About Me

My career spans 20 years, starting in frontline youth work with children and young people and delivering drug and alcohol support. I spent over 10 years working for a number of Local Authorities in both frontline and management role across the Connexions service, Targeted Youth Support, Early Help, Children’s Social Care and Youth Offending Services before making the move to the voluntary sector where I spent several years leading on targeted gang intervention and mentoring programmes.

My roles have all been diverse and I’ve always been keen to get stuck in, developing my experience and offering my skills where needed. Key areas of expertise include:

– County lines and criminal exploitation
– Community violence and gangs
– Serious group offending
– Youth homelessness and housing
– Substance misuse
– Understanding trauma and trauma-informed care/practice
– Youth mental health
– Safeguarding
– Early intervention and prevention
– Young parents and fatherhood

My programme management and consultancy experience includes:

– Fundraising and grant management
– Staff and volunteer management, including large multi-disciplinary teams
– Financial management
– Partnership development and management
– Strategic development and planning
– Operational coordination
– Policy development
– Monitoring, evaluation and research
– Media and communications

I have remained committed to professional development, building on my degree in Psychosocial Studies with training that includes a range of therapeutic approaches to working with young people, specialist safeguarding training and issue based training and development in areas such as housing and homelessness.  

I am particularly passionate about ensuring services are able to effectively meet the needs of young men affected by gangs and serious youth violence with highly professional but credible support that considers issues of identity, masculinity, trauma, attachment, vulnerability, shame and experiences of exploitation whilst providing meaningful and viable alternatives to offending.

A full CV is available on request and do feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn