Facilitators are listed in alphabetic order.
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Lynette is a qualified CIMA accountant working in the third sector for almost 30 years, specialising in charities for the last 20. She has worked for a wide range of charities, but her heart lies with those offering opportunities and support to young people and vulnerable adults.
Lynette’s role in Shared Lives Plus is to manage the £2.5m budget and all of the finance and back office functions, as well as being an active member of the senior team driving change in social care and embedding Shared Lives and Homeshare across the UK.
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Dr Claire Bates is the founder and leader of the National Supported Loving Network (www.supportedloving.org.uk) which highlights the importance of good support around relationships for people with learning disabilities at Choice Support, a support provider organisation she joined in 2002. Claire has worked closely with the Care Quality Commission on their guidance Relationships and Sexuality in Adult Social Care https://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/20190221-Relationships-and-sexuality-in-social-care-PUBLICATION.pdf and their report on Promoting Sexual Safety Through Empowerment https://www.cqc.org.uk/publications/major-report/promoting-sexual-safety-through-empowerment. Supported Loving also produced Skills for Care’s guidance on Supporting Personal Relationships https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/Learning-development/ongoing-learning-and-development/self-care/Supporting-personal-relationships.aspx.
Claire is an active researcher at the Tizard Centre at the University of Kent, her research focuses on sexuality and intimate relationships. Her most recent research was part of the Tizard Centre’s Love Project which explored the experiences and social care needs of adults with learning disabilities in relation to finding partners, forming and maintaining long term relationships https://research.kent.ac.uk/tizard/the-love-project/.
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Phoebe has been at Shared Lives Plus since 2017 and has 14 years’ experience in stakeholder engagement, media relations, change and crisis communications. She started her working life as VP of the student union, representing members on education and health issues, then moving into working in PR and media for both local and national housing associations, progressing to a social marketing PR agency for Department of Health, and delivering charity and public sector social change campaigns, where she also became CIPR qualified. In London, she delivered change management and stakeholder engagement for Scope, the national disability charity organisation, working on communications to promote independent living for the controversial closure of very traditional care homes.
Phoebe brings her strategic thinking, creativity and tenacity to strengthening our relationship with members and raising awareness of Shared Lives, Homeshare and Family by Family, so more people can enjoy them.
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Wendy started her career in special education, moving on to child care specialist, social care parenting assessment practitioner and finally to family support, first as a worker, then a senior and then to manager. Over the years she has been part of many child protection and child in need plans but in her heart firmly believes that early intervention and prevention is far more effective. Family By Family ticks all the boxes and Wendy is loving every minute of her role at Shared Lives Plus. Wendy says, “I am so looking forward to seeing families thriving and not just surviving”.
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John is an AAT qualified accountant with almost 25 years’ experience, mainly in the charity sector, but he has also worked in the retail and not-for-profit sectors. His main passion is working in the charity sector, knowing that his job makes a small contribution to the greater needs of the public, whatever charity he has worked at.
John’s role at Shared Lives Plus includes producing month-end, year-end, and management reports, processing day-to-day information and providing IT cover amongst other tasks. John has also undertaken annual statutory reporting, cost reporting activities and dealing with VAT and Income Tax in his previous roles.
Ian read Economics at university and is an Accountant by profession. He was Finance Director of one of the largest metropolitan councils for 15 years and now has his own business advising on financial management and pension fund management. He consults on projects across the public, private and charity sectors. Ian holds a season ticket at Manchester United, (one of the rare breed who actually hails from Manchester…!) and enjoys being a member of the National Trust. He has supported Shared Lives Plus for over 10 years.
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Steve has been a Shared Lives carer champion since February 2019. Without question, caring is in Steve’s blood and over the last 27 years he has worked in formal nursing and care environments.
Steve has a passion for the caring profession and wants to inspire others to be better, he says that “Being part of a shared lives community is very satisfying and so rewarding, especially when you know you can make a difference. I love nothing more than knowing that I have helped carers in their daily job role and inspire them to be the best they can be, and I hope I always inject a bit of humour in what can be a very difficult vocation.”
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Caroline is the Founding Director of Share and Care Homeshare. Share and Care is a Community Interest Company (CIC) which has been matching and supporting live-in Homeshare arrangements in London and across the UK since 2006. As well as 70% of Share and Care’s Householders living with various forms and levels of dementia, Caroline also has personal experience as her father had Vascular Dementia. This led Caroline to train as a Dementia Friends Champion.
