Trainer biographies

Jean Gould

has practised as a solicitor for many years specialising in community care, human rights and public law, and is also a qualified teacher. Formerly project solicitor at the Public Law Project, Jean then practiced in Birmingham where she was a founding partner of Public Law Solicitors. She has advised and represented both individuals and organisations in a wide range of community care cases. Jean has been a trainer with Carers UK since 1998. She is currently also an associate tutor at Sussex University and freelance legal consultant. She co-authors the Community Care Legal Updates for Legal Action and is a member of the editorial board of Community Care Law Reports.

Sam Lloyd

is our specialist Social Care Consultant with over three years experience of delivering consultancy to health and social care sector organisations. Sam has extensive experience as a local authority Assistant Director of Adult Services and managed one of the first Carers Support Units. She has helped organisations with managing change, workforce development and performance management. She had responsibility for developing and implementing local policy covering Valuing People, National Service Framework for Older People, Direct Payments and Fairer Charging. She worked with heath colleagues to implement the Single Assessment Process.

Janet Read

is an Associate Professor (Reader) Emeritus in the School of Health and Social Studies at the University of Warwick, and holds a social work qualification. Her publications include, Disability, the Family and Society:

Listening to Mothers and with Luke Clements, Disabled Children & the Law, Disabled People & European Human Rights and Disabled People and the Right to Life. She has extensive experience of teaching on

qualifying and post qualifying programmes for social work practitioners, and of practice, management, training and consultancy in the public and voluntary sectors. She has also been a member of the research teams undertaking a number of projects for the Department of Children, Schools and Families.

Pauline Thompson

is currently a policy adviser at Age Concern and Help the Aged covering Care Finance. She has worked in local authority social work and welfare rights. Pauline is on the editorial board of the LAG Community Care Law Reports. She is a co-writer with Luke Clements of the fourth edition of Community Care and the Law and contributed the chapters on charging.

Simon Unsworth
Simon has worked directly with carers for more than 12 years, originally as a Support Worker and Development Worker with the voluntary sector and more recently as a Strategy Officer for local authorities. Prior to joining Carers UK as our Social Care Trainer, Simon worked as a consultant and trainer specialising in health and social care.  Simon is chair of a local carers’ organisation. Simon’s experiences have helped him to gain expertise in the legislation relevant to carers and the application of this legislation to front-line practice. As an independent consultant, he has carried out service reviews for Blackburn with Darwen Borough Council, Disability Action Carlisle and Eden and the Blackburn Diocese Grassroots Project and has designed and delivered training programmes for Croydon Council, Knowsley Borough Council, Knowsley PCT, Devon PCT, Cumbria County Council, Education Directorate International, The Fatherhood Institute and Lancaster University. In addition to his work with carers, his areas of particular interest are equality and diversity, disability awareness, fatherhood and fathering and good practice in and around community care assessments and Fair Access to Care. He is also an award-nominated published author