I manage the Advocacy, Sport and Circles of Protection projects. I am leading an advcoacy project 18 months into a four year contract, which was considerably below it’s statuary output targets. Through redesign, increased awareness and partnership work with the local social services, I have led the team to triple the statuatory advocacy outputs. I have introduced multiple feedback monitoring systems and service user self-assessment systems which better evidences project impact. This evidences our work as a preventative model.Whilst under my leadership, both publically funded Advcaocy and Circles of Protection projects have been awarded an overall ratings of excellent by the LBI funded contracted quality assurance team. I influence Islington’s commissioning teams policy and delivery of health and social care for people with learning disabilities by being an active member of The Whittington Hospital LD steering board, The Islington Partnership’s health, employment, safeguarding and housing sub-groups and feed into the Islington Prevention Providers Forum. I manage the all service budgets and contribute work directly with fundraisers to attract new commissions and expand the projects to meet demand. I spend 40% of my time on community advocacy delivery. I support people with learning disabilities to develop their knowledge, understanding options and make decisions for issues such as welfare benefits, debt, health and housing. I oversaw the design and delivery of an Islington and Haringey CCG’s learning disability accessible Easyread commission following large changes to St Pancras Hospital and community mental health services. The process included service user focus groups, producing two versions to suit learning needs and follow up documentation such as questionnaires. I am responsible for stakeholder engagement for all three projects.I am the adult safeguarding lead for the Elfrida Society.

I took over a Big Lottery funded service that had underperformed against two out of three Big Lottery Outcomes in the first three years. I set up a meeting with our commissioners and local social services to identify health needs, service gaps and renew partnerships. This informed the redesigned project plan and ensured we delivered against our yearly KPI’s. The project caught up on its outputs and successfully delivered against the Big Lottery’s four year KPI targets.The advocacy service evidenced a direct impact on healthcare and knowledge. 150 people with learning disabilities had improved healthcare as a direct result of 1:1 health advocacy and 80 people with learning disabilities reported a better understanding of a particular health issue after attending a group. Groups included partnership working with stakeholders such as Macmillan and Diabetes UK.I managed the design and delivery of Learning Disability awareness training to medical staff across the Camden and Islington NHS trust. We also partnered with Mencap to contribute to the successful Treat Me Well campaign. Our campaign work was aligned with national health campaigns such as Breast Cancer awareness, Mens Health and National Walking month.I developed contact with a wide range of health and community organisations, including GP practices, local hospitals and their Patient Advisory Liaison Service, sexual health and other specialist health clinics and outreach based organisations. I introduced new ways of working into the advocacy toolkit such as Make Every Contact Count (MECC), 5 ways to Well Being and Helen Sandersons person centred thinking tools. I managed the project through an exit plan including the production of an external project evaluation report, redundancy phases and stakeholder engagement. The evaluation report evidenced service user assessed themselves as having increased awareness, understanding, independence and confidence in making a decision about their healthcare.

I mentored 24 nationwide elite athletes with learning disability to challenge perceptions and raise awareness, following the success of the 2012 Paralympics, for the My Sport, My Voice! project. The project provided a platform for athletes to share their experiences and inspire people and organisations to become more accessible.I designed, planned and delivered individualised person centred plans for each athlete. I delivered these through 1:1 development, group training, and evaluation and reflection sessions. Following the developmental work I supported the athletes to attend local community visits to raise their profile and speak about their achievements. These included media opportunities, school visits, workshops, conferences and radio interviews. The finale was each athlete was then supported by me to co-deliver a workshop in their local area attended by local organisations, sports clubs and other stakeholders.As LD project officer and athlete mentor, I designed and implemented two accessible athlete recruitment days held at The Oval London and The Etihad Manchester. I co-delivered all community visits and supported the delivery of all workshops. I worked alongside colleagues to produce the communications toolkit given to all workshop participants. I built strong partnerships with the four main national governing bodies as well as the governing sport bodies such as: The FA, British Swimming and British Athletics. I was responsible for all UKSA’s easy read information. I supported the Communication and marketing team on the website redesign and social media content. I supported the team to audit local business, sport and disability sectors. I played an active role in building and maintaining these relationships. This was vital for workshop and community visit attendance and success. I managed the athlete development budget, and contributed to the quarterly, end of year and evaluation reports. This included individual athlete development reports.

I coordinated the National Autistic Societies London Outreach service which supported 28 clients managing a remote staff team of 30.My team and I worked with clients across the Autism spectrum, some with comorbid diagnoses such as anxiety, low mood, and psychosis. I led on assessments, person centred planning, recruitment of staff and development of client services. The service support included university, voluntary and paid work placements, further education colleges, leisure activities and home support. I introduced a new staff matching process by actively recruiting staff who had shared interests with people we were supporting. The client and the circle of support were heavily involved in the recruitment process. All staff had profiles which the client would use to choose their preferred person. I introduced working with PATH and 5 ways to Wellbeing to the service. These person centred thinking tools led to new opportunities and outcome focuses for both the person and their staff. As my background involved working with people using PECS and Makaton we were able to open new services for people with more complex needs.I organised and chaired annual reviews and client person centred meetings.I was the safeguarding lead for the service and a member of the on-call team. This led to frequent crisis management interventions.I delivered all outreach staff inductions, supervisions and ad-hoc training. I worked with multi-disciplinary teams alongside the clients within their circle of support. These included the client and their social workers/care coordinators, families and guardians, therapies, education providers, housing associations, prospective employees, other charities such as Mencap.

I was the Autism specialist Lecturer at a Further Education college for learners with learning disabilities, complex learning needs, autistic spectrum disorders and physical disabilities.I was responsible for the planning, design and delivery of the developmental life skills curriculum. I collated evidence of achievement against targets to support the learners to achieve foundation learning accreditation The lessons were based around learning independent and daily living skills. The learners practiced these skills in work based placements both inside and outside the college. As their lecturer I guided their learning working alongside a large multi-disciplinary team. I was an Autism and Art specialist lecturer who tutored seven students on the Autism Spectrum. I managed a team of 5/6 staff who work directly with my learners and others who attended my sessions. I completed training in PECS, TEACCH and Makaton which enabled me to effectively communicate with the learners and design and use a variety of visual systems.I produced and co-produced learners person centered plans, risk assessments, behavioral support plans, moving and handling guidelines, literacy and numeracy assessments and annual reports amongst others.