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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.
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Beth Coyne
Beth has twenty years’ professional experience in homelessness, criminal justice, mental health, and improving physical, economic and social outcomes for people experiencing disadvantage. She’s worked in in homelessness charities large and small, developing innovative projects and improving services. More recently Beth has led holistic employment services and homelessness prevention in local authorities, and transformation projects with Integrated Care Boards. Beth has experience in mixed-methods evaluation, strategic development, co-design and ensuring people with lived experience can lead service change and improvement. She’s delivered national projects for government, and has a particular interest in place-based systemic change.
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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.
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Catherine Glew
Cat is a project manager, researcher and policy professional with a decade of experience driving evidence-based change in the homelessness and domestic abuse sectors. Alongside her freelance consultancy work, she also leads on lived experience engagement at a large national domestic abuse charity, working with survivors to change strategy, policy and practice. Before moving into the violence against women and girls sector in 2021, she was Women’s Strategy Manager at St Mungo’s, leading development of the women’s strategy and improving safety and outcomes for women facing homelessness.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
