Care professional of the year award winner: Joanne Mackinnon
Jo Mackinnon is proud and happy to be a ‘voluntary sector professional’. It’s been her forte since reading for a social science degree at Coventry Polytechnic. On graduation she volunteered for a local homeless charity before getting jobs with several homeless schemes, working with ex-offenders and young people. She then joined Orbit Housing as a project worker, became a manager and achieved a master’s degree in housing studies.
By this point she had started to specialise in substance misuse and recovery, and felt strongly that “I’d found my client group”.