Consultancy

Karen Patten

Karen has over 30 years in the care and housing support sector. An experienced consultant, in recent years, Karen has focused on policy development and quality monitoring and reviewing homelessness services, rough sleeper services and mental health provision.

Laura Paterson

Laura has over 20 years of experience working within the housing sector with a particular focus and specialism towards housing options, homelessness, rough sleeping, housing policy and housing advice disciplines. Laura has been a Housing Consultant for the last seven years.

Peter Brooks

Peter is a supported housing consultant working with a large number of registered providers, voluntary organisations, government departments and local authorities with the main focus on finance, including budgeting, financial projections, appraisals, accounting, reporting and statistical analysis.

Dr Bert Provan

Bert started work in frontline housing management for third sector agencies and as senior officer in housing management and strategy for several London Local Authority, before becoming a Senior Civil Servant in MHCLG for 14 years. He is also a Senior Policy Fellow at LSE focusing on social housing and regeneration.

Joan Coulton

Joan has worked in the voluntary sector for over 15 years, as a frontline support worker, team leader, and service delivery manager, at a charity supporting women involved in sex work. She also worked as a housing support worker in HMP New Hall. She led the pilot scheme of the first Housing First project in the UK working solely with sex working women. As a consultant she advises organisations how to overcome barriers for women and increase engagement with their services.

Mark Goldup

Mark has 40 plus years experience of working in the housing care and support field, the last 25 years as a freelance consultant. He worked initially for 11 years for Stonham Housing Association at operational and policy levels. His work has involved working in a number of sectors but in recent years most of his experience is in relation to the development of policy and provision to reduce the risk of homelessness and find effective routes out of homelessness.

Dr Sarah Alden

Sarah began her career working for various local authorities as a housing options advisor and providing specialist housing and welfare benefit advice for the Legal Service Commission. She gained a PhD at the University of Sheffield which explored implementation of homelessness policy across UK Local Authorities. Sarah held research posts at the University of Leeds and University of Sheffield prior to becoming an independent consultant.

Steve Coles

Steve Coles has 20 years’ experience within the charitable and social enterprise sectors. Until July 2021, Steve was the CEO of Spitalfields Crypt Trust (SCT), an addictions recovery charity working with people experiencing homelessness. Prior to that, Steve founded Intentionality CIC, a social impact consultancy, working with 600 organisations across the UK. He is an experienced chair, mentor and facilitator.

Tassie Weaver

Tassie has worked in a number of rough sleeping services in London and complex needs services in Yorkshire. More recently, Tassie developed and supported the national MEAM Approach network, focussing on transforming services and systems for people facing multiple disadvantage. Tassie led the network for five years, before moving to freelance work. Tassie has three particular areas of interest and expertise: systems thinking, trauma informed approaches and coproduction.

Phil Saunders

Phil has 30 years of experience in the Supported Housing and Homelessness fields, including work for specialist housing associations, the government’s Rough Sleepers Unit and Homes England (formerly the Homes and Communities Agency). He also brings significant knowledge and experience of the private rented sector, gained working as a senior level consultant for Safeagent, a representative body for lettings and management agents.

Jane Turner

Jane Turner has 25 years' experience in the Community and Voluntary Sector. She is an experienced and engaging trainer and management coach, having worked in a wide range of Operational and Strategic roles including innovative mental health, domestic abuse and homelessness services, supported housing, business development and fundraising. As a consultant, Jane is experienced in change management, service transformation, quality audits, development of service processes, monitoring and evaluation, and support to managers and teams to create empowering and positive workplaces.

Helen Lewis

Helen has worked in the housing and homelessness sector since the early 1990s. She is an expert in rough sleeping and single homelessness issues. Helen has worked extensively in voluntary sector homelessness organisations including Shelter and Thames Reach. Helen has provided consultancy services since 2004 – completing a wide range of projects for central, regional and local government, CCGs, homelessness organisations and housing associations.

Andy Meakin

Andy is an experienced leader and management consultant in the contexts of people experiencing combinations of homelessness, mental ill health, addiction, and offending behaviour. Andy was the Project Director for a large multi-agency project exploring different approaches to tackling multiple needs and helped to establish Expert Citizens CIC. He is also a research fellow at Staffordshire University and Andy co-authored an academic journal article about the care act toolkit that won an emerald literati outstanding paper award in 2019.

