Christian Beech, President of ERA

Diploma in Social Work (2000) MSc Applied Social Studies (2000)

Christian has worked in social care since the early 90’s culminating in his graduation from Swansea University in 2000 where he gained a Diploma in Social Work and an MSc in Applied Social Studies. Christian worked as a social worker in a variety of community and acute settings, predominantly with older people before moving on to become a Team Manager of a community care adult team. Following a period of time in this role, Christian moved into policy and development and became a strategic commissioning manager for adult community care. In this role he had responsibility for a range of portfolios including the organisational implementation and development of Direct Payments and latterly the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

Christian was seconded to the Centre for Innovative Ageing at Swansea University in 2007 to work on a three-year project funded by two local authorities in Wales aimed at delivering improvements in knowledge-based social work assessment practice, service planning and delivery and the creation of a comprehensive strategy to meet the current and future needs of older people within both areas. It was also in this year that Christian commenced his part-time PhD looking at developing an interdisciplinary understanding of risk between community-based health and social care professionals.

Christian also works with the Older People’s Commissioner for Wales and is presently coordinating Team Wales, which comprises a range of bodies who work with and for older people across local and national government, health, housing, transport, the economy, the voluntary sector and research in Wales. All partners are committed to working to pursue a rights-based and citizenship approach to promote the health, well-being and independence of older people living in Wales.