11
The Team
Murray Davies
Co-founder and director of The Viewpoint Organisation
Murray is the co-founder and joint director of The Viewpoint Organisation.
He is a qualified social worker and worked as a practitioner and manager in child protection and child and adolescent mental health services for many years.
He worked with the predecessor of the General Social Care Council to develop training materials for supervisors in child abuse cases, the Department of Health England to draft Guidelines for Management of Child Sexual Abuse Cases and managed a European Union Project on Local and Regional Cooperation (in Europe) to Protect Children and Young People from Abuse and Neglect.
His research has included Children’s Perceptions of Service Quality for a Master’s Degree at Bradford University.
His publications include as editor and contributor to ‘Empowerment and Participation in Child Protection’, and author of among other articles: ‘Partnership from the Child’s Perspective’, ‘Using Computer Assisted Self Interviewing to Facilitate Consultation and Participation with Vulnerable Young People’ and ‘Improving Participation of Children in Care in Western Australia’.
Murray works with organisations, including with children and young people, in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and North America to implement develop the Viewpoint methodology.
Neil Hopkins
Co-founder and director of The Viewpoint Organisation
Neil is the co-founder and consultant to The Viewpoint Organisation.
He is a qualified social worker and worked as a practitioner and manager in child protection and children and family services for many years.
He has worked with Anderson’s Consulting Group and Sheffield Hallam University focusing on business processes for a National Children's Services charity, in particular how these could be aligned to better capture, understand, and act on the views and experiences of children and young people [Making Connections].
Neil has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Wales, Cardiff, during which time he contributed a chapter to the publication, ‘Children Speak: Children, Trauma and Social Work’, about how young people’s directly expressed views can form the basis of a ‘principles, standards and indicators’ framework for measuring service quality in Children's Services organisations.
He has worked in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre for Quality and Innovation and Library Services to develop early versions of an ACASI (Audio Computer Assisted Self Interviewing) tool for enabling children and young people to feed back their views on service quality.
Alan, Sorcha, Heulwen and Rachel lead specialist teams in administration, learning, software development, research and development.