Hi there!
Thank you for taking the time to visit my website.
As is the story with many youth workers I know, I didn’t choose to be a youth worker, youth work chose me . I had always dreamt of becoming a professional drummer or DJ but the minute I started my first youth work role I knew this was the sector I was meant to work in.
I worked as a frontline youth worker designing and delivering high quality programmes that inspire and informally educate young people from all walks of life for over 20 years before I decided make the move into training and supporting other youth work professionals. I had learnt so much during all those years managing youth clubs and working with young people, and I wanted to be able to share my learning and insight with other professionals and youth organisations.
“Passionate about supporting youth practitioners with their individual and organisational development”
A bit more about me.
I started my youth and community work journey in 2001 and I’ve made it my mission since then to work with as many different groups of young people as possible. Some youth workers choose to specialise, working with specific groups e.g. young offenders or young people with disabilities, however, during my career I have opted to get as much varied experience of youth work as possible; I did this for two reasons, firstly, I wanted to be able to work with anyone, regardless of their age, socio-economic background, gender, race, physical or mental ability, sexuality, cultural beliefs or religion; and secondly, I knew that by working with such a variety of young people on a broad range of topics, in many different youth settings, I would learn the most about how young people see the world they live in and therefore would be best placed to support them and the professionals who work with them.
After years of designing and delivering different types youth work programmes and managing youth projects in London and the West Midlands, I found that I had become a bit of ‘go to person’ for other youth workers that required support or guidance; not just those on student placements, but also professionals who had been in the field a long time. Some just needed a little support with livening up their programmes to boost their numbers, some wanted help with applying for funding as writing bids was not their strong suit and others wanted more detailed guidance on how to restructure the youth teams within their service, and create bespoke targeted programmes for young people.
Whilst supporting fellow youth practitioners I realised that my work experience, coupled with my problem solving skills, meant I would be well-placed as a consultant and trainer. I decided to make the move from full time, frontline youth work to freelance consultancy and training as I felt my impact on young people could be much wider and stronger through supporting and training youth practitioners. In the past five years I have supported a number of organisations with:
Designing and implementing new ways of working with young people
Implementing meaningful youth voice
Restructuring youth/support work teams
Writing / Improving policies such as safeguarding, health and wellbeing, and policies on how to work with specific groups of young people e.g. the LGBTQ+ community
Implementing quality assurance systems and processes
Improving data collection and measuring the impact of youth work delivered which in turn supported the organisations fundraising
Setting up their first youth organisation
Specialist support for those working with LGBTQ+ youth
If you think my skills and experience would be useful and you’d like a chat, please get in touch via email and I'll set up a time to meet up either in person or online.
Blue sky thinking can be difficult to do when an organisation is facing challenges.
And sometimes it helps to have a fresh pair of eyes looking at a problem to gain perspective.
If you are Interested in finding out about how I can support you, get in touch via the contact button below.