Meet our Trustees

I joined Choice Support as a Trustee to bring my passion and experience to create opportunities for happiness for the people we support. It’s not enough to provide excellent support: Choice Support aims to go beyond and provide individualised and innovative care.

As a mother of a young adult with complex disabilities who lives in supported living, I understand the barriers and difficulties of finding the right support for a loved one. I have campaigned for over twenty years for families with children with disabilities in my home city of York. Currently, I am involved in a campaign to reopen the city centre to Blue Badge holders. I am dedicated to using my voice to speak for the forgotten and overlooked. I will also campaign to improve the pay and conditions for the undervalued caring workforce.

As well as being a proud mother of three amazing young and neurodiverse adults, I am a BAFTA-winning screenwriter and part-time lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. My proudest achievement was to have been made an honorary member of Summerhill School – the inspirational and ground-breaking school formed by A.S Neill in 1921 and run as a democratic community.

I have been a Trustee at Choice Support since March 2019 and I am humbled and privileged to be in this role. As an information technology professional, I obtained a Master’s degree in information technology, completing a dissertation on information security. I have worked for various organisations, both in the public and private sectors operating at executive level as a chief information officer, providing strategic digital direction and transformation in support of an organisation’s overall strategic objectives.

I am a parent with lived experience, who has a son born with a disability that falls under the learning disability spectrum. I became a Trustee of Choice Support for a number of reasons. The organisation’s values, with specific reference to the people we support, always put people at the forefront of what we do. The services offered and provided to a diverse group of people are some of the best on offer. But most importantly, I have always been passionate about everyone having the right to live a life of their choice, with dignity. I believe being part of Choice Support will provide the opportunity to do so.

I hope to add value and make a difference to ensure a better life for all the people we support by applying both my lived experience and professional expertise.

I have been a Trustee at Choice Support for just over seven years. I want to help Choice Support to fulfil their values and support people to lead the lives that they want and are entitled to. I believe that our innovation and commitment to provide personalised support is fundamental to this.

I’m retired but worked in adult social care for most of my working life in operational, managerial, and commissioning roles, mainly with people with learning disabilities. In that time, I came to realise that professionals in statutory services didn’t really know what the people they supported wanted. People were often placed in inappropriate provision with inadequate support causing harm to people and their families. Discriminatory failings in healthcare of people with learning disabilities are now well documented.

While there has been progress and improvement in the way people are supported and cared for, there is still much room for improvement. Particularly in healthcare, housing, employment, personalised support, personal relationships and improving the pay and conditions of a still largely unrecognised and undervalued workforce.

When not reading papers from Choice Support I enjoy travel, gardening and spending time with my family.

I am delighted to be on the Board of Trustees at Choice Support. I am an engineer by profession and began my career in property development consultancy.

In 2009 I established my own domiciliary care business in South Manchester providing care and support to adults and children. I worked diligently to establish an award-winning service and became a leading care provider in the area. My focus was enabling the people we support to remain independent in their own homes, and I worked to develop innovative solutions to achieve this.

I have three children and in my spare time work with several charities. My proudest accomplishment is travelling to the Syrian refugee camps to raise funds and support displaced families. I also sit as a Magistrate in court and am a member of the BAME group in the Magistrates Association where I will continue to champion diversity, something I am passionate about.

I became a Trustee of Choice Support to give back to the community and use my skills to support and safeguard vulnerable people. I hope that I can add my value to the work they already do and collectively make a lasting difference to the people we support.

I have been the Chair of Trustees - of mcch initially and then of Choice Support following the merger in 2019.

I am a qualified social worker by background and was Director of Adult Social Services for Kent County Council before working on improvement in adult social care at the Local Government Association for six years, until 2017 when I retired.

I have always been interested in how to make sure that people with disabilities have choice and control in their lives, and so it has been a privilege to be involved with Choice Support which lives its values in practical ways, day by day.

With the pandemic and lacking a vision for adult social care set by government, I think the future lies with good not for profit organisations, and so I firmly believe that Choice Support can make an even bigger contribution to improving the lives of the people we support.

I have been a Trustee at Choice Support since 2016. My career has been in the NHS, where I trained as a mental health nurse. I was the Director of Nursing and Modernisation for the Kent and Medway NHS Trust. I also completed an MBA in strategic health service management, and trained in family therapy and coaching. Since my retirement in 2008, I continue to work within the NHS at a national level.

Being a Trustee for Choice Support has been a great pleasure as I believe it is an organisation with the right values, always putting the people we support at the forefront of all we do. The learning disability services provided by Choice Support are some of the best available in the country and I’m proud to be associated with them. Our smaller mental health services are growing fast and demonstrating that they are innovative and able to adapt to the needs of those we provide services for and for our commissioners.

In recent years I have been involved in working with other countries to support the development of high-quality mental health services. I have worked in Cairo in Egypt and Abu Dhabi and I am currently working in Ghana in West Africa. I very much enjoy using my training, experience, and expertise to help influence better mental health care for all.

As a Trustee, I share Choice Support’s commitment to ensuring that everyone has the right to live the life they choose. My commitment to these ideals spans the three strands of my career as a doctor, journalist, and policymaker. I am also currently training in medical law at the Kings’ Inns.

I trained as a physician, and completed a Masters in Translational Medicine, at Trinity College Dublin. Throughout my education, I have conducted research to improve diagnostic practices and therapies for people with neurodevelopmental conditions, autism, ADHD, and other issues relating to mental health. Alongside this, I have been active working in crisis mental health and health rights advocacy on a national and global scale. I was profiled for my work by the New York Times and awarded Woman of the Year from the Lord Mayor of Dublin in 2019.

I have extensive experience as an academic and have been editing scientific journals for the last six years. I’m currently working as trainee editorials editor of the British Journal of Psychiatry and a reviewer of the Journal of Medical Ethics. I also work as a public-facing freelance journalist, for publications such as Irish Tatler and the Sunday Business Post.

I have acted as advisor to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission for my projects such as “All Equal, All Human,” and informed the work of the Oireachtas Joint Commission on disability matters from my professional and lived experience. I am currently part of the READ Advisory group to the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre, making sure clinical research and practice are inclusive of the experiences of the communities I serve and represent.

I was delighted to have been appointed as a Trustee of Choice Support in 2020. I want to help ensure that the people we support receive the support they need to live their lives to the full.

During my career as a qualified accountant, I have worked in professional account practice within local government and more recently for housing associations delivering affordable homes and a professional medical membership charity. I have held senior finance roles for the past 20 years.

I have an interest in making a real and positive difference to people’s lives both in my day job and in a voluntary capacity outside of work. This has included working with young people through scouting and sports coaching as well as the homeless at a local winter shelter.

Outside of work I enjoy a wide range interests including time with my family, cycling, walking and bellringing.