Partnership board

Strategic Director, Education & Children's Services, Slough Borough Council

Andrew is Corporate Director, Children & Young People at Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council and co-Chair of the ADCS Children and Families Policy Committee, for whom he is one of the lead directors on Safeguarding issues and resources.

Andrew has been employed in a number of local authority social services posts since 1976, working predominantly with children. He was previously Director of Social Services in Stockport, and Head of Children and Families with Knowsley Council and Cheshire County Council. In 2003/04 he was seconded part-time as an adviser to the DfES to help develop the change programme supporting Every Child Matters and the Children Act. Andrew’s contribution to national policy has included work on reducing delay in legal proceedings, and membership of a number of Government inter-departmental steering groups that produced guidance on safeguarding children and services to children in need. He was a member of the NSPCC working party that published ‘Which of You Did It?’ in 2002 and more recently he was a member of the group chaired by Baroness Kennedy and sponsored by the Royal Colleges of Paediatrics and Pathology which produced a national protocol for the investigation of Sudden Unexpected Deaths in Infancy.

Richard has led on providing and commissioning analysis and research for the Every Child Matters programme, ensuring there is a coherent approach to the collection, analysis and use of data and research evidence.  This has included research and evaluation on early years, parenting, vulnerable children and young people.  He is also a member of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s  advisory committee on poverty and disadvantage and was, until recently, a member of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Training and Development Board.  He has worked as a researcher for the former Manpower Services Commission and the Department of Employment.

Andrew is Director of Hammersmith & Fulham, Children's Trust, he began his career in children’s services, as a residential social worker, after completing a degree in social policy at Manchester University. In the early 80s he was a social worker for children and young people in East Sussex and Australia. He began his management career at a multi-disciplinary family centre in the London Borough of Lewisham in 1984, before gaining his first senior management post as an area manager in West Surrey in 1989.

In 1998, Andrew joined Hammersmith & Fulham as assistant director (community services) and became assistant director (children’s services) in 2000. In October 2003, Andrew was appointed as the director of Hammersmith & Fulham’s Children’s Trust. He was appointed as the Borough’s Director of Children’s Services in January 2006.  He leads for the ADCS on issues relating to children in care; and is a member of the boards of BAAF and research in practice. 

Ann is Programme Director, Adolescent Mental Health, at The Nuffield Foundation in London. She is a Chartered Psychologist with a specific interest in at-risk adolescents, and has worked for many years in applied and social policy research settings. Overall, she has authored or co-authored over 50 articles, chapters and reports on adolescence and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Adolescence.

Tony joined Birmingham LEA as Deputy Chief Education Officer in January 2002 from Derbyshire County Council, where he was acting Deputy Chief Education Officer.
He was previously Derbyshire's Chief Adviser, leading on the Council's strategy for school improvement.

Tony started his career teaching in special and primary schools, including a period teaching in Hong Kong. He has worked in local authorities in special needs, staff development and school improvement services.

He was appointed as the City's Chief Education Officer on the retirement of Professor Tim Brighouse in October 2002.  In December 2003 he was appointed as Birmingham's Strategic Director - Learning and Culture, following the realignment of the City Council's services into five Strategic Directorates. 

In April 2006, Tony took up the position of Strategic Director - Children, Young People and Families, which is Birmingham LA's statutory Director of Children's Services.  In this role he is active in a range of corporate and partnership arrangements, including the developing children's trust arrangements; the city's strategic partnership; locality and neighbourhood working; and leading the City Council response to the Respect Action Plan.

Tony's key priorities and interests focus on:

• a focus on outcomes driving developments in practice;
• innovative approaches to learning;
• the place of the school in the community - and the community in the school;
• multi-agency working to achieve better outcomes for vulnerable children and families;
• the links between outcomes and 'what works';
• building collaborative learning networks at the local level. 

Vaughan joined The Dartington Hall Trust as Chief Executive Officer in February 2004 from McKinsey and Company, the internationally renowned strategic management consultancy.

His first degree, in geography, from Oxford, was followed by an MSc in demography at the London School of Economics. Following a short assignment with Procter & Gamble, Vaughan then spent eleven years in the voluntary sector.

His first role was with independent health charity, the Kings Fund, during which time he was sponsored by his employer to study for an MBA at the London Business School. He then spent six years at Shelter as a Director, a charity which had lost its way, but during his time there he played a key role in returning it to its highly influential position, simultaneously restoring its financial strength.

This was followed by a position as Deputy Chief Executive at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) which again was transformed during his tenure as he was instrumental in re-establishing the Council as a membership based organisation and as a voice for all voluntary organisations. Head-hunted by McKinsey whilst at the NCVO, Vaughan then spent six years advising blue chip corporations on their strategy, marketing and sales, prior to joining The Dartington Hall Trust as CEO.

