I am passionately committed to the delivery of excellent therapeutic services to young people, couples and their families. As an accredited Systemic Family Psychotherapist, I have over 25 years’ of experience working within the mental health service; originally as a mental health nurse and then Systemic Family Psychotherapist, Co-Director of the Systemic Portfolio and now Deputy Director of PGT programmes at the University of Exeter. I am also currently the CEO for the Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice. I worked as Lead Family Therapist at an adolescent in-patient unit for nine years, and for the past 10 years worked at the University of Exeter in close collaboration with my Co-Director, to develop what has become the most prolific systemic training provider in the South West, and possibly the UK.

Education - Here I hold a number of posts; Programme Lead for the agency based Family Intervention for Psychosis Programme, the AFT accredited Systemic Supervision Course and the South West CAMHS Inpatient Training Programme – all of which I designed and delivered. I was systemic convenor for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology for the past eight years and am Academic Lead for the MSc in Psychological Therapies and the Systemic Family Practice Child IAPT programme. I have successfully lead four courses through the AFT accreditation process and have expertise in delivering specialist evidence based treatments, including whole-team training for specialist eating disorder services. I regularly liaise with Health Education England about service design, delivery and commissioning.

Impact - I am a passionate educator, working to extend the broad application of systemic ideas nationally and develop relationships with the international community. I am excited by radical approaches to service delivery and systemic leadership and am currently collaborating with colleagues in the USA, Belgium and Singapore. I am an AFT registered supervisor, regularly present and train nationally, am an Associate Editor for the Journal of Family Therapy and an External Examiner for the University of Leads. I have been Chairperson for the Confederation for Family Therapy Training Institutes for the past five years, and as such have a national profile in the wider family therapy community. Publication areas include the Exeter Model couple therapy for depression, integrative practice, systemic supervision, religion and family therapy, training in psychosis, digital learning and inpatient family therapy. I am interested in the innovative delivery of systemic ideas and most recently featured in The New Psychotherapist, contributed to a BBC 3 documentary about family therapy (2019), an online app about couples therapy (2020) and a UKCP podcast about notions of home (2020).

Research - I use an innovative, creative approach and have co-developed and manualised a model of couple therapy in a research-based couple clinic at Exeter University. This intensive clinical training was developed and rolled out nationally. In 2020 I completed a Doctorate in Clinical Practice, exploring and researching service delivery and notions of ‘home’ within an inpatient context, which supported a successful application with HEE to pilot, evaluate and collaborate with international colleagues on a specialist inpatient training in the South West. As Principle Investigator, I am responsible for co-ordinating the project, which draws on the only manualised, empirically supported family therapy model specifically designed to target family processes associated with adolescent suicide and depression, due for completion in 2023.