I now mainly work in voluntary capacity, mainly locally but also on some national committees.  The rest of this biog was written to support my freelance role.

Adrian Barker is a freelance researcher, writer, thinker and facilitator with a background in local government and health.  He has particular experience of corporate management, strategy, policy, performance, and wellbeing.

As a freelance he has had a range of engagements including developing resources for health and wellbeing boards, exploring the potential for co-operation on engagement between health and wellbeing board partners, contributing to a project on mainstreaming public health across local authorities and supporting an online network on public health development.

He is a board member of the local Healthwatch, chair of a Patient Participation Group (PPG) and chair of a grouping of local PPGs.  He sits on two local multi-agency boards, one on mental health and the other on community engagement.  He works on a voluntary basis for the local acute trust.

He is a public member on the NIHR (National Institute for Health and Care Research) Public Policy Research committee.  He is a public member on the NICE Indicators Advisory Committee.

He was formerly a lay member on the local CCG.  As a board member of the local Healthwatch in a previous incarnation he sat as its representative on the local Health and Wellbeing Board.  He was also the Chair of a local youth counselling charity.  For four years he sat as a public member of the NIHR’s public health research funding committee.

He worked for the LGA and predecessor bodies (LGID, IDeA, LGMB) for 15 years.

His last job with the LGA was as Programme Manager of the Healthy Communities Programme. His role included ensuring the consistency, coherence and synergy of the range of projects within the programme, managing staff and leading on projects (including Wellbing).
He was previously strategy manager with Local Government Improvement and Development (formerly the IDeA) working on strategy and policy development in areas of corporate improvement including the theory and practice of improvement, the new performance framework, performance management and self-regulation.

Previous projects include updating LGID’s guidance on performance management in councils and in partnerships in a project called Managing Local Performance, and helping develop an offer on self-assessment as part of the Local Government Group’s ‘Taking the Lead’ on self-regulation and improvement. In the past, he has managed projects and produced a range of publications, web based materials and CD Roms on areas including wellbeing, co-production, consultation, performance reporting, challenge, and mainstreaming improvement initiatives. He has worked with authorities, individually and collectively, helping them with consultation, challenge, reviews, and performance management. He has also written and spoken widely on topics related to performance and improvement.

He has twelve year’s experience in Local Government working in a district council and London borough at the corporate centre as well as fifteen years working in national organisations. He also worked as an MP’s Research Assistant at the House of Commons.
He was awarded a PhD in 1987 (on the relations between Government and the News Media) and an MBA in 1995.