Dr Caroline Dowson

Senior Consultant

Dr Caroline Dowson has over thirty years’ experience in children’s services within local authorities in both strategic and operational roles. Her expertise ranges from early help services through to safeguarding systems as well as managing an early years special educational needs team. Holding a PhD, Caroline was Vice Principal of an FE college, and has a background in supporting maintained and independent educational institutions to reduce inequalities.

Caroline has deep experience of partnership working across the care sector. She spent five years with the Connexions service improving young people’s levels of participation in education, training, and employment. Prior to joining IPC in 2022, she worked for a safeguarding children partnership. This entailed working with local authorities, the police and health on the implementation and development of new children’s safeguarding arrangements.

Caroline also leads and coordinates IPC’s leadership development programmes and is regularly involved in their delivery. Her consultancy and evaluation work has focused on children’s services, including the rollout of the Healthy Schools Initiative.

Browse Team Profiles

Phil Hornsby

Associate Consultant

Phil is an experienced senior leader specialising in commissioning across adult and children’s social care, housing and community services. He has worked collaboratively with health partners, elected members, providers and communities to deliver services that meet local needs.

Chris Watson

Associate Consultant

Chris has over 24 years’ experience working across the public and voluntary sector in the fields of health and social care, commissioning and community development. He is passionate about self-directed support and finding ways to make commissioning systems more personalised.

Sally Wilcox

Associate Consultant

Sally has over 25 years of professional experience at a senior level, within the adult services sector. She specialised in the housing sector, where she operationally and strategically led on the management and development of housing and services for older people, the homeless and care leavers.

Lynne Bennett

Programme Administrator

Lynne is a member of the Administrative Team based at Oxford Brookes University, working alongside Sasha Carter, to provide administration for the accredited training and development programmes.

John Wilkinson

Visiting Research Fellow

John is a qualified social worker with over 30 years experience including leadership roles in commissioning and organisational transformation. Since joining IPC in 2021 John has worked on projects in both adults and children’s social care focusing particularly on market shaping.

Llinos Edwards

Associate Consultant

Llinos is a highly motivated professional with over 25 years’ experience of working in different roles within Criminal Justice and Health and Social Care, spanning Children’s and Adult Services. She is experienced in strategic commissioning, planning and partnership development and is a fluent Welsh speaker.

Narinder Saggu

Senior Consultant

Narinder has significant operational and strategic experience working in the Public Sector including roles within Social Care, Education and Scrutiny. Prior to joining IPC, Narinder was the Head of Strategic Commissioning at Birmingham Children’s Trust undertaking needs analysis, Sufficiency Planning and developing commissioning intentions for a range of children’s support services.

Amy Johnson

Associate Consultant

Amy is a qualified social worker who has had a range of management experience working in local authority children’s services and the charity sector, varying from youth justice, child sexual exploitation and child protection to managing early help services and commissioning.

Sue Cooper

Associate Consultant

Sue is a qualified and registered social work professional who has a long history in local government and social care. Before joining IPC Sue worked in a variety of roles and most recently as a Statutory Corporate Director of Social Services and Wellbeing for a Welsh local authority.

Sasha Carter

Programme Administrator

Sasha is responsible for providing the comprehensive administration behind our portfolio of accredited training and development programmes. Her role encompasses, for each course, every part of the Oxford Brookes University accreditation process.

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