Barney Wells
Director, EASL Director of Enabling Assessment Service London (EASL) and mental health social worker, with 30 years experience supporting people who are homeless and who have mental health problems.
About this speaker
Barney Wells is a mental health social worker and Director of Enabling Assessment Service London (EASL). He has worked for projects supporting people who are homeless and who have mental health problems since 1994.
Earlier in his career he spent time in Nigeria and as a St Mungo’s Hostel worker in London. From 1999 to 2013 he worked in Camden and Islington in statutory services, including managing the Focus Homeless Outreach Team. He was an ASW from 2003 and an AMHP after 2007.
In 2012 he founded “Enabling Assessment Service London” (EASL). EASL is a community interest company formed by a group of mental health professionals who provide input, in the form of assessments, advice and training to projects that work with people who are homeless.
EASL’s assessment input is focused on supporting pan London projects which would otherwise struggle to access assessment input from NHS services and in certain areas of London EASL is also commissioned by Local Authorities to provide capacity building input to local homeless services.
EASL has been involved in the development of a number of training and reference resources relating to homelessness and mental health, many of these in collaboration with Homeless Link, Barney is also co-chair of London’s NHS Mental Health and Homelessness Steering Group.