Liam Toner

Social Care professional and disability researcher

Liam is a disabled person, a social care professional and a disability researcher based in Sheffield. He has spent the last decade working for Sheffield City Council in various roles ranging from Service Manager to Support Planner.

He is driven by the belief that each of us has something powerful to contribute and that we tend to get better outcomes when power is in the hands of citizens and communities to solve the challenges they face. Our current approaches prevent this from happening, something which has been compounded by years of austerity. 

Liam was a 2018/19 Crook Public Service Fellow at the University of Sheffield, through which he coproduced research into relationship based social care practice as well as reimagining what we might want to mean by the term “professional”, through conversations between disabled people and people who work in social care.

Liam’s interests are broad and cover both the practical and theoretical. His current areas of special interest include:

Liam lives in Sheffield with his partner Cassie and their two children Oisín and Thirza. In his spare time he’s learning how to be a cutler and forges his own kitchen knives (being from Sheffield this felt like the only logical hobby to have).

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