Peter is Dean of Social Sciences at the University of Sheffield. He is a social worker and Professor of Child and Family Welfare at the University. He spent ten years as a lecturer/social worker in a joint post between the University and a community-based team, and is currently working on practice development in participative social work, focusing on Family Group Conferences, and General Practice in Primary Care. He heads up the resources team for the Higher Education national social work research strategy

Clair, our Strategic Director of Education and Children’s Services, started in Slough in February 2008.   She came from Essex, where she was Deputy Director in the Schools, Children and Families Service, managing children’s social care, youth and youth offending services and the service to support children with special educational needs.  Clair started her career as a social worker, and has worked in children’s services as a practitioner and manager since 1979, first in London, then in Suffolk and Essex.  Clair set up the early years and childcare service in Suffolk, and worked at the DfES in London (now the Department for Schools, Children and Families) for two years, managing regional work to support early years and childcare across the country. She has considerable experience of strategic planning and implementing change, and is looking forward to learning about Slough and working with partners from schools, health and other organisations working with children to further develop the high quality services to children in the borough and build on the strong emphasis on valuing diversity.

Sharon has been Director of the Children and Young People's Service since April 2005 following two years as the Director of Education. 

Sharon first came to Haringey in April 2001 as part of the strategic partnership with Capita.    Previously Sharon was one of Her Majesty's Inspectors (HMI) inspecting schools and local education authorities.  Sharon has many years' experience as an LEA officer: as Principal Inspector in York,  Senior Inspector for Special Educational Needs in Sheffield and Education Advisor in Trafford, Greater Manchester.  All of this was built upon a career in teaching that started over 30 years ago and includes senior management experience in special, primary and secondary schools.

Sarah is professor of public health at Warwick Medical School. She began her career working in hospital paediatrics in London and Bristol. She  trained in public health medicine in Bristol and worked in health service and academic public health posts in Bristol, Worcester and Oxford before settling at Warwick in 2003. She has combined her interests in child health and public health and together with collegaues in paediatrics developed the specialist area of child public health. In Oxford she directed the Health Services Research Unit and it was there that she developed her interest in parenting, identifying the many ways in which family relationships impact on health and wellbeing over the entire life course. This led to research on parenting education and support. because   Her interests also include school health promotion particularly mental health promotion programmes and injury prevention. Recently she has developed an interest in the measurement of mental wellbeing at population level and with colleagues in psychiatry is developing the interdisciplinary field of public mental health . Sarah is Vice Chair of Parenting UK and a foundation trustee of the National Academy of Parenting Practitioners

Sheila has worked at the NFER for over 28 years and has a background that spans both scientific and social science research. She is Assistant Director, member of the Senior Management Team and Head of the Research, Evaluation and Information Department. This consists of nearly 90 staff based in three research units (Slough Research Group, Northern Office at York and Welsh Unit at Swansea) and two major information services (EMIE – the local government information exchange and the International Information Unit which includes the EURYDICE policy information service on education for the EU).

Sheila also has responsibility for the Local Government Association’s education and children’s services research programme at NFER, for overseeing NFER’s children’s services development plan and research projects, for international research and for NFER’s Code of Practice and Ethics Committee. Other corporate roles include working with the Director and other members of the Senior Management Team on overall strategy and management issues and, in particular, on developing new and better links and relationships with clients and partners.

As Chief Executive of Action for Children since January 2005, Clare Tickell has been responsible for one of the UK’s largest and most important charities. Action for Children employs over 6,000 people in nearly 500 projects across the UK and in parts of the Caribbean and Africa, supporting more than 170,000 children, young people and their families.
For more information about Action for Children’s work please go to www.actionforchildren.org.uk.

Throughout her career, Clare has been committed to improving the lives of our most excluded and vulnerable fellow citizens. Her previous role was as chief executive of Stonham Housing Association. She has also held many non-executive and advisory positions in the voluntary and housing sectors, as well as in the Social Exclusion Unit, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Department of Health and the Audit Commission.

Clare is a member of the management board of the Information Commission and the Public Interest General Council of the Office of Public Management.  In July  2007 Clare became a Commissioner for the Howard League’s newly established national Commission on English Prison’s Today. 

Kevin has a strong background in teaching and social work having commenced his career with the Inner London Education Authority. Kevin has a Master of Arts qualification in social work and a Batchelor of Arts in Education. He is a Trustee for the British Agency of Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), on the board of Research in Practice and has spoken at many national conferences.

Celia Atherton - Director, research in practice

'I am a trained social worker and practiced in Birmingham and a number of London boroughs until the early 1980s. I then joined Family Rights Group, a voluntary organisation dedicated to encouraging professionals and families to work more closely together to improve outcomes for their children. Between 1981 and 1996 I held the posts of social work advisor and co-director. In 1996 I moved to Dartington to set up research in practice as its first director. It has grown very considerably since then and I remain committed and enthusiastic about our role in building a strong research knowledge base with all those helping to improve outcomes for children and families.
I was proud to accept an OBE in the 2007 New Year's Honours for RiP's work to improve outcomes for children and families through better use of research evidence'.