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After initially working in adult care in various hospital wards and theatres and then residential care with adults with Learning Disabilities, Kate moved into social care. She was a foster carer for 15 years and most enjoyed caring for teenagers. During this time Kate completed a degree in social work. Kate has carried out varied roles including supervising social worker, supporting foster carers in caring for foster children, training and development, and direct work with children and young people. Kate is a beekeeper with a couple of hives in her garden and is currently converting a big white van into a campervan which takes up a lot of her weekends.
Kate joined Shared Lives Plus in March 2021 and couldn’t be happier, Kate says “The whole team is so supportive. Being part of a new model of family support at Family by Family is great, developing and delivering a new project is really exciting, and the role of Family Coach is so varied. I’m loving connecting with the families and also networking with other organisations. I’m looking forward to seeing the achievements of the families involved with the project, and to see it role out in other areas”.
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Ben Joined Shared Lives Plus in May 2020 and is part of the Homeshare UK team. He is responsible for helping to build the profile of Homeshare, supporting the UK network of Homeshare providers, removing the barriers preventing people from taking part and developing resources to support the network to deliver Homeshare services. Ben is also responsible for growing the Homeshare sector in the East of England, so that anyone wanting to benefit from Homeshare can participate. Before joining Shared Lives Plus, Ben worked in the public and voluntary sectors with a focus on stakeholder engagement, public consultation and developing volunteering schemes.
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Profile coming soon.
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Alex is CEO of Shared Lives Plus, the UK network for Shared Lives and Homeshare. Members include 6,000 Shared Lives carers who share their homes and family life with people who need support and 175 local organisations.
Alex sits on the NHS Assembly and is Vice Chair of the Think Local, Act Personal board, leading its Building Community Capacity network. He a Social Care Institute for Excellence trustee, an Honorary Senior Fellow, Birmingham University and London South Bank University, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He chaired the government’s review of health and care charities (2015-18) and co-chairs the Social Care Learning disability & Autism Advisory Group. He co-founded the Social Care Innovation Network.
Alex is the author of A new health and care system: escaping the invisible asylum (Policy Press) and Meeting as Equals (RSA/NCVO) on the future of charities. He was awarded an OBE in 2017. Alex blogs here and tweets @alexsharedlives.
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Mark has worked for Shared Lives Plus since 2014 and is currently responsible for the management and delivery of our strategic advice. Before his current role, he was responsible for membership support, advice and guidance to Shared Lives schemes across the UK and was the national lead for Shared Lives with stakeholders including CQC and the Department for Health. He brings a wealth of expertise in Shared Lives, supporting and empowering disabled people, service improvement and development.
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Dawn joined Shared Lives South West five years ago and has been instrumental in building relationships with SLSW families to grow the newsletter, website and social media presence to support the organisation’s marketing, promotional and press opportunities.
Dawn has also been responsible for overhauling SLSW’s carer recruitment marketing strategy and was part of the National Lottery Funded Carer Recruitment Project led by Shared Lives Plus.
Prior to joining SLSW Dawn worked as a senior journalist and sub editor for regional press.
Dawn is passionate about the care model and bringing SLSW family stories to life to promote Shared Lives to the wider network and media.
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Nick has 20 years’ experience in marketing and communications. He has worked for a variety of organisations and sectors, including health, transport and leisure, overseeing marketing and PR campaigns on regional and national level. Nick’s role started as the communications lead for Shared Lives in health, as part of a four-year programme in partnership with NHS England, to demonstrate how Shared Lives can support people with intermediate or long-term health needs. As well as supporting Phoebe and the communications team on a day-to-day level, Nick also now leads the marketing of Shared Lives Plus strategic support services across the UK, as well as delivering communications consultancy projects to expand Shared Lives schemes.
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Ben lives in Scotland with his wife Pamela, and son Wilf. He is a Development Manager for Shared Lives Plus, leading on activity which includes Shared Lives and a new Homeshare development project.
Ben has worked in the social care, and education sectors in Scotland since 1993, including work with young homeless people, people living with mental ill-health, and families living in poverty.
Ben says “I love Shared Lives, I love the humanity of it, the kindness, and the compassion that it brings to people’s lives”
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Helen joined Shared Lives Plus as the Corporate Services Officer in 2020. Helen is responsible for supporting SMT, HR and the externally facing strategic support and communications work. Helen is also the lead for health and safety within Shared Lives Plus. Before joining Shared Lives Plus, Helen spent an impressive 22 years in the Armed Forces (Army) as a Logistics Movements Controller and HR specialist and also has worked with several veteran charities.
