Consultancy
Our consultants at New Key will be able to help your organisation achieve the best practice possible and help the people you support. We want to change the way people look at disabilities and help people really develop and become part of their community. All our consultants share our dream and vision.
Ben Drew
I have been working in ëSupported Livingí services for over 16 years. I was fortunate enough to first start working for The D.O.V.E. Project, one of the first Learning Disability Services to offer ëSupported Livingí to people with Learning Disabilities. After qualifying as a Learning Disabilities Nurse at Bournemouth University, I moved to Boston, Massachusetts, for three years to manage services for adults with Developmental Disabilities.
In 2003, building on experiences developed in the UK and USA, I established an organisation called ëOptionsí in the UK, as one of the first specialist Supported Living organisations. This service provided high quality, innovative and progressive outcomes to over 100 people.
After ëSelborne Careí acquired ëOptionsí in October 2008, I moved to New York to live permanently with my American wife. I use my dedicated knowledge of individualised housing and support services to enable more organisations to improve and develop their services.
Jenny Carr
Jenny played a key part in setting up, and then went on to manage one of the first large joint health and social care learning disabilities Teams in Devon. She has spent her career promoting the principles of personalisation and was at the forefront of implementing the principles of ‘Valuing People ‘at a ground level.
Jenny has led a team who have been at the forefront of partnership working both with statutory and third sector agencies leading to massive reductions in residential care for people with learning disabilities in their locality and instead people having Tenancies or shared Ownership. This was accompanied by individually designed services to support people in their new homes. She and her Team took the learning from these projects and have developed useful tools and pathways to bring together this knowledge for others to use.
Jenny’s work has given her knowledge and experience across a large range of situations and problematic areas that people working in this sector may encounter. Jenny will be able to share with individuals and organisations what she has learned throughout her career and help them realise that it is possible to empower people and give them better lives.
Margaret Cushen
I am a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with 30 years experience working in NHS services for people with learning disabilities.
I began my career working with children and young people whose sight and hearing had been damaged by Rubella. This sparked my life long interest in Intensive Interaction specifically and more generally, in how carers develop a connection with people whose world is small. This interest has broadened during my years as a psychologist in Community teams in London, Hampshire and Devon, to helping families and staff develop their understanding of a person’s world and how best to enter that world to engage with the person in ways that work for the person.
The quality of all our lives is dependent to a great extent on the relationships we have with others. While I will work directly with people with disabilities on the issues that distress them, I have found that to achieve improvements in people’s quality of life, it is important to work with the significant others in their circle. So providing staff training and support is essential to achieving what the person wants or seems to need and has become an increasingly important part of my work.
My main areas of expertise are in
- Psychometric assessment of people’s strengths and weaknesses and the interpretation of assessments to enable people achieve their optimum functioning.
- Working with people with learning disabilities who are parents, through assessment of skills and competency and developing interventions to help improve their life skills to enable them better care for their children.
- Training staff to carry out functional assessments and develop ways of providing active support to the people with whom they work.
- Helping organisations establish robust ways of supporting staff and preventing burnout.
- Helping organisations develop methods of evaluating the services they provide.
