Meet Our Associates

Nick Lamprey– Nick has experience as a child care Social worker and in Child and adolescent mental health. In addition , Nick has been a foster carer and has experience of preparing form F assessments. As an independent Social worker Nick has extensive experience in carrying out parenting assessments and working with parents to improve parenting capacity, where children are in need or at risk as a result of concerns around parenting, including domestic violence, volatile relationships, substance misuse and mental health. Nick’s experience enables him to carry out holistic assessments and pieces of work and I have a good track record of engaging with individuals and families who may be resistant to agencies.

Liisa Mancini – Extensive experience of working with Children and Families. Specialising in Complex Risk Assessments within LA Child Care Systems and in the Emergency Duty Context.Wide experience as a trainer/mentor in the public sector and as a training consultant in the private sector developing and delivering tailor-made courses to broad professional audiences. Proven track record of operational management skills including social work teams, multi-agency professional teams and multidisciplinary projects. 1986 CQSW (Ipswich College of Further and Higher Education), 1992 Advanced Certificate in Social Work (University of East Anglia),1995 Approved Social Worker in Mental Health (UEA Consortium), 1997 PQ Award in Social Work (University of East Anglia),  2007 City & Guilds Delivering Training to Adult Learners.

John Henden–  is an international trainer, author, therapist and performance coach. For over 20 years, he worked within UK NHS mental health services firstly as a practitioner, then as a manager, during a time of rapid change. He delivers training courses from a broad portfolio and also provides organisations with personal coaching and mentoring services. John delivers a broad portfolio of 2-day and 3-day intensive solution focused brief therapy (SF) workshops to many and various organisations.  He specialises in delivering these to foster care organisations, enabling foster carers to deal with challenging behaviour in their looked-after children, to avoid placement breakdown and return to residential care.  Foster carers are provided with over 20 effective techniques for their toolbox, on these intensive workshops.Another specialist area is Recovery from Severe Trauma & Stress. As an SF therapist he has worked successfully with many survivors of both adult trauma and childhood abuse & neglect, near-death experiences, rape, road traffic accidents, sudden death and military combat. John teaches how both the basic and advanced SF techniques are applied.

He has written a book on the subject, which has been tailored to the military veteran context: Henden, J. (2011).Beating Combat Stress: 101 Techniques for Recovery. Wiley-Blackwell (Already into its 3^rd printing)

John’s next specialist subject area is Suicide Prevention.  He has a book on this subject, too, which has now gone for its fourth printing. It is currently being translated into Japanese. The title is:  Henden, J. (2008). Preventing Suicide: the Solution Focused Approach.  John Wiley & Sons BA(Hons)  RMN  Dip Couns(Univ of Bristol)  MBACP FRS

Brenda McLackland–  is a Clinical Psychologist who specialises in parenting. She has 25 years’ experience in the NHS working with both parents and children. In addition she has worked for ten years in the Voluntary sector training and supporting Foster Carers and Adoptive parents. Often work with children who have been in the care system is complex, their emotional and psychological development has been disrupted and requires an expert to help.

Brenda has used her experience to develop a simple way of helping based on attachment theory. Her system, called ‘Comfort Zone’ has been featured at national and international conferences. To find out more please visit www.mclackland.com

Helen Holgate -has had a varied career which gives her a wealth of experience to utilise when training. She was a trained nurse who moved on to work as a Sexual Health Counsellor, working in the NHS for many years as a practitioner and service manager. She studied for a Masters in Counselling and Education before undertaking a PhD. Helens research looked at the lived experiences of young parents. Following the birth of their three children Helen and her family made the decision to become a foster family in 2006. Fostering placements have included Parent and Child Assessments, short term work for children with a variety of additional needs and respite care. Helen is a Trustee of the Fostering Network. She is passionate about fostering and has spoken at numerous public events to this end.Helen now works as a counsellor, trainer and fostering consultant. Throughout her career she has developed, delivered and evaluated training to workers from many backgrounds.

Cathy Mayes has extensive experience of working with children, young people and families in a range of both statutory and voluntary settings. Cathy has been a foster carer, and was also responsible for developing a training programme for foster carers, and for delivering some of that training; she has also helped to deliver Skills to Foster training. Cathy, her husband and a cartoonist friend developed and designed anti-bullying leaflets for foster children and re wrote the statement of purpose for children in a child friendly version alongside the Fostering Service Manager. Cathy has worked for Cornwall Council for twenty years, initially as Head of Department for Child Care and Education, CPD and other FE courses. She was also child protection officer for the college. More recently her role has been that of Learning and Development Lead for Early Help, Psychology and Social Care Services at Cornwall Council where her role was to research, develop, source, co-ordinate and review the core curriculum for social workers and other specialist social care practitioners in Cornwall. The core curriculum supports Munro’s principles and the Professional Capability Framework. ‘Cathy is a skilled professional with extensive experience in the local and national sectors which cover work with troubled children and their families. She is high on emotional and cultural intelligence. She facilitates training effectively at all levels including management and leadership’.

MEd (Special Field Early Years), Cert Ed FE, Leadership Award, LDAF award, NNEB.

Sarah Dillon
Therapist and a registered member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists. Child and adult therapist for those with attachment difficulties, complex and developmental trauma.Attachment Consultant for numerous Fostering Agencies. Delivering Therapeutic Parenting training courses to foster carers and social workers throughout the Midlands and North of England.

Panel Member, DDP Practitioner

My background is that of a looked after child. I spent most of my childhood in the care system. Having had 4 foster placements and being in 2 children’s homes, I was finally placed with a carer who through exceptional patience, love and support enabled me to begin to value myself and recover from trauma.

Maria Duah

Maria has extensive experience and knowledge of working with children, young people and families in a variety of settings including the local authority.  Working with the Domestic Violence Intervention Project – Yuva for over 4 years Maria is a specialist in working with adolescent to parent/ carer violence (APCV) and behavioural change and has worked on many cases where young people are in foster care or have been adopted using APCV.

Maria’s qualifications include a degree in Media BA Hons, Professional writing Post Grad Cert, NVQ 3 Youth & Community work, Qualified Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities facilitator, Train the trainer, MA Social work and a level 3 award in education & training.

Maria has written training and group work programmes for Action for Children, Home start, Stonewall Housing and Yuva as well as delivering to training to foster carers and professionals as an independent trainer; Maria’s training is interactive, engaging and incorporates the trainee’s different learning styles and needs.