Dom Williamson

Dominic has thirty years’ experience working to tackle homelessness. From 2015 to 2021, he was executive director of strategy and policy at St Mungo’s, with responsibility for policy, research, quality, safeguarding, client involvement, and diversity and inclusion. His department also included the CHAIN and Real Systems teams. His previous roles include chief executive at Revolving Doors Agency; director of policy and good practice at Homeless Link; hostel manager at Providence Row; regional manager at Shelter; and specialist adviser at MHCLG.

Lorraine Richardson

Lorraine is a highly skilled and motivated professional with over 30 years’ experience of working in the homelessness sector. Her last role was as a Head of Services for a large homelessness charity based in London which included developing databases to ensure measurement of impact as well as designing quality assurance frameworks. She also has experience of setting up projects which support mental health and substance misuse and has designed services that focus on a strengths-based approach.

Paul Anderson

Paul has worked in homelessness since 1994 after previously being homeless himself. He has held operational roles, from Support Worker to Senior Manager in the voluntary and statutory sectors, including as Head of London and then Policy Manager at Homeless Link. An experienced trainer and researcher, his past projects include benefits training, Rough Sleeping Strategy evaluations, development and analysis of surveys for staff and users of services, reviews of supported housing for local authorities, and individual service audits.

Roger Clark

Roger has worked with people affected by homelessness for 24 years including in senior positions at DePaul UK, The Passage and West London Mission. Roger has undertaken governance service reviews, restructured operations, created a Quality Framework for policies and procedures, written new strategic plans and created new missions, visions and values for organisations. As a consultant, Roger aims to use his experience to help organisations to take stock, be aware of their compliance, deliver good services and strive for excellence in their strategy and operations.

Steve Benson

Steve has had a long career in housing working for local authorities, housing associations and homelessness charities, most recently as chief executive of Two Saints. He's a former President of the Chartered Institute of Housing and has extensive governance experience. He currently chairs the Grand Union Housing Group and previously served as Chair of the Croydon Churches Housing Association Board for six years and on the Homeless Link Board, where he chaired their governance committee.

Delia Águila

Delia has over 10 years of experience providing person-centred support and psychosocial interventions to people experiencing homelessness in London including at Crisis Skylight in Croydon and as part of the first Pan London Housing First Service. Delia’s approach to her work is influenced by NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and NVC (Non-Violence Communication) with a methodical approach based on the principles of participation and co-production. She is very passionate about learning and introducing social innovation and implementing trauma-informed approaches in the homelessness sector.

David Gill

David worked in the substance misuse field for 13 years in a range of frontline, training and strategic management positions. For the last 5 years, he has worked as an independent trainer and consultant and as an associate for Homeless Link. David’s focus is on providing trauma-informed approaches to services using a range of training and consultancy techniques. David has helped implement a trauma-informed approach on behalf of Homeless Link in a variety of organisations, including Forward Leeds, Beacon Leeds, YMCA East Surrey, Two Saints and Trident Reach.

Joe Baldock

Joe is a consultant and coach who loves to look for the gifts in people and organisations – he is skilled at deep listening and loves to host and facilitate spaces that bring people together to find and harness their collective strengths. Joe is especially passionate about people with lived experience of life’s challenges leading the way to coproduce the solutions we really need. Joe previously worked for Justlife and Groundswell and is currently studying with Gabor Maté.

Brian Matthews

Brian has over 35 years of experience in supported housing and homelessness, working for housing associations, the voluntary sector and local authorities. From 2003-2023, Brian worked for LB Camden, initially as a Supporting People Lead Officer and more recently as Head of Housing Commissioning and Partnerships. In these roles, Brian was closely involved in the development of new services and programmes including Pathway hostels, Housing First services, and a three-year Homelessness System Transformation Programme.

Jeremy Swain

Jeremy has been working in the field of homelessness and housing for over 40 years including as CEO of homelessness charity Thames Reach for 19 years. In 2018 he was seconded to MHCLG (now DLUHC) as Deputy Director with responsibility for a range of homelessness programmes. As a consultant, his specialist areas include evaluating services, commissioning, business planning, change management including crisis response and the funding and delivery of complex projects.