Welcome to the national association of link workers

Wayne is a carer and senior associate with QK Associates where he heads up the health and social care department.

Wayne has worked as a social worker, a HR professional, and as a Senior Policy advisor in local government.

He has over 18 years experience as an NHS non-executive and was Vice-Chair of Newham CCG for 6 years where he was the architect of the BT Sports Industry 2018 Community Programme of the Year award winning Newham Community Prescription.

His unique contribution to improving health care for disadvantaged communities was recognised by his 2015 HSJ Patient Leader Award. He is currently leading the relaunch of the national BME Leadership network for the NHS Confederation.

Wayne has over 30 years’ experience as a social entrepreneur and community organiser. He is a long term associate of the Institute of Race Relations. He has leadership roles in numerous community initiatives including the Immigrants Political Forum (Berlin) Third World Voice (Copenhagen) Newham Monitoring Project Adcris CIC Vision Care for Homeless People, Doctors of the World UK, the Migrants Rights Network, An Viet Housing Association, and ARHAG Housing Association.

Marie Anne is a GP in S Oxhey, Hertfordshire, who says that Social Prescribing is the most transformative initiative she has encountered in 30 years of practice.
Previous experience includes work on Integrated Care, and Board Membership of an NHS Community Services Provider as Medical Director.

She is the Clinical Lead and Ambassador for Social Prescribing for her CCG, STP and Regional Network, also assists the development of Social Prescribing in Ontario, Canada. She speaks and tweets widely on the subject, (@marieannedoc), and has been involved from design, through delivery to development of the Hertfordshire Hospital and Community Navigator Scheme.

Marie Anne is passionate about the role and work of authentic link workers, who coproduce solutions and plans with people, and communities, delivering effective empowerment which would not otherwise have been possible. Ensuring the NHS Long Term Plan link workers within the new Primary Care Networks are positioned and supported to deliver gold standard social prescribing is a priority.

She Is an advocate for sustainable and innovative cross sector partnerships, and created a partnership value creation and evaluation tool as part of her MBA.

Kelly’s journey into social prescribing really started when she joined the GP practice, then known as Sawston Medical Practice 9 years ago, as a receptionist. During her time in this role she helped facilitate community weight loss groups, set up walking groups and became the Carers co-ordinator. She then moved into clinical coding which gave her a real insight into how other aspects as well as medical issues can affect patients.

In early 2018 Granta, now a group of 5 merged Practices and patient population of 44,000, secured funding from our local District and County councils for a social prescribing service to be launched, an opportunity that she jumped at. The service is now 9 months into the initial 2 years funded pilot and with the new NHS plans and GP contracts it looks set to continue. Joining the advisory board has really given her a platform to help shape the way the social prescribing service works and has been an enormous privilege.

Out of work, she is a married mum of two boys and have lots of animals! She is also a qualified dancing for fitness instructor, this has also lead to her to undertaking the Strength and Balance instructor training later this year. She likes to challenge herself doing long distance charity walks.

Roseann joined The Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (The ALLIANCE) in February 2014 as the Community Links Manager with the Links Worker Programme, a highly innovative and unique programme that aims to support people to live well through strengthening links between primary care and community resources.

Roseann has always had a passion for working with people and especially within the field of mental health and qualified as a mental health nurse in the early 90’s. Since then she has worked within different Third Sector organisations in a variety of management roles setting up new and innovative services within a challenging and changing Social Care environment.

With over 20 years’ experience within Third Sector organisations the fresh challenge of this programme and role has given Roseann the opportunity to use her experiences and knowledge and share them with colleagues from different sectors.

Mavis has worked independently, freelancing for almost twenty years across Health, Social Care and Community Services. She has worked extensively within and alongside Local Authority and County Council Social Services in both Children and Adults Social Care Services as Practitioner, Manager and Strategic lead.

Her experience includes social care management and commissioning and social care related project and change management and turn-around work, as well as management investigations related to Conduct, Complaints and Grievances.

Over the last decade her work has focused on engagement and involvement with often ignored communities and disenfranchised individuals, using a grass roots developmental approach to community resilience, social models of care and less popular expressions of well being. Her partnership and collaborative working includes work with private businesses, community investors and voluntary agencies.

Sara works as an integrative psychotherapist and counsellor in private practice as well as being employed by MIND in CAMDEN as a social prescribing link worker for a partnership project with CAMDEN & ISLINGTON NHS FOUNDATION TRUST. Her current social prescribing role is embedded within the Trust’s Mental Health Advice and Assessment Team.

Born in Italy, Sara moved to the UK 20 years ago. She is a passionate believer in social justice and has always been involved in the voluntary community sector, in a paid and non-paid capacity.

Sara has a keen interest in mental health which developed from her work in the voluntary community sector. She is particularly passionate in finding creative ways to empower people to own and tell their story as to bring about a multitude of voices, perspectives and practices.

She has a university degree in Sociology and Anthropology and worked for Oxfam for many years prior to her post-graduate in Psychotherapy.

She is a mum of two children and needs to be outdoors and as much as she can, she spends time toiling the soil in her allotment.

Susie is a Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Research at London South Bank University. Her professional background is in Public Health and Health Promotion and she has particular interests in Community Development, Health Policy and Health Literacy.

Susie began her career in the voluntary sector working around issues of young people and drugs. She then moved into the public sector working within different public health departments, with responsibilities for young people, teenage pregnancy and community development before moving into academia in 2005.

Susie is an experienced qualitative researcher and she leads the Health Promotion Research Group at LSBU. Her current research focusses on health literacy, Public Health workforce development and health promotion intervention evaluation in which she collaborates internationally and with national Public Health bodies. She is the Course Director for the Professional Doctorate at LSBU and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health. She is also an Assessor for the UKPHR Public Health Practitioner Register.

Margaret is an independent consultant working with the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice to support faculty colleagues to move research into practice through learning programmes that spread health care delivery science globally. She previously served as adjunct Lecturer at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Before joining Dartmouth, Margaret was a Senior Audit Partner for more than 30 years at Deloitte where she served as Americas Lead Partner for Emerging Growth Client Services, Managing Partner for Strategy, Innovation, Communication and Marketing for the Audit and Enterprise Risk Consulting groups, and as an elected Member of the Board of Directors.

From 2009, Margaret served as Deloitte’s Chief Learning Officer, leading an organizational transformation with a professional team responsible for developing the technical, professional and leadership learning for more than 14,000 auditors and risk consultants. She played a senior leadership role in the successful launch of Deloitte University.