Andy Hyde

Andy manages a young persons and adults disability social work team for a West Midlands based local authority.

He is a registered social worker and has 20 years experience of working in social care as an expert in all age disability, safeguarding and young people/adults at risk. 

His post qualifying experience includes qualifications in Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, practice education and facilitated learning. 

Andy is deaf and uses British Sign Language. His role in the role of a national advisory forum member is to provide robust feedback from the unique perspective of both a lived and learned experience of social work and inequality. 

He has a current focus on co-production and how this can improve people’s well-being from a service implementation and improvement perspective. He is also a member of Deafblind International; deafblind people and their experience of direct payments were the focus of his final dissertation. He continues to have a particular interest in haptic communication, and proficiently uses this niche to communicate with deafblind people via solely the sense of touch.