Professional

I qualified as a social worker in 1977 and technically retired in 2013. During that time I worked with children, families and communities in disadvantaged areas of Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, but mostly Milton Keynes. For nine of those years I was manager of the Moorlands Neighbourhood Centre at Beanhill, Milton Keynes. In large measure Moorlands and the families that used it were the inspiration for what later became National SureStart.

In 2013 I set up the second family drug and alcohol court (FDAC) in England.  I now work part time as a consultant for The Centre For Justice Innovation, helping to establish the FDAC model of non-adversarial family justice throughout the UK.

Research Interest

My contact with the West of Ireland began as a small child in 1957. Since then I have seen massive changes in the social, cultural and religious life of these communities - but still some practices have not changed. In 2019 I concluded a series of interviews in the West of Ireland (Galway, Connemara, Mayo and Achill Island) with local people who voluntarily maintain the tradition of digging graves for deceased members of their community. Recently this has become part of a PhD study looking at the social meanings the gravediggers ascribe to this activity, with the working title: Communal grave digging in the West of Ireland.