Our Founders

Lee Smith Director, Founder

RMN; DipHE (Professional Nursing Studies); PGCE (Education in Healthcare); PGDip (Child Forensic Studies: Psychology & Law)

Lee founded Cove Care, with his wife, Beverly Cyrus, in 2008. Having worked together for many years in inpatient child and adolescent mental health services (tier 4 CAMHS), Lee and Bev identified a significant unmet need within this sector: that there were very few specialist community residential services for young people being discharged from hospital, or that could offer skilled alternatives to hospital. This is the explicit mission of Cove Care.  

Spanning across almost 30 years, Lee’s mental health nursing career has been dedicated to children’s mental health services. He had early clinical staff posts in forensic CAMHS, before moving into ward management and clinical specialist posts, lecturer-practitioner roles and a nurse consultant. He has been involved in national work in chairing a group of multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals with an interest in the therapeutic management of violence and aggression, and also chaired a special interest group around the mental health needs of young people within residential care.

Lee’s focus moving forward is to lead Cove Care with all of the expertise, innovation and drive he and Bev brought to it from our inception, and the exciting projects we have in development. To complete Bev’s dear unfinished tasks she was so committed to.     

Beverly Cyrus Founding Director

RMN; PGCert (Psychotherapeutic Interventions); PGDip (Psychotherapy); PGCert (Health Service Management); MSc (Psychotherapy)

1971-2023, In memoriam 

A force of nature and the driving force behind Cove Care, Bev passed away after a sudden illness in June 2023. She was both co-founder of Cove Care and a leading light within the national child and adolescent mental health field, working within the sector for almost 30 years. 

She had always been a pioneer: Bev piloted the UK’s first CAMHS psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU CAMHS) back in 1997, she founded Cove Care in 2008, and was in the process of launching Cove Healthcare, set to transform inpatient and integrated CAMHS in her inimitable spirit of innovation. 

Bev was a true inspiration for so many. She was an exceptional clinician, and achieved ward management posts early on in her post-registration career. Over many years she then combined post-graduate and clinical trainings in executive health service management and psychotherapy to become an exceptional and charismatic healthcare leader: with the ability to inspire informed by an in-depth understanding of people. The people she led, and the young people she dedicated her career to care for. 

Right up until she passed away, Bev was excited about and committed to our ongoing work at Cove Care. She was acutely aware of the crisis in children’s mental health in our current climate and an amazing blueprint to help address it. In her memory, our mission at Cove is even more important, necessary and vital.