Consultants

 

Brian Atkins BSc, CQSW, MBA is an experienced social work practitioner and manager and has worked in a range of social care services including children’s services fieldwork, child protection, residential care, leaving care services, family placement and youth offending.

Brian has worked as an independent consultant and director of etc since 1996. His consultancy experience includes service review in a range of settings, including child protection, disability, children looked after, criminal justice partnerships, youth offending, learning disability and research to support the work of Drug Action Teams. He has also led in the development of service user empowerment programmes and in the construction of statutory plans. Most recently he has been involved in work with strategic partnerships and integrated developments in children’s services.

Brian is also an experienced staff safety and managing challenging behaviour consultant, and is particularly interested in developing management approaches to this strategically important area. 

 

Sue Brunton-Reed BA, CQSW has extensive experience as a social care practitioner and children’s services manager. She has worked as an independent trainer and consultant since 1991. Her consultancy experience has included service review across single and multi agency services, performance management, strategic planning, multi agency working, managing change processes, involving service users and team development.  She has facilitated the work of inter agency planning teams and the development of inter agency plans in a number of local authorities.

Sue’s main interest is in developing skills and knowledge to support partnership and multi agency working. Her approach is based on helping to improve effectiveness at all levels in an organisation. She has good interpersonal and presentational skills and is committed to ensuring that any work undertaken has clear objectives, which are understood by all concerned.

 

Graham Sloper, DipSW, is an experienced manager of children’s social work services with a proven track record of implementing change and developing services in response to new legislation and national policy.  He has a strong commitment to the welfare of vulnerable children and a clear vision of the way in which services need to be developed to ensure that children are protected and have positive opportunities to develop and learn.

Graham has knowledge and skill in managing services for looked after children, early years, disabled children, young people in the criminal justice system, youth services; a strong track record of improving performance through a process of analysis and action that directly targets the problem; experience of working as a member of a senior management team, including the implementation of the Children Act 2004 with its requirement to develop integrated services for children.  He also has considerable experience of dealing with staff and managing the HR elements of organisational change

Grahams areas of expertise are in: Looked after children, Early Years, Adoption, Commissioning and procurement, Planning and implementing new legislation, HR and staffing, Disabled children and the Youth Service.

 

Sally Bresnahan NNEB, CQSW, DipSW , CMS  MA Policy, Organisation and Change in Professional Care. Sally has worked as Assistant Director in both Children’s and Adult services in a large English local authority. Since 2004 she has worked independently as project manager and interim head of service in local authority settings. Having had a long career in Social Services she describes herself as both a seasoned professional and a very experienced manager with a particular interest in the management of change. 
The key skills and strengths she has developed during her career are: Leadership, Strategic and Operational Management, Change Management, Budget and Resource Management, Human Resource Management, Performance Management, Quality Assurance, Mentoring and Coaching, Health and Safety Management , Project Management and Negotiation.

 

Dr Ruchira Leisten, BSc, MA, Cert. Ed., PhD has a substantial history of research in the social care and health fields and has worked as a research officer, lecturer and fellow at a number of universities and academic institutions in the UK. She has published research in the areas of diversity and access to social care and health services
She is currently a lecturer in research methods at the Open University and working as a freelance research consultant.

 

Sharon Milo Jones holds an MSc in Occupational Psychology. She has extensive experience of conducting research in occupational psychology within the private sector, public sector and academia. She specialises in the evaluation of organisations and people within them. Her area of expertise is in developing and analysing psychometric tests, surveys and attitude scales and in managing the process of implementing any survey within an organisation.