Worked in Age Concern and CSV before working in Local government as Youth and Community Centre manager in Lanarkshire. Then as a community Intermediate treatment officer/team leader in youth social work. Policy developer of Children's Services Plan in South Ayrshire before moving onto the field of community regeneration as a partnership manager. For the past 7 years I have been a Community Engagement manager still with some strong links to local community regeneration projects. Recent role includes links to Community Council support and administration. I was a manager in the Communities Service with close links to Community Planning and the Community Empowerment Act. I have enjoyed being involved in developing place based approaches in Ayrshire and have experience of planning and participating in three charrette place based engagements leading to the formulation of local area strategic plans.I also recently put a fourth one in place. I have also assisted in the roll out of asset based community development approaches at a neighbourhood level in Ayr in conjunction with Ayrshire and Arran NHS.In the last two years I have led a small team of new community engagement staff employed through Health and Social Care funding to build up the foundations of community engagement for locality based planning structures in 6 localities. These have been operating since September 2015.I have also worked in partnership with the other 2 Ayrshire local authorities to build up expertise in Participatory Budgeting (PB) to allocate small grants .We have delivered 29 'Decision Day' events in South Ayrshire involving more than 6,200 people and have learned a great deal about what works and what does not. More than 636 community groups and projects have benefitted. But 'You Decide' is about more than grants. The value of bringing communities together under one roof to raise awareness and share ideas cannot be underestimated.This is a way to coproduce and achieve community aspirations.