Graham Jowett
Graham Jowett was a biochemist, but moved out of research and into social work in inner London through his involvement in voluntary youth and community work. After qualifying as a social worker, he worked with people with learning difficulties and in a residential unit for young people with acute mental health problems.
He then taught and managed social care and health studies courses in large urban FE colleges. Before becoming Principal of Treloar College in 1995, he was responsible for a department at Crawley College delivering vocational programmes in health, care, early years, counselling, catering, hotel management, hairdressing and beauty therapy, leisure and tourism and a degree in occupational therapy.
He has been a part-time FE inspector and external examiner, a member of the Hampshire and Isle-of-Wight Learning and Skills Council and is now on the LSC South East Regional Council.
He retired recently from his role of Director of Education for the Treloar Trust, but continues to provide support with oversight of the strategic planning of the Trust’s services for young people with disabilities.
Rachel Morris
Michael Walker
Michael Walker B.A. (Hons), M.A., graduate of Queens University, Belfast brings together the focus of Supported Employment and Social Economy through his unique career experience.
Initially Michael worked for a national recruitment solutions provider placing persons with and without disability in all employment sectors. Through this his interest in the disability sector was spawned. He moved to The Orchardville Society bringing with him both quality processes and experience of the recruitment sector. Michael initially led as the first Job Finder employed by the organisation and as such brought a new approach to employer engagement.
After two years Michael successfully applied for his current post as Manager of the Orchardville Business Centre (Karten CTEC Centre) and has been innovative in both the business direction and skill opportunities offered to people with severe learning disability. Michael’s approach has benefited from his knowledge of Supported Employment and how Social Economy Businesses can offer that very important “first step” into the real work environment.
Michael’s drive and vision have led to Orchardville Business Centre becoming Belfast’s first Social Economy Printing facility. This again will offer people with severe learning disability and/or autism new opportunities for skills development.
Paul Hambling
Paul left school at 16 to join Royal Navy, invalided from the service after six years due to loss of arm in road traffic accident.
Joined Civil Service and worked within the Job Centre service in Portsmouth for 5 years including 2 years as a disablement resettlement officer
Joined print & packaging company in Halifax as production manager rising to Production Director for 10 years
Started and ran own print & packaging company in Leeds for 11 years
Moved south and worked for a further year in print and packaging before joining Enham at the start of 2007 as Commercial Manager.
Promoted to Head of Industries after 5 month sitting on the Executive Board.
Andrew Fellowes
Kate Gascoyne
Rohan Slaughter
Rohan Slaughter is the manager of the Technology Department at Beaumont College in Lancaster. Beaumont is Scope’s National Further Education College catering for young people aged 18-25 with cerebral palsy and other similar conditions. Rohan oversees both mainstream IT staff and ‘technologists’ who work with students to deploy ‘special access’ hardware and software solutions. The College describes the ‘technologists’ as “working at the interface of people and technology”. Rohan is also a qualified teacher and works as part of the College cross disciplinary AAC team which is made up of educationalists, technologists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists who together integrate customised computer access and communication solutions for students with a wide range of disabilities and or learning difficulties.
Beaumont College is nationally recognised by BECTA and JISC as having an ‘exemplar ILT strategy’ and is a member of the Technology Exemplar Network as a ‘participating provider’.
Rohan has worked at Beaumont College for over eight years, the last four years of which as a senior manager and leader of the Technology Department. Rohan holds a joint honors first degree in Anthropology and IT, and has since done a variety of technical courses in both mainstream and specialist areas. Rohan holds a post compulsory PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) and does carry out some teaching and staff training although his primary role is as a service manager. Rohan has taught as an associate tutor on a University of Cumbria foundation degree program in the area of special access information technology.
Rohan is currently working on a number of projects that bridge technology and disability, these include:
The Scope / BT Wheeltop Project – an initiative to integrate and provide customised communication and / or accessible computer systems based on ‘off the shelf’ equipment to both students and the college and at local feeder schools as part of an outreach service. This has recently been extended to a Scope School in the South East of England.
The ‘Mobility Bridge’ project in collaboration with Lancaster University, The University of Central Lancashire, a local SME and other associate partners to develop a novel special access interface and accessible mobile phone software ‘bridge’ to allow persons with dexterity or cognition disablements to use a mobile telephone as independently as possible.
Qualifications
BA (Hons) Anthropology and Informatics University of Wales, Lampeter (1999)
PGCE (Post Compulsory) University of Central Lancashire (2006)
John Sewell
John Sewell is an engineer and teacher who worked in a specialist College for nearly 20 years trying to solve the problems that individual students with disability had with all aspects of their life and increasingly with accessing the digital world. He set up and ran the Karten centre at the National Star College. John now works for TechDis as their Senior Advisor with responsibility for Specialist Colleges, implementing the LSC programme of funding to improve the take-up of technology in Specialist Colleges. He is part of the team trying to improve access for all learners and promoting the importance of accessibility across the whole learning population.
Ceri Hibbert
Ceri’s career started as a Scientific Programmer with ICL in Nairobi, but she then entered teaching and taught Maths and IT in a variety of schools in the UK and Kenya. A move to the Civil Service – HMSO – saw a range of roles from programmer to technical assurance to Quality Manager to Head of Marketing. Following the privatization of HMSO Ceri joined City College Norwich as an IT Lecturer and left to join Treloar College as Assistant Principal in 2000. Ceri left Treloars to join the Karten Network in July 2008.