeutic mentoring, with a particular focus on understanding each child or young person holistically and creating environments where they feel safe, valued and able to re-engage with learning.
For the first six years of her career, Sophie worked in a generic specialist school, supporting children and young people with a wide range of needs, including SLD, PMLD, SLCN, Autism and SEMH. During this time, she worked closely with families and multidisciplinary professionals to develop personalised approaches and achieve meaningful outcomes for each individual.
Sophie then transitioned to an independent specialist school supporting autistic children and young people with complex learning needs, including pathological demand avoidance (PDA) and anxiety. In this setting, she developed particular expertise in supporting young people with histories of placement breakdown, school-based trauma, burnout and Education Other Than At School (EOTAS). Her work focused on rebuilding trust, emotional safety and engagement, while working collaboratively with families and professionals to support successful reintegration into education.
In her current role at Aroa STET, Sophie leads a team of mentors working with children and young people who may have experienced exclusion, repeated placement breakdown, emotionally based school avoidance, unmet neurodivergent needs or negative experiences within traditional education settings. She supports an individualised, trauma informed approach that prioritises relationships, emotional safety, trust and meaningful engagement.
As a Designated Safeguarding Lead, Sophie is committed to keeping children and young people at the heart of safeguarding practice, ensuring their voices, wellbeing and individual needs remain central to decision making. She is particularly passionate about neurodiversity affirming practice, school-based trauma and creating alternative educational pathways for children and young people who have struggled within traditional settings.
Sophie believes that every child and young person deserves to experience education as a place where they feel safe, understood and valued. She is passionate about recognising that sometimes it is the environment that needs to change, rather than expecting the child or young person to change to fit the environment.
Mrs Lindsey Davies
Executive Operations Manager
Lindsey spent 21 years in the airline industry before moving into medical administration, initially within a private hospital setting prior to her current role. The airline industry provided a great background for developing a number of core and complementary skills that now complement the work Lindsey does as the Operations Manager for the Aroa group.
Front and centre of these are strong interpersonal skills. An ability to deal with complex and multiple situations with an empathetic understanding enable Lindsey to deliver care and service that put Aroa as a best-in-class provider. As a first point of contact for many, Lindsey understands and represents the business in a way that creates a level of comfort and understanding that all needs will be dealt with to the highest of standards.
