Andy is an experienced project manager, contract manager, and commissioner in the contexts of people experiencing combinations of homelessness, mental ill health, addiction and offending behaviour.

Through this work Andy has modelled systems of service coordination, personal budgets, embedded welfare benefits and housing rights specialisms, and worked with others to develop a Care Act and Safeguarding toolkit for practitioners working with people experiencing multiple needs.  Andy co-authored an academic journal article about the Care Act Toolkit that won an Emerald Literati Outstanding Paper award in 2019.

Andy was the Project Director for a large multi-agency project exploring different approaches to tackling multiple needs.  He has experience of co-creation and co-production drawing on the expertise of people with lived experience.  Andy helped to establish Expert Citizens CIC, which is a social enterprise managed by and for people with lived experience of multiple needs.

During ten years in local government, Andy worked with third sector partners as a contract manager and commissioner of supported housing services.  He led one of a handful of payment by results pilots in the context of services for people experiencing homelessness.  This involved coproduction with people with lived experience and procurement using the competitive dialogue procedure.  For two years, Andy was a senior manager for supplier relationship management in adult social care.  While in Local Government, Andy represented the authority in person at a Parliamentary Select Committee.

Andy holds a Master’s in Business Administration and a degree in Politics and Environmental Management from Keele University and is also a qualified Prince 2 practitioner.  He has held a number of volunteer and non-executive director positions in supported housing, a social enterprise, and further education.  Andy has been a member of the Hardship Commission in Stoke-on-Trent and commissioned a research project about the lived experience of poverty in the city which was highlighted in parliament during PMQs.  He is also a Research Fellow at Staffordshire University.