Bernie has been working in social care for over 35 years, beginning her social work career in Hope Hospital, Salford in 1984, from where she went on to work within a wide range of service areas where she has undertaken a variety of management roles.
In 2016, she took on the role of Director of Social Care and transferred, along with 440 adult social care staff, from Salford City Council into an Integrated Care Organisation hosted by Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust.
In 2018 she moved to Manchester as Director of Adult Social Care in Manchester Local Care Organisation (MLCO), joining them on the exciting journey of integrating health and social care and was appointed to the Executive Director of Adult Social Services in 2019.
Whilst employed by Manchester City Council and a member of the Senior Management Team, she is deployed into the MLCO along with all Adult Social Care staff (circa 1500) and services and is a key member of the Manchester Local Care Organisations Executive Management team. From her experience she believes that integrated care gives us so many opportunities to improve services, design new care pathways and support people closer to home.
Bernie is responsible for the strategic development and operational delivery of Adult Social Care services to the people of Manchester, delivered through the MLCO. She is currently focussed on the delivery of the Better Outcomes, Better Lives programme, Manchester’s ambitious transformation programme for Adult Social Care which builds on significant improvements implemented over the past few years.
Alongside the health and social care integration agenda, her responsibilities also include engaging with wider partners and stakeholders including the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector, housing, the police, and mental health services to develop better ways of working together to support people in need of our services.
Bernie has always had a person-centred, strength-based approach which keeps people at the heart of everything we do. She firmly believes that working collaboratively, thinking differently and importantly valuing, developing and supporting staff, will enable us to support the people we serve to improve their health and wellbeing and achieve better outcomes in their lives.