I live in St Helens with my wife and son. I am a retired Chartered Civil Engineer and worked in urban regeneration during Merseyside’s Objective One programme. For some years now I have been a great advocate of person-centred care. I have a son with a severe learning disability, autism, epilepsy and type 2 diabetes, and Person-Centred Integrated Health and Social Care (PCC) is essential for someone like him. But not only people like him; anyone with multi- or co-morbidities would benefit from PCC.

I became involved with CLAHRC in December 2017 when I was chosen as a Public Adviser (PA) on a project with NHSE (Cheshire and Merseyside) evaluating ‘GP Forward View’. When the Health Inequalities sub-group was formed I was successful in applying to be a member, and remain so to this day. When ARC took over, I successfully applied to be a member of the Governance Sub Committee, and since then have also been involved in the Strategy Group.

I was also chosen to be a PA on the Liverpool Biomedical Research Centre funding application committee. This is working with researchers from the University of Liverpool, the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and others, including 7 NHS Trusts across the City Region. Unlike ARC, this is biochemical research. Outside of ARC I am a Governor of North West Boroughs Healthcare NHST, a Member of the Cheshire and Merseyside NHSE Transforming Care Strategic Board (for people with a learning disability and/or autism) and their Steering Group for LeDeR (the learning disability mortality review).

My main drive for being involved in health research, or anything to do with health, goes back to when I was a Trustee of Royal Mencap Society (National Mencap). At that time, they ran a campaign called ‘Death by Indifference’. This highlighted that people with a learning disability are an enormous group suffering from massive health inequalities. It was then that I vowed to do my bit to fight health inequalities and improve the life of people who suffer from it. Although I must confess that I am very much still learning – hence the interest in research.

Back to team