Specialist Roles

Julian Gaskin

Transitions Manager

Jennifer Neville

Autism Lead

Jenny joined the Future Directions team in 2013, and has a wealth of knowledge and experience of working within Health and Social Care. As Autism Lead, Jenny’s role is to advise, negotiate, advocate and champion the needs of autistic people. She draws on best practice to ensure we provide the best possible support and to enable people to live happy, healthy and meaningful lives. 

Jenny brings her experience, knowledge and passion to her role. She is committed to creating opportunities for people we support to promote their independence and human rights. Jenny loves her job and feels proud to work for such a values-driven organisation. 

Sharron Hunt

Quality Compliance Lead

Sharron is a registered nurse with many years of experience in providing high quality individualise designed personalised support services for people with a learning disability, complex health needs, mental health, autism and those with a forensic history.
Sharron has held the role of Registered Manager for many years and is passionate about ensuring that the support that is provided across all services within Future Directions is of the highest quality, ensures that the individual is at the centre of the process and is always working with teams to ensure that they are striving to improve the services provide and ensure that everyone is living their best life.

Alison Robinson

Quality and Compliance Officer

Alison is a Registered Nurse who has over forty years’ experience supporting people within a Health and Social care setting.

As a Quality & Compliance Officer I ensure Future Directions provides a high quality service for the people we support which is safe, effective and accessible to the person.

It’s important to me the people we support are at the centre of all decisions ensuring they live great lives.

Nakash Ali

Quality & Compliance Officer

Nakash began his journey at Future Directions in Chadderton as a Personal Assistant in March 2021. In September 2022, he transitioned to the Finance team on secondment, officially joining them as a full-time member in December 2022. As of June 2024, Nakash now works in the Quality and Compliance team.

As a Quality and Compliance Officer, Nakash is committed to upholding outstanding care standards for the people we support. He enjoys spending quality time with them and ensures that their needs and preferences are central to every decision made about their lives. For any inquiries, please feel free to contact him at 0161 769 9000.

Michelle Whipp

Quality & Compliance Officer

Michelle has worked within a Quality and Compliance role in both health and social care for over 10 years and joined Future Directions in July 2024.

Promoting improvement and involvement is something that Michelle is passionate about. As a Quality and Compliance Officer Michelle works with managers and staff to ensure that we provide an environment that is safe and that the people we support are at the heart of everything we do. 

Tiffany Lonergan

Quality & Compliance Officer

Tiffany has over 13 years’ experience within the social care sector, Tiffany has been previously registered with Care quality Commission working in a variety of senior roles and achieving outstanding ratings with Care Quality Commission.
Tiffany has a number of qualifications in lots of different subjects and hold a bachelor’s degree.

Tiffany is dedicated and focused to support our established fabulous team to achieve great outcomes providing high quality care and support to each individual we support.  Tiffany’s role includes mentoring, completing detailed themed audits, identifying risk and opportunity areas for improvement to ensure our services meet and exceed regulatory, statutory and organisational standards. You may also find Tiffany on our excellent training induction program teaching “Supporting people to have good health”

Suzanne Ryan

Lead Nurse and Positive Behavioural Support (PBS) and IAPT LeadOfficer

Suzanne has worked in Health and Social care for many years.
She has worked with individuals with a Learning disability, Mental Health, Complex Health, Autism, Acquired Brain injury, and individuals who present behaviours of concern.
She qualified as a Learning Disability Nurse/Social Worker in 2001 and had many roles in Management and Leadership.
Suzanne feels privileged to be part of so many peoples life and being able to support them to live the best lives they choose.
During her time working for Future Directions has developed her clinical skills and therapy work becoming qualified as a Behaviour Therapist, Cognitive Behaviour Therapist, Counsellor and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).
Suzanne is passionate about reducing restrictive practices and leads on the Positive and Proactive Pathway Training which is certified with the RRN network and works closely to co-produce all training with experts by experience. Advocating and embedding a rights based approach.
Suzanne is a Practice Educator and takes the lead on supporting Student Nurses, Social Workers, Occupational Therapist and Health and Social Care students.

Dave Holden

PBS Practitioner

Dave is the PBS Practitioner here at Future Directions. Dave supports individuals with a Learning Disability and/or Autism to improve their quality of life, by reducing challenging behaviours and increasing positive behaviours. I use evidence based, person centred approaches to understand the causes of behaviour and develop individualised strategies that support positive change.

Vicki Palmer

PBS Practitioner

Vicki has 10 years’ experience supporting individuals with learning disabilities. I have qualifications in Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) and Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) and is currently working towards becoming a certified behaviour analyst. 

Vicki’s role as a PBS practitioner is to support individuals to have a good quality of life. This can involve things such as carrying out a functional behavioural assessment to help identify functions of behaviour, teaching new skills to individuals which help to build independence as well as helping to reduce behaviours of concern, and helping to coach staff teams on how to implement different strategies. Vicki is also one of the Positive and Proactive Pathways (PaPP) trainers. 

Paul Lord

Interim Non-Verbal Communication Lead

Paul has well over 40 years’ experience of working in Health and Social Care. During this time he held a number of key support and managerial positions and has – within these posts always aspired to the delivery of services that are centred around people who have used those services. In March 2016 he retired from the Director of Operations position and returned to Future Directions on a part-time basis as the Training and Development Manager, Paul has now moved on to use his expertise in his new role of Interim Non-Verbal Communication Lead.