Andrew Mackay-Astley

Biography

Andrew has worked for the NHS for over 30 years. The latter 27 years have been as a Registered Nurse in adult general care. During this time Andrew developed an interest in safeguarding issues and worked for a short time as an adult safeguarding support nurse at the local acute NHS Trust.  His experience is predominantly district/community nursing and palliative/hospice care. Due to his work experience he completed a BSc (Hons) in Community Nursing to top up his initial nursing qualification (RN/Dip HE in Nursing).

Andrew has worked as an expert witness, trainer and nurse specialist. Due to his healthcare experiences, he has developed many skills which include advanced communication, learning disability and mental health champion training, a mental health first aider qualification and several teaching/assessing qualifications.

Andrew took a break from Nursing and worked as a Police Constable for 3 years before an injury ended his service and he returned to nursing.  This role gave him many transferable skills including conflict resolution, safe handling individuals deemed a risk, communication skills and triage/organisational skills.

Early in his career Andrew developed an interest in safeguarding law and ethics which were enhanced by completing an MA in Medical Ethics and Law In 2005. Through this learning he wanted to learn more about the law and completed an LLB in 2022, followed by an LLM in Law & Society in 2023.  During both the LLB and the LLM, Andrew specialised in health care law including mental health, disability, and mental capacity. Both dissertations reviewed aspects of adult safeguarding and mental capacity law. During his LLB, Andrew worked as a Research Assistant on two projects within the School of Law. The first was the UK Pandemic Ethics Accelerator (2022) which researched the experiences of individuals with a disability and their experiences during Covid-19. The Second was in 2023 supporting Dr Pritchard-Jones with her article, “Palm Tree Justice”: The Inherent Jurisdiction in Adult Welfare Cases.

Research and scholarship

Andrew is now researching for a PhD in Disability Law which is supported by the ESRC NWSSDTP. The project title is “Supporting love through law: Exploring the ways in which law is used to support intimacy among (cognitively) disabled adults”. 

This research is a collaborative ethnographic project with Telford & Wrekin Council who will be supporting Andrew to gain valuable information about what individuals with a disability want from social care in terms of support to develop/continue a supporting and loving intimate relationship safely. He will also work shadow social care practitioners to understand the day-to-day difficulties front line practitioners face when dealing with issues around sexuality and intimacy.  The project will conclude with a set of resources/toolkits for both practitioners and individuals with disability on the law, safeguarding issues and safe relationships.

This PhD project is kindly supported by the ESRC NWSSDTP (Grant No: ES/Y001796/1).

Wider Research interests: Tort Law (Negligence), Criminal Law, Equality Law, Human Rights, neurodiversity, and all aspects of adult safeguarding law. Andrew is also a keen astronomer and has taken degree modules in astrophysics and is very keen to undertake space law modules.

Further information

Memberships:

Royal College of Nursing (RCN)

Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC)

Sociolegal Studies Association (SLSA)

Supervision

Supervisory Team:

Lead Supervisor: Dr Ezgi Tascioglu

Co-Supervisor: Dr Laura Pritchard-Jones