Don is also a fellow of The Centre for Welfare Reform.

Don set up self direct with the 3 other co founders in Feb 2008. Since then self direct has grown into a nationally recognised social enterprise, working with hundreds of provider organisations across England and Wales and many local authorities and health authorities to change the way services are delivered.

Don has worked directly with a large number of providers, local authorities and health authorities across the UK to support them in putting the concepts of citizenship and personalisation into practice. Don has been directly involved in co designing unique to self direct transformation programmes of training for providers and social and health care practitioner teams and delivering these with colleagues at self direct.

Don is the author and editor of the self direct book Helping providers to change, published by The Centre for Welfare Reform and described as “a book by Self Direct that focuses on the work necessary to help service providers change and to develop more personalised forms of support”. Helping providers to change was reviewed by Dr Simon Duffy, who said “It is packed full of useful information, stories, case studies and statistics. Any of the 27,000 service providers who currently provide social care will find it a useful resource”.

Don has worked closely with local authorities in Wales to introduce Citizen Directed Support, a development based on the principals of Personalisation but unique to Wales. Don was the author of the publication The Critical Path Framework, which was produced in association with The Centre for Welfare Reform and coproduced with input from local authorities in Wales. The Critical Path Framework has been developed to help local authorities plan all the necessary system changes as they move towards creating support systems that people can control for themselves.

Before setting up self direct, Don worked for Mencap for 15 years in various roles. In the last few years with Mencap, Don was Mencap's National Officer for Self-Directed Support, heading up a group of senior managers to oversee a number of pilot projects across England, Wales and Northern Ireland to introduce Self-Directed Support and Personalisation into the work of Mencap and to make Self-Directed Support / Personalisation targets an integral part of Mencap's corporate plans. Don represented Mencap on the Steering Group set up by the government to oversee the Individual Budget Pilots programme during 2006 and 2007.

As Mencap's National Officer for Self-Directed Support, Don was one of the founding members of in Control Cymru in Wales and worked with the steering group that has led to the formation of the Wales Alliance for Citizen Directed Support.

During this time Don was also a member of the original in Control core team working with the directors and reporting to the Chief Executive, Simon Duffy, as in Control's Business Manager and managing special projects.