Who we are

Hello! This is us.

Purpose

Platform

Yorkshire

London

Purpose

Amber Wright

Chair of Purpose Circle

Amber leads a team of Personal Assistants and has designed digital tools to facilitate person-centred support. Her work with small employers (people with disabilities employing their own staff) is award-winning and she has deep experience in creating support perfectly shaped to fit the person.

Amber chairs our board and facilitates many of our workshops.

Emma Back

Setting up & Product

Emma has worked in social care and community development. Previously trustee for community based charity Stepney City Farm, then working for major mental health charity Richmond Fellowship and advocacy charity VoiceAbility, she offers insight into how support services are designed, developed and commissioned. She saw that power over how services are delivered sits with commissioners and managers. It's rare for people on the front-line to be in charge.

Emma is leading on setting up and developing Equal Care Co-op. She is the Nominated Individual for CQC purposes.

Kate Hammon

People & Service

Kate ran and transformed a small social enterprise (the Feel Good Bakery) working with ex-offenders getting back into work. She has given front-line support in residential care settings. Kate has also had direct experience as a teen carer, being the main carer for her mum for several years before her death in 2007.

Kate is leading on our co-operative care and support services, regulation and recruitment. She is the Yorkshire Registered Manager for CQC.

Helen McFarlane

Secretary, Purpose Circle (Investor) Member

Helen was an Assistant Chief Probation Officer before establishing Trafford Council’s Youth Offending Team and retiring as Director, Safe Strong Communities. She has wide ranging governance, executive and consulting experience supporting public, voluntary, charity and social enterprises in fields including recovery from substance misuse, the Samaritans and health.

Helen has recently joined the Purpose Circle and is supporting our upcoming community share offer and co-operative governance requirements.

Gregor McKellar

Treasurer, Co-opted director & Investor Member

Gregor is an impact driven finance professional who is passionate about building effective mission driven organisations through an approach which incorporates commerce, rigor and ambition. In addition to his role with ECC, Gregor is the Director of Strategic (Finance and Business) Planning with Erskine Hospital. Previously he was Chief Commercial Officer at Angkor Hospital for Children (AHC), joining from Deloitte’s Corporate Finance practice following qualification as a Chartered Accountant within external audit. Gregor was the recipient of The Institute of Chartered Accountants OneYoungCA President’s award in 2018 for his work at AHC and graduated from a Master’s degree in social innovation with the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge during 2020.

Gregor has oversight of our financial and investment strategy.

Lydia Nicholas

Purpose Circle (Investor) Member

Lydia is an anthropologist and technologist working across health and care technology policy. After an early career as a developer she studied medical and digital anthropology at UCL. As a senior researcher in Nesta's Futures team and Health Lab, a programme manager at Doteveryone and as a freelance consultant with the Wellcome Trust, Science Museum and New Scientist, she has led research into technology supported innovation in artificial intelligence for healthcare, public understanding of health data, social movements in health, patient-led research, and innovation in the social care sector.

Platform

Matt Williams

Software Engineer

Matt is our software swiss army knife twice described as "wise". He loves talking to people and understanding their problems. Sometimes they can be solved by writing some software, which he really enjoys.

Matt's career path is a windy one; he's worked at organisations large and small, private and public, digital and physical. Above all, he likes working on things that might make a real difference to people's lives. Equal Care Co-op was a natural fit.

Emma Back

Product

Emma is supporting the platform's development to the Equal Care service model.

Adam McNichol

Platform Lead

Adam is an experienced project director who has worked across both the private and public sectors delivering a hugely diverse range of digital products. His way of working uses progressive ethical business practices, deep industry knowledge and creative thinking to motivate individuals, teams and businesses to deliver their best work. Adam is also the founder of Well Good (a product that helps prevent mental health crisis) and is on the Leeds Digital Festival organising committee.

Adam is leading the project delivery of our platform.

Giles Dring

Platform Technical Advisor

Giles is an independent IT Consultant based in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. He used to work for a large international corporation, and has a wealth of experience in designing and supporting large IT systems, particularly in the public sector. He is director of delivery at ODI Leeds and is also working on projects for the DWP.

He has a passion for local community, and in response to a couple of devastating flooding events in his town, he developed the Hebden Rising website which aimed to support the business community during recovery.

Giles is advising on the technical specification and platform architecture.

