Ben Andrews

I was born and raised in Salford. Before joining Unlimited Potential, I had has aspirations to enable disabled people to access mainstream health and fitness activity. This came from my own personal interest in health and fitness, as well as my own lived experience of disability, being registered blind.

My role at Unlimited Potential

My role at Unlimited Potential started as a part time Health Trainer. I did this role alongside completing an Exercise and Health Sciences degree at the University of Salford. I later went on to be a Well-being Mentor at Unlimited Potential. This was to pilot an early model of social prescribing with GPs. During my time at University, I built a case aligned with my long-term aspiration to develop a service to support disabled people to be active, to reduce health inequalities and to support integration and cohesion between disabled and non-disabled people. On completing my degree, I submitted this learning to NHS Salford Clinical Commissioning Group to secure pilot funding for my initiative.

Although the initiative showed promise, not being a legal entity, I was unable to secure the funds myself to deliver the work. Instead, Unlimited Potential incubated my project. This enabled me to deliver and develop my initiative, while still an employee of Unlimited Potential, until ready to deliver independently. My ambition was achieved when Beyond Empower CIC became an independent social enterprise.

What most benefitted me from being with Unlimited Potential and what difference it made to me

I had a consistent and experienced mentor for six years at Unlimited Potential. The importance of this, particularly early on a career, cannot be understated. Although in different areas, my mentor has been there and supported the set-up of many projects and services. He had a lot of learning and insight to share, which was helpful to my own development as well as the service and later my own social enterprise.

Incubation took the immediate pressure off – setting up and managing an organisation is difficult and involves spinning lots of different plates at one time. Being incubated meant that I could focus on service development, delivery and sustainability rather than getting bogged down in the likes of governance, finance and ‘HR’ aspects of running an organisation, as these aspects were looked after by Unlimited Potential.

What I have gone on to do/achieve since I left Unlimited Potential

Since leaving Unlimited Potential in 2021, I have gone on to:

• Establish an independent social enterprise, Beyond Empower CIC, maintaining contracts secured during the time at Unlimited Potential, while securing others in different localities such as Tameside and sources such as the National Lottery Community Fund.
• Write a series of children’s picture books around access for disabled people. The first publication was Better Places: Nicky and Candy’s Street.
• Be recognised as one of the most influential disabled people in the UK as part of the Shaw Trust’s Disability Power 100