Meet our Trainers
Profiles of Approved Freelance Trainers at Dementia UK
Aubrey Maasdorp
Aubrey has over eighteen years experience of training and facilitation, both in the UK and worldwide. His areas of expertise and experience include leadership, management, personal development, equality and diversity issues. Aubrey has a Certificate in Training and Development.
Aubrey regularly delivers training on topics as diverse as ‘Recruitment and Selection', ‘Managing Sickness and Diversity', ‘Stress and Time Management', ‘Influencing Skills' and ‘Better Self Management'.
Aubrey has contributed to and edited a number of training manuals.
He also delivers training on a range of issues regarding working with people with HIV and their family carers.
Brenda Walker
Brenda (Ben) has worked with older people for nearly 30 years and developed a specialist interest in dementia 15 years ago. Initially she worked as a manager in various home care and residential settings and has been a trainer for the past 12 years. She now works in a freelance capacity for a wide range of public, private and voluntary organisations.
Brenda does a lot of work for Nottingham City where she helped develop the JackDawe Scheme: a specialist home care service for people with dementia. She continues to provide all the training in support of this service. This experience has spawned an interest in the kind of organisational structures, care planning systems and managerial approaches necessary for the delivery of person centred services.
Brenda is a qualified teacher, trainer, social worker and Dementia Care Mapper.
Danuta Lipinska
Danuta has developed services for people with Alzheimer's Disease, their families and the professionals who care for them. She has extensive experience as a trainer, specialising in gerontology and dementia care, bereavement, psychology of groups, teambuilding and group facilitation.
Danuta regularly delivers courses on mental health issues and sexuality in later life and undertakes 'Safeguarding and Protecting Vulnerable Adults' training on behalf of Dementia UK Training.
Danuta now has a freelance training consultancy and private counselling practice and is an international conference speaker and author.
Dave Bell
Dave Bell has had a career in mental health nursing for thirty years, specialising in the care of people with dementia. He has spent five years as an Admiral Nurse, and still works regularly on the Admiral Nursing Direct helpline, and has also worked as a care home manager and a CPN.
Dave has experience of training a wide range of people in dementia care and is currently a freelance trainer with Dementia UK.
Denise Westwood
Denise has over 30 years experience in health, social care and education ranging from specialist nursing to the development and management of services for people with dementia.
For the last eighteen years, seven of them freelance, she has supported the learning of family carers, staff and managers on a multi-agency basis in a training and consultancy role.
Denise has pioneered tools for person-centred planning within the field of dementia care and mental heath services for younger adults. Using her unique approach to training, Denise specialises in the safeguarding of vulnerable adults, dementia awareness and skills based training.
She has lectured and assessed competence on the Registered Managers Award and also worked in Learning Disability Services in partnership with Bradford Dementia group.
Denise is currently involved in learning sets for staff, developing dementia champions and communities of learning practice that create outcomes important to the person with dementia, family and friends.
Fiona Fowler
Fiona has worked in care service provision of older people for over twenty years, twelve of those as an Inspector of Care. In 2006 she became a freelance trainer and consultant offering support and training.
Fiona has held several managerial roles for services with older people and those with dementia. She taught on the HNC in Social Care and worked at the Dementia Services Development at Stirling University.
Fiona is also an accredited Trainer in using Montessori techniques with people with dementia. This area of work is new and Fiona is one of the few people in the UK with this qualification.
Fiona also worked as Consultant to a team that won a BAFTA in 2008 for films as part of the channel 4 Three Minute Wonder series. She has contributed to books and publications on the issues of training and supporting people with dementia.
Hilary Woodhead
Seventeen years ago, whilst studying drama at university, Hilary supported herself by working in a care home for older people with dementia and has worked in dementia care ever since. Her interest in Drama, the arts and dementia came together when working for many years as an activities coordinator. Hilary worked directly with and managed services for people with dementia for 12 years in the private, voluntary and public sectors before moving into service development and training.
Hilary has worked in a specialist dementia development team and has managed training and development - older people's services. She is now a part time Dementia Pioneer at Dementia UK and also works as a freelance trainer and consultant in dementia care. Hilary holds a degree in Drama, a Masters degree in social care, is a qualified Dementia Care Mapper and an accredited Suzy Lamplugh personal safety trainer.
Sylvia Cowleard
As an HR Manager, Sylvia has spent many years managing the interests of employees within various organisations including education, food production and care of older people. As a result, she has developed a keen interest in training and has delivered such diverse courses as management, leadership skills, supervision and building and motivating teams.
Sylvia's passion is dementia care and this has led her to concentrate her skills in the care sector working in the area of care for older people with physical frailties and people with dementia.
