Hiring a developer: where to start

Hi,

I’m looking for someone to design me a custom theme for my website. My site is currently an outdated mish-mash of html and a few wordpress installations and I basically need someone who can look at the site I have and work out how best to run it all through wordpress. I’m thinking it will probably need to be a multisite that I will gradually move all the content I currently have over to over a period of months.

I’m happy to pay, obviously, but have already paid out for a web developer who turned out to basically be a con-artist so am hesitant to part with money until I can see what they are actually doing. I was just wondering if anyone could help with where best to find talented, reputable wordpress developers.

Thanks

Oh, the site is here if anyone wants to have a look: http://www.essexmums.org