Martin originally qualified to teach Secondary Design Technology but his career in teaching began at Tanfield Special School in Wigan. He worked there for ten years in a school for children aged 2-19 years, all of whom experienced Severe Learning Difficulties. He was a class teacher in the nursery and later in the upper school, alongside delivering Design Technology and ICT across the age ranges. Prior to leaving this post Martin had responsibility for investigating and developing communication strategies throughout the school.


Building on this experience Martin joined the newly formed Wigan Behaviour Support Team as a Behaviour Support Teacher working initially with primary schools then increasingly also supporting secondary and special provision. His responsibilities within Wigan included, amongst many other things, the development of and support for Nurture Groups (of which he helped to set up around 30 in a range of primary, secondary and special schools as well as Pupil Referral Units) and the organisation and delivery of "Team-Teach" physical intervention training.


Martin was appointed to the post of National Training Manager for the Nurture Group Network in July 2005, which he "job shared" alongside working within the Wigan BST until August 2008 when he moved to working full-time for the NGN. The main focus of his work became the development of materials and resources for a range of courses to support those involved in the development of Nurture Group practice, including school staff, educational psychologists and other professionals from within childrens services and the voluntary sector. He also instigated the successful "Training the Trainers programme" as well as planning whole school training days and contributing to regional and national conferences.


For the last 4 years Martin been invited to deliver a full days training to trainee educational psychologists at Manchester University, covering topics such as Whole School Behaviour Policy, Physical Intervention and Nurture Groups.


In September 2008 Martin became a governor at Abraham Guest High School in Wigan, taking on the role of SEN Governor in September 2009 and Vice Chair in Late 2009.


Martin has had work published in;
The Special Needs Coordinators File (Using the Boxall Profile), ISBN 1479-2028, (2007)
Beyond the Boxall Profile: Strategies and Resources, The Nurture Group Network (2007)
Nurturing Talk, Education Bradford and the Nurture Group Network (2007)