Sam is currently a freelance consultant for her organisation Enough is Enough Time4Change as well as a Director of a not for profit organisation I’m Out of Here and the organiser of the social media campaign #IAMchallengingbehaviour which promotes challenging the behaviour of people and professionals that prevents people with disabilities having good lives.
Sam is a social justice campaigner and works voluntarily with a number of people, families and groups helping them through the often seemingly impenetrable systems of care in the UK. She has worked with people with learning disabilities and their families for over 25 years as a carer, social worker, a regulator within health and social care, as a provider and a Life Plan facilitator.
Sam is known most widely for facilitating Life Planning which she has been doing, and training others to do for over 10 years now. Life planning enables people and their loved ones to put together the information needed to get them the housing and help they need to have a good life. Sam works extensively with people incarcerated in the specialist hospital system and creates ‘service specifications’ so the right help can be commissioned.
From 2011 until 2014 Sam established with Doreen Kelly, and operationally managed the nationally acclaimed provider Beyond Limits, based in Plymouth. The formation of Beyond Limits was a partnership project with Devon CCG, using Individual Health Funds to plan and then help people with learning disabilities and mental health needs leave specialist hospitals and return to their communities and live in a home of their own.
Sam has also worked on NHS Learning Disability Hospital campus closure projects in Bournemouth and Cornwall over the last ten years; which has led onto consultancy work with health and residential staff and Commissioning teams, training on cultural change in readiness for supporting people moving on from Institutional care.
Sam would describe herself as more of a doer than a thinker and her skills lie in transferring theory and ideology into practical tools that people can use in their work. Sam wrote Citizenship – A Guide for Providers of Support, which was published by the Centre for Welfare Reform, based on the quality assurance work she had been involved with whilst closing Institutions.
Sam is also more of a leader rather than a follower! She is happiest trying to show by example how we should work with, and listen to, the people we support on a day to day basis. She has written chapters in books, facilitated numerous workshops and published numerous articles about her work (follow the links on the right hand side).
Sam lives in Exeter, Devon with her husband and is the extremely proud Mum of a son and daughter and Nana of two Grandsons who all light up her life. She enjoys her garden, likes walking and exploring new places home and abroad and loves sharing time with family and friends. Sam is an optimist and a lover of life and she believes that everyone deserves the best life.