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Lynne has been at Shared Lives Plus since 2014 and was appointed to Head of Membership in July 2020, she formerly held the post of Operations Manager. As Head of Membership, she has responsibility for overseeing the support, information and guidance provided to Shared Lives Schemes and Shared Lives carers. Lynne is also responsible for looking at how Shared Lives Plus can develop, maintain and share good practice to raise the quality of Shared Lives across the UK and to ensure that Shared Lives members’ voices feed into and influence everything we do.
Lynne’s background is varied, and she has worked in private and public sector. At Liverpool City Council she had responsibility for implementing cultural and change management programmes; including the refocusing of some customer facing services. Lynne has always been passionate about working directly with people to deliver services to improve and enrich their lives.
Richard trained as a social worker and worked for many years in local government. He was Director of Social Services in St Helens and Executive Director of Adult and Community Services in Lancashire. He has also worked for the Department of Health and was responsible for the inspection of social care services.
Richard has worked in the NHS and in his last role he was an Area Director for NHS England in Lancashire. In 2010/11 Richard was President of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. He now works part time as a consultant with care providers and public sector organisations. Richard is a Trustee at Look Ahead Care and Support and he also chairs a group of social Enterprises in the North West working in the areas of domestic abuse, drug and alcohol dependency and homelessness. Richard lives in Cumbria and enjoys spending time walking and seeing his grown up family.
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Profile coming soon.
Meg is a prolific speaker and campaigner for mental health and passionate about making the health and social care system more personal, from the inside. She works with Shared Lives Plus as an Ambassador and in 2019, she won the Shared Lives Plus award for human rights. Her nomination describes her as “devastatingly authentic… she inspired us to respond not as a service to a user, but as humans to a human.”
After four years in a hospital environment, Meg now lives independently with Flower, her dog, and continues to receive some day support via Shared Lives.
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Pat Lewis has been a qualified accountant for over 4 decades and for more than 10 years she has been at the helm of Intellect Business Services. Pat and her team are specialists in foster carers’ tax, benefits, and National Insurance matters and with over ten years of experience in dealing with thousands of carers of all kinds, there is rarely a question that cannot be answered, or a problem that cannot be solved.
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Cathy has worked in a variety of social care and educational settings, with people with a range of disabilities, over the last 25 years. Before Shared Lives Plus, she was part of the set up and running of an independent Shared Lives Scheme in Suffolk and Norfolk for 8 years.
Cathy now works as part of the membership team in providing support, information and guidance to Shared Lives Schemes across the country. This includes monitoring the Scheme Google Group forum, supporting regional and national meetings and supporting Shared Lives schemes to access and use the My Shared Life outcome tool.
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Ali’s background is primarily in managing services and projects for disabled and socially excluded children and young people. Ali was Shared Lives Plus’ Development Officer for Young People in Transition from 2017-2019 and then led on our Domestic Abuse and Modern-Day Slavery projects. Ali works closely with specialist organisations to develop the Shared Lives model from a trauma- informed perspective and is dedicated to involving survivors and people with lived experience in the designing and implementation of projects and services. She is working closely with partners, such as SafeLives, Hestia, Crisis, Women’s Aid and BAWSO to ensure Shared Lives keeps the needs of survivors at the forefront of developing our model for people with specific support needs.
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Amanda Mills is one of Voiceability’s Team Leaders. Her services cover Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, Staffordshire, and Bolton. Amanda has spent over 30 years helping people find their voice.
Voiceability is an independent charity and one of the UK’s largest providers of advocacy and involvement services. They have been supporting people to be heard in decisions about their health care and wellbeing for almost 40 years. They support around 30,000 people every year and are also influencers in legislative and policy change. They believe that everyone has a right to be heard and respected; have the same choice, control, and freedom as any other person; be safe from violence, discrimination, harm or abuse, and so everything they do is focussed on achieving this.
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Profile coming soon.
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Kathryn has a background in banking and fundraising, she previously worked for Macmillan Cancer Support, developing volunteer and donor networks across Wales. Kathryn joined Shared Lives Plus in January 2018, her current role as Development Manager for Shared Lives and Homeshare involves supporting both individual members and schemes. With funding secured from Welsh Government, Kathryn is looking forward to setting up a new Homeshare Project as well as growing Shared Lives to be a flexible service available for everyone who needs it.
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Profile coming soon.
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Tina has been with Shared Lives Plus since April 2021 and is part of the Homeshare UK team, she is responsible for supporting the development and growth of the Homeshare Sector in Scotland. Tina lives in the north of Scotland and is working with organisations and communities from all over Scotland who are interested in developing a Homeshare service.
