| Meet The Team

Claudine Young

Chief Executive Officer

Claudine has a background in both social work and managing not-for-profit organisations, most recently as chief executive of CanTeen New Zealand. Originally from the UK, Claudine has lived permanently in New Zealand since 2005. She and her husband Pete live in Waitoki with a range of rescued animals including two goats, two pigs, two mini ponies, a dog and a chicken. She is looking forward to working alongside staff to provide great support and opportunities to the children and young people.

Nicola Dunlop

Manager, Residential Services

Nicola comes to Dingwall Trust from CanTeen New Zealand, where she managed youth workers across the Waikato region. She also worked closely with children in her senior management role at Porse. Nicola is passionate about improving outcomes for children and is committed to helping each one find their greatness within at Dingwall Trust. She and husband Craig enjoy a rural lifestyle in Pukekawa with their two teenage children.

Uinita Vao

Manager, Transition to Adulthood

Uinita has been with Launch for six years and as manager for the past three. Previously, she worked as a social worker with the residential team from 2008. As well as a bi-cultural social work degree, Uinita has a post-graduate certificate in clinical supervision. Uinita’s focus is to help young people build positive connections with whanau and community to support their transition towards adulthood. Uinita and her team work with young people from all over greater Auckland.

Chris Kelly

Senior Caregiver

Chris is our Senior Caregiver and has been a caregiver at Dingwall Trust since 1995. His extensive experience with children in care gives Chris a sound base for supporting the practice of our team of caregivers. He is a long service, active member of fostering associations working to support excellence in practice for caregivers.

Jennie Valgre

Practice Lead

Jennie's role is to find ways to continually improve the services Dingwall offers to children and young people in its care. With a background in maternity services and counselling, Jennie is building an evidenced-based framework to create well-defined service pathways for both residential and Launch, Transition to Adulthood. She comes to Dingwall from Odyssey Youth Services and has also worked as a counsellor in school. She is a mum of two, grandma to one and loves to play and umpire netball.

Kristy Tamati

Senior Social Worker

Kristy supports a team of youth and social workers to provide services to the children and young people residing at Dingwall Trust. Her team works with children, caregivers, Oranga Tamariki social workers and staff, whanau and other external services. Kristy has previously worked for Best Pacific Education and for drug and alcohol programmes associated with Youth Justice. She was born and raised in Christchurch with social workers for parents. She and her husband have Samoan and Tongan ancestry but are raising and educating their sons to be steeped in Te Reo Maori and Kapa Haka.

Denise Bosbach

Manager, Finance and Administration

Denise is originally from Germany and came to New Zealand via Australia in 2013 for a short visit, but never left after she fell in love with the country, people and culture. She has a background in both working with children and office management and was previously accounting assistant and operations manager at ICM Asia Pacific. She sees working at Dingwall as a chance to combine her passion for people and different cultures with her administration management experience.

Meet The Team