Yorkshire

Kate Hammon

Coach

Kate ran and transformed a small social enterprise (the Feel Good Bakery) working with ex-offenders getting back into work. She is an extremely experienced manager and has given front-line support in residential care settings. Kate has also had direct experience as a teen carer, being the main carer for her mum for several years before her death in 2007.

Kate is leading on our co-operative care and support services, regulation and recruitment in Yorkshire. She is to be our Registered Manager for our CQC registration.

Dan Cahill

Learning Circle

Dan worked in social care as a care assistant in ‘virtually every care setting imaginable’ (and maybe a few more!) for fourteen years, dividing his time between Devon and Yorkshire, before relocating to Hebden Bridge where he learned about Equal Care Co-op through a friend and colleague. Dan was one of the first workers to deliver care and support through the platform, having his first introduction and completing his first shift in November 2019.

Dan’s introduction to care saw him working in a psychiatric hospital where he was trained up in the then outdated ‘manual patient lifts’. A bumpy start which led him to develop a passion for helping people to move in the most sensitive and compassionate way possible while also preserving the health of carers who participate in these moves. This is what he currently leads on in his work for Equal Care, both in terms of training and policy, as well as being a founding member of the learning circle.

Matthew Shallow

Finance & Compliance Lead

Matthew worked for Camphill Village Trust for over 20 years as a support worker for adults with special needs, also working in HR and finance. In his role as landcare and estates manager he supported a team of people with very different needs to work together on the land. He experienced how people with care and support needs often support each other whilst working together. He now works as a support worker and DJ.

Matthew leads on our health, safety and wellbeing work, our bookkeeping and due diligence.

Joan Scott

Policy & Recruitment

Joan worked in a Social Services Childrens’ Home in Dewsbury, the Probation Service in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire and, before retiring in 2013, in London for three years at a strategic & policy post. She is an “active grandmother” of her daughters’ five children. She helped her sisters advocate, co-ordinate and give care at home for her father and then her mother who both died at home in 2013 and 2016 respectively.

Joan is writing policies and working on our visual governance project, helping with recruitment and at whatever, whenever, her organising skills are required.

London

Luke Tanner

Circle Founder

Luke is a father of two young children, living in Clapton. Luke has worked in a variety of care roles and social care settings; older people's care; dementia care; residential care, day care, home care, PA work. Luke is the author of the book “Embracing Touch in Dementia Care. A person-centred approach to touch and relationships” and provides training and consultancy to care providers in culture change and relationship-centred care. Having worked with both the best and worst social care providers, Luke recognises the importance of creating cultures of care ourselves; from the people, places and things that make up the communities we belong to.

Florence Nazziwa

Circle Founder

Florence is a third year student at London metropolitan university pursuing a B.Sc. degree in community development and leadership .Florence is a mother of 3 with a wide experience in social care including mother and baby units where she was awarded the employee of the month award in 2016 in her current employment as a senior support worker of young adults with special needs. She has worked with organisations such The Trussell Trust for food banks, Tweeddale children's centre, Aid Health foundation (AHF) and Gillette square regeneration project. Florence has a high passion for Personal Centred Care and believes that everyone who receives care must be treated as an individual and not as a group and this is one of the co-op core values.

Agnieszka Rolkiewicz

Circle Founder

Agnieszka is a mother of two growing up boys and applied theatre practitioner, dedicated to engaging community members by using creative and participatory methods to transform their lives. She has experience of living and working with different communities in various roles from Healthcare Assistant, Housing Officer to a Creative Facilitator.

Marian Fakhrudin

Circle Founder

A third year student of Bsc. Community development and leadership. Originally, marian worked for many years in the private sector. During the pandemic, she decided to return to university for a career change. Her main motivation was to feel she was able to work with communities to make a difference. Her long term goals are to use her current skill set/degree as well as develop her digital skills to eventually bring them together and positively impact on communities from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Douglas Racionzer

Circle Founder

Douglas is a qualified social worker and ethicist working in local communities promoting social entrepreneurship and cooperatives. He is a qualified and experienced training facilitator and assessor. He has run his own businesses and is a recognized social entrepreneur having received an Ashoka fellowship in 2004 for his work in township trading and a Lemmelson fellowship in 2006 for the invention of a display fridge. Douglas' personal imperative is to engage communities to dream and flourish, organizing with them and empowering their lives.