About
I have over 30 years post qualification experience. I began my career working with young adults before specialising in CAMHS, and, since 2012, therapeutic residential care. My clinical practice draws on attachment theory and developmental trauma research, with additional experience across learning disability, autism, and family and private law.
I have held Clinical Director and Clinical Lead roles including at Oracle, Halliwell Homes, Keys Group and bMindful. I have also co-authored Healing Child Trauma through Restorative Parenting (Robinson & Philpott, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2016), published peer-reviewed papers, and am actively engaged in ongoing research and development work.
I now work only through my own company, Child and Family Psychology Services Ltd. I am currently providing a limited amount of training, supervision, and consultation, alongside writing and publishing.
Insights
Trauma Informed Care Must Be Allowed in the Boardroom
Leadership & Organisational Culture
Stressed leadership results in stressed care. If managers do not feel safe, supported, and have clear direction, neither will the teams they lead.
This is widely understood at the operational level. What's less accepted is how far the connection extends. Owners, investors, and leaders of public sector providers have huge influence over the culture of their organisations. High-level financial and political drivers often critically affect individual caring relationships.
Responsibility is too often obscured by distance and the distilling of personal impact into cumulative charts and numbers. A placement breakdown becomes a line in a monthly report. A broken relationship, an incident in a quarterly return.
Trauma informed care must be allowed in the Boardroom.
The Care Cliff
Residential Care & Practice
Providers who are looking after young people without a clear progress agenda are wasting critically important time. The care cliff, the point at which close support ends, is coming and unless providers are actively working with young people and networks to acquire skills and secure the best possible options, an essential focus is missing. Stability without progress is not enough.
Attachment Classification and Looked-After Children
Clinical Assessment
It is concerning that assessment reports for looked-after children still routinely categorise them according to "attachment style." Contemporary attachment theory has for some considerable time emphasised that attachment is a dynamic, relational and context-dependent process, not a fixed trait or categorical "style". Attachment behaviours vary across relationships and developmental periods, and often reflect expectations of caregiver availability rather than stable internal states.
Attachment classifications, originally derived from the Strange Situation Procedure (Ainsworth), were never designed as diagnostic entities. They were certainly not intended for use in everyday practice in which classification is determined on the basis of carer reports. Children in the care system have a lot of things to process and overcome. A misapplied label shouldn't be one of them.