My Profile

I am a professional man in my 50’s who was diagnosed HepC+ two and half years ago. I have been married to Carol for 24 years and we have two grown-up sons, Ben and Phil.

Until recently I have actively worked as an independent management and organisational consultant in the not-for-profit and public sectors, working with a number of ‘household name’ charities. I have also been Chief Executive of a national charity, a senior manager for local authority social service departments, including Child Protection Co-ordinator, as well as a ‘troubleshooting’ manager in social service departments.

I have an MA from the Dept of Government at Brunel University, a qualification as a social worker and I trained in organisational development at the Tavistock Clinic. Neither Carol (who is also a qualified social worker) nor I have done direct social work for many years. Carol has gone on to become a complementary therapist.

When I was diagnosed HepC+ I decided to reduces the stress of my previous work life. I qualified as a counsellor therapist and trained in online counselling. I currently work part-time for an EAP (Employee Assistance Programme) doing assessments, arranging counselling for employees and managing cases. I also see a limited number of clients for face to face counselling. And I continue to work on a limited number of independent consultancy projects.

UPDATE:
I wrote the above when I started my blog in 2004.

Since then, I have been through treatment and no longer have Hepatitis C. I left my part-time role as case manager and clinical supervisor for counsellors to return to full time work assignments.

I am once again working as an organisational consultant or “trouble-shooter” usually in ailing or struggling social welfare organisations. Trouble-shooter is my description – formally, my role is to “improve service delivery”.

My experiences of writing a blog and starting an online Forum led me to become very involved in the internet as a support and connection medium. The advent of Web 2.0 social media is incredibly interesting and stimulating. It continues to lead me to thinking how it can be used positively to benefit patients dealing with the impact of illness in their life.

July 2008