Meet the team.

With 25 years of frontline experience, Joanne has spent her career walking alongside people through life's hardest moments, from crisis and trauma to rebuilding and recovery. She has supported hundreds of individuals and families to overcome some of life's most complex challenges, from addiction and eating disorders to poverty and homelessness. Through her consultancy practice she has helped hundreds of businesses and organisations to start, grow and flourish by working with their leaders to move beyond fear and into confident action.

Joanne believes healthy relationships are everything. The relationship we have with ourselves shapes how we connect with other people, how we lead, how we work together and how we respond when life becomes difficult. Her work helps people build self-awareness, trust, accountability and clear communication, creating the foundations for healthier families, teams, organisations and communities.

Joanne is the founder of Believe Again CIC and the The Business Fairy, bringing together lived experience, professional practice and a deep belief that no one should have to navigate the difficult chapters of life alone.

She is the creator of The Self-Esteem Approach™ (SEA™), YOB- Be Your Own Bestie, Fresh Thinking, RISE, ELEVATE and SWISS (Staff Wellbeing In Safe Spaces), alongside the ASP™ Model of early intervention and prevention, now used by professionals across education, criminal justice, mental health, substances, impulsivity and mental health concerns and domestic abuse services. Joanne originally developed the Age, Stage and Phase framework in 2022 while working at MyCWA, where it was applied in the context of domestic abuse. Since leaving, she has continued to develop and expand the concepts into a broader strategic approach applied across multiple issues, sectors and services, now named the ASP™ Model.

Joanne also writes and delivers workforce development training across NHS, schools, local authorities, youth and community services and criminal justice, including The Self-Esteem Approach™, You're all Loved (Y'AAL), Be Your Own Best Friend (YOB) and SWISS, Staff Wellbeing In Safe Spaces.

Joanne has successfully designed, mobilised and managed complex, multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary partnerships across several local authority areas and some of the most challenging areas of public and community life, including Criminal Justice, Mental Health, Substance Misuse, Poverty Alleviation and Domestic Abuse. Her work includes six Home Office and Police and Crime Commissioner funded perpetrator projects across Cheshire (CARA, Engage, Reset, Bail Support and the Custody Suite project) with budgets exceeding £2 million, and the £900,000 Lottery-funded LIFT whole family project. Originally delivered by Home Start Central Cheshire from 2011 to 2013, LIFT was taken over by the original Be-live CIC (where Joanne was a director) from 2013 to 2015. Joanne served as lead professional co-ordinator before becoming project manager from 2012 to 2015, improving outcomes for families with multiple and complex needs across four local authority areas, with a focus on capacity building and shared learning between the voluntary sector and local authorities at a strategic level.

She currently specialises in strategic partnerships and systems change work, presenting at national conferences to influence policy on early intervention, perpetrator engagement and outcomes for victims and families. Joanne holds a Post Graduate Certificate in Business from Liverpool John Moores University and a Distinction in Business and Management from Edge Hill University.

Her approach is warm, practical and steady, the kind of support she wished had been there when she needed it most.