Associates

When projects require it, our project teams are enhanced by the expertise of Associate Consultants.

Jane Owens and Mick Conboy have worked as Associates with York Consulting for the last few years. Here they share their views on their work for the company:

I have been working as a York Consulting Associate since 2002, having worked for the company full-time for the previous two years. Before joining York Consulting I had worked for over twenty years in a variety of public and voluntary sector organisations supporting young people. Working as an Associate has enabled me to continue to use this knowledge and expertise within national studies and to keep up-to-date on recent developments in youth support services in particular.

Over the past five years I have worked in a range of teams, each led by different York Consulting consultants. In each case, the project manager has brought her/his team together to ensure that we have all been fully briefed and have the opportunity to ask questions and clarify roles and details. This liaison continues throughout each project and culminates in report writing – this tends to involve writing a report on the geographical area that I have been working in or on a particular theme that I have taken the lead on. For example, an Aimhigher Costings Study included case studies in some of the English regions – my initial focus was Herefordshire & Worcestershire followed by Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole. In each case, I arranged a series of face-to-face consultations with local stakeholders and staff and then analysed their responses to produce a costings report on each area.

I have recently been working as a York Consulting associate on the national evaluation of Targeted Youth Support, and am currently working with Hampshire and Gateshead to identify how they are implementing this work and the impact it is having upon their clients.

I previously worked as a teacher in London before moving to Scotland to work in equalities field. This culminated with over 10 years as a senior manager with the former Commission for Racial Equality where I worked with other equality bodies, public sector agencies and the Scottish Parliament to promote equality and tackle discrimination. In 2004, I became an independent consultant and began to use my knowledge of the public sector and expertise in equality work to assist a series of clients to integrate equality into their services and practice.

For the past three years I have worked on several York Consulting equality-based projects in Scotland, England and Wales for a range of clients – regional development agencies, government departments and voluntary sector organisations. The work has been diverse and included desk based policy reviews, facilitated discussions with community groups in Wales to consultations with Scottish primary school children.

I have recently been working with York Consulting on two Scottish based projects - the development of anti-racist materials to support teachers in the classroom for the Scottish Government’s Education department and for a voluntary sector body – PATH Scotland, a study that looks at how community planning partnerships are addressing race equality.