Jacky Mortimer
Jacky has been delivering training on Safeguarding for over thirteen years and on a wide range of topics relating to older and disabled people for much longer. A background of over 30 years work in the Health and Social Care field means that there is a deeply practical edge to all the training Jacky devises and delivers.
Much of the training has involved identifying discrimination and Jacky has written a Training Manual for Alzheimer's Society London on delivering cross cultural training. Working with people with Dementia is a passion and Jacky has delivered dozens of courses to Residential Care Home staff looking at ways of communicating with older people.
As a disabled trainer, Jacky is currently involved in work to bring the carer and or service user perspective into the new Personalisation agenda, as well as delivering Safeguarding sessions to service users, with all kinds of disabilities.
Jacky is trained as an NVQ assessor and Dementia Care Mapper.
Mike Phillips
Mike originally trained as an actor/singer and went on to co-found a charity in Wales. He then worked in senior training roles and as a manager in a range of small, medium and large organisations in local government and the charity sector.
Health and social care training has included staff and volunteer-training at HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust; training for Skills for Care; dementia and mental health awareness training and Training Services Manager at Dementia UK prior to becoming a freelance trainer/consultant. Recent projects have included co-facilitating ‘Remembering Yesterday, Caring Today' (a reminiscence project for people with dementia and their carers).
As a member of the senior management team at Directory of Social Change, Mike delivered a portfolio of public and in-house training courses. Areas of expertise included presentation/communication skills, time/stress management, diversity and customer care.
Mike specialises in designing ‘brain-friendly' training programmes using a variety of methods designed to appeal to all learning styles.
A qualified Dementia Care Mapper, Mike is passionate about improving the standard of dementia care.
Kerry Barrowman
Kerry is a qualified occupational therapist and has worked with older people and older people with dementia for over twenty years. She has worked both in the NHS and in the independent sector. Kerry has been a freelance trainer with Dementia UK Training for over ten years.
Kerry works regularly in a residential home for people with learning disabilities, some of whom are developing dementia.
Kerry is also an NVQ Assessor and a Basic Dementia Care Mapper.
Sally Knocker
Sally is part-time Director of Communications for NAPA (the National Association for Providers of Activities for Older People), which she combines with her freelance training and writing practice and has worked for eighteen years with the Alzheimer's Society and, within social services, as a dementia specialist trainer.
Sally is trained as a dramatherapist and is the writer and editor of the Alzheimer's Society Book of Activities. Her interest areas include life story and reminiscence work, meaningful activity planning for individuals and groups, communication skills, and loss and bereavement.
Jane Robinson
Jane's interest in working with older people began while at school, where she became a volunteer befriender to older people living at home. Jane is now a BACP accredited counsellor and has 15 years' experience of working with older people and family carers in a variety of roles.
She has worked as a counsellor for carers of people with dementia and has developed a counselling service for adult carers of people with a range of needs. Jane has run a counsellor training programme and also has a private counselling practice. She is also interested in supervision issues, both for therapists and for staff in other professions.
Jane offers training to groups of carers, social care workers and other professionals. Her areas of special interest include both introductory and advanced levels of training in dementia care, carer-awareness and support, bereavement and loss, and communication skills.
Julia Burton-Jones
Julia has been working in the field of dementia care for 12 years. She worked as Development Officer for the national charity Relatives and Residents Association, training and advising on setting up relative's groups in care homes, before becoming freelance in 2004.
She has worked alongside numerous services for people with dementia to facilitate meetings and involve residents and relatives in processes of consultation often linked with planned changes (such as the building of new care homes).
Julia has delivered training courses such as Involving Relatives and Friends; Communication and Consultation with People with Dementia; Relationships and Emotional Care; Person Centred Approaches to Dementia Care.
Her special interests are the role and needs of family carers and service user involvement. She has written several books on ageing and the needs of carers, the most recent of which - Find the Right Care Home - was co-written with Rosemary Hurtley and published by Age Concern England in 2008.
Mycal Miller
Mycal Miller has been involved in delivering training and the production of training materials, video and multimedia for several years and is delighted to have joined our team of freelance trainers in 2005.
He devised and delivered training while working for Samaritans as London Regional Training Officer and has developed a number of notable awareness and training videos for the Alzheimer's Society, including: 'Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow'; ' Sahara Lo'; 'Remember Me...', 'About my Grandfather, about my Grandmother' and ‘Tomorrow is another day'.
Mycal has experience of working with people with dementia and delivering training to care staff, service providers, family carers and volunteers.
Jude Sweeting
Jude trained as a general nurse and has worked for 10 years in the voluntary sector managing and developing services for family carers.
She currently works as a Development Officer for dementia services in the City of Westminster. Both her parents had dementia so this is a topic close to her heart. She is a qualified Life Coach with a passion to have everyone live a life they love.