Tina’s background is in the voluntary and health sectors, supporting community development, advocacy, and volunteering services
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Celia Osuagwu and Laura Picton are pharmacists in the care quality commission (CQC) medicines optimisation team (MOT). They are also part of the adult social care network (ASCN) – a group of pharmacists at the CQC whose work focuses on adult social care. The MOT continually promotes the fair and consistent regulation of medicines across health and social care, with a focus from the ASCN on medicines optimisation in social care. As we continue to navigate the ongoing pandemic, the focus remains on ensuring that the use of medicines has patient centred care at its core.
Helen has been a shared lives carer for Greenwich Shared Lives for 30 years, caring for 3 gentlemen in her home for 27 of those years. Helen has worked tirelessly to make the gentlemen a part of her family which she says has, at times has been challenging but has given her more joy than she could have ever imagined. Helen joined Shared Lives Plus in February 2019 as a Shared Lives Plus carer champion. Helen has supported many Shared Lives carers from across the UK and says “my time with Shared Lives Plus has been and continues to be a great experience knowing that having a simple “chat” or taking “that call” can help make a true difference to these wonderful people. Long may it continue, and I hope that my 30 years of experience will help and inspire future carers”.
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With a background in finance and community planning, James has spent the last 13 years leading communications, marketing, fundraising and business development functions for both private and third sector social care providers.
James has been with Avalon for 7 years, and in that time has supported the charity to grow its services, increasing income by over £2million. James has developed Avalon’s Shared Lives service through both innovative marketing practice, and internal business process improvements which have enabled more effective and efficient recruitment of carers, as well as a more streamlined referral process for local authority partners.
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Profile coming soon.
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Profile coming soon.
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Lesley joined Shared Lives Plus in 2017 to support the development of Shared Lives across Scotland. She has a professional background in policy and research and a personal interest in care and support, having volunteered for Parkinson’s UK in a number of roles. Lesley has a doctorate from the University of Glasgow and has worked previously for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, the Local Government Improvement Service and the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives. Lesley lives in Dumfries with her family.
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Profile coming soon.
I stay with my Shared Lives family in Kilmarnock with Andrea, who is my carer, Kirsty, Layla, Spencer, Mitchel and Maddie who are all part of the family.
They are a loving and caring family and there is never a dull moment in the house. Living with my family has changed my life in so many ways for the better. I wouldn’t change it for the world – we have been on holidays together, fulfilling my dream of going to Disney World in Florida.
I have been a Shared Lives ambassador for the past 18 months and I also work at the New Beginnings café. Shared Lives is very important because they match you with a family that care, trust and give you support, but also allow you to follow your dreams no matter how big or small. Shared Lives changes lives for the better.
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Eilidh joined BIHR in March 2019 after six months as a project assistant in European Council on Refugees and Exiles. Prior to this she completed legal research internships at the Council of Europe and the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute. Eilidh also has a background in asylum support casework. She holds a LLB, a LLM in Human Rights and Migration Law and a Diploma in Professional Legal Practice.
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Nicola has been a support worker with Aberdeenshire Council’s Shared Lives Scheme since 2013 and has been involved in the scheme being declared a winner at the Scottish Social Services Awards in 2019 for the ‘An Enlightened Approach’ category. https://www.sssa.scot/2019-winners
Prior to joining Aberdeenshire Council Nicola worked for 5 years in a respite service for people with learning disabilities and has a degree in Education.
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Wendy has been a support worker for the past 3 years with Aberdeenshire Shared Lives, which provides for people with a disability. Wendy previously worked within the third sector, managing and providing residential respite care for adults or children with learning and associated physical disabilities. Before that she worked in banking. Wendy is of the opinion she has the most rewarding job, and she enjoys supporting the Shared Lives carers. Having the opportunity to build relationships with individuals and their families makes the role unique, for which Wendy feels privileged. When she’s not too busy with work she enjoys walking, swimming and spending time with family and friends.
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Jayne started her career as a community development worker in Knowsley, which included supporting the local community to run a regeneration partnership. She then moved to the third sector where she has worked for the past twenty years. Jayne’s roles have principally been leading operational youth work teams and forming partnerships to secure the outcomes needed for young people to reach their potential, as well as fundraising to support the work.
In her last role Jayne was CEO of a charity which supported young people with learning disabilities where she realised the difference a Shared Lives home could make to people.
Jayne joined Shared Lives Plus in 2020 co-ordinating the expansion project, and is now director of development, leading the organisation to diversify and increase income, as well as supporting the membership, communication, strategic advice, Homeshare and Family by Family teams.
