PARENT-INFANT FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- TREASURER
- Senior Finance Advisor at Shell
Bio
Amanda is a Senior Finance Advisor at Shell with over ten years of experience in corporate treasury. She is a chartered accountant with broad experience at several large multinational corporations in the areas of treasury operations and strategy, IFRS implementation, projects and pension fund management. In her free time Amanda enjoys travelling to new places and spending time outdoors - whether the countryside or the coast. Amanda is a mum to two young children and is passionate about improving mental health awareness and support for babies and their caregivers in the early years.
Bio
Ben is an experienced campaigns, communications and marketing professional determined to make the world a better place.
He was awarded the prestigious Marshall Memorial Fellowship in 2017
Outside of work, Ben can be found walking, on his local community farm, on walks or wild camping, or watching Sheffield Wednesday.
Bio
Ben has worked in specialised parent infant relationship and under fives teams in the NHS for the last ten years. He is a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist (registered with the Association of Child Psychotherapists) who delivers interventions, and supervises practitioners, across different treatment modalities including Parent Infant Psychotherapy, Circle of Security Parenting and other group interventions. He has devised and delivered training for early years practitioners about infant mental health and parent infant relationships.
Previously, Ben held a senior position at the Children's Commissioner for England and was Family Engagement Manager in Tower Hamlets.
Ben is currently writing up his doctoral research about fathers and their young children's play. He has contributed to books and publications on infant and child mental health, and has won the Louise Emanuel Essay Prize for Infant Mental Health.
Job Titles:
- TRUSTEE
- Solicitor and Former Partner at Allen & Overy LLP
Bio
Claire Wright is a solicitor and former partner at Allen & Overy LLP. She qualified into the corporate department there in 1987 and specialised in corporate and commercial transactions, particularly in the financial services sector. She advised on various commercial transactions and arrangements including acquisitions, joint ventures, strategic investments, IP licensing agreements and complex services arrangements. She was also responsible for graduate recruitment and was involved in numerous diversity and inclusion initiatives at Allen & Overy.
Job Titles:
- Clinical Psychologist
- Consultant
- Wales Development Lead
Bio
Liz is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with over 30 years experience in the NHS, predominantly in Wales as Joint Head of Child Psychology for ABUHB (Aneurin Bevan University Health Board). Broadening the children's mental health agenda to include babies, children, young people, parents, carers, wider families, communities and the professionals who work with them has been Liz's passion throughout her career.
Clinically Liz has worked in a variety of settings including Specialist CAMHS, Paediatrics, Neonates and more latterly the Gwent Parent Infant Mental Health Service.
Liz led the development of the Nyth/Nest Framework on behalf of Welsh Government. It is a planning tool for Regional Partnership Boards, co-produced by young people, parents, carers and professionals from across all agencies.
Outside of work Liz is a mum to two grown-up children and still has a dog and husband at home. She loves running, yoga, singing in a choir and being outside in the beautiful Welsh countryside.
Job Titles:
- Clinical Psychologist
- Consultant
- VICE CHAIR
Bio
Nicola Cosgrave is Consultant Clinical Psychologist in the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Clinical Director of the NSPCC's Infant Family Team.
Nicola completed her training in clinical psychology in 1996 at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) Kings College London, and retains a position as a visiting teacher on their doctoral course in clinical psychology. Since qualifying, Nicola has spent most of her career working in national and specialist children's mental health services at the Maudsley Hospital.
Nicola is passionate about improving the mental health outcomes for all children but with a particular emphasis on early prevention and intervention for the under-fives. She wants to promote the evidence base with relevant stakeholders to increase awareness of the needs of this population, and to increase the availability of appropriate interventions.
Nicola's clinical and research interests are in the area of child maltreatment and complex trauma; she just finished a three-year fellowship with NICE focusing on the mental health of the under-fives. Nicola's current role is lead of the clinical team delivering the New Orleans Intervention Model - a wrap-around assessment and intervention for maltreated infants, which is being evaluated as part of a large randomised control trial.
Nicola is also a Mum to two teenage boys, and has recently added a very lively cocker spaniel to the brood!
Job Titles:
- Communications and Marketing Manager
Bio
Emma is an experienced communications and marketing professional with a passion for trying to help make real change. As a mum of three young children, babies' needs have been very high on her agenda in recent years so she is excited to be part of the Parent-Infant Foundation journey to help babies get the best possible start. After a number of placements for consumer PR agencies, Emma's first ever ‘proper' communications job was for a charity, Business in the Community. From here she worked at PR agencies specialising in work for charities and public sector, before moving in-house to local government corporate communications teams at London Borough of Merton and London Fire Brigade.
Emma works part-time and outside of work she can be found entertaining her children, occasionally playing netball and often walking in Richmond Park.
Job Titles:
- NETWORK and EVENTS MANAGER
Bio
Gemma has worked in the third sector for over twelve years, with a wealth of experience in Event Management and Fundraising at both large, national health charities and smaller children's disability charities. As a Mum to two young children, Gemma is particularly passionate about causes that support the wellbeing of babies and their parents.
Bio
Jane Turner is a psychoanalytic child and adolescent psychotherapist (Northern School of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy) and psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapist (Anna Freud Centre).
Jane made the decision to specialise in parent-infant work as a result of conversations over many years with parents who bravely shared with her their painful early relational experiences with their children as babies and who were continuing to struggle many years later. This highlighted the lack of the right sort of help at a time when families most needed it.
Jane is passionate about supporting the development of parent-infant services and psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy in the North of England. She currently works in a parent-infant service in the North West Boroughs Healthcare Trust, for Impact North in Leeds, and in private practice.
Jane has taught on the psychoanalytic 10-week infant mental health course at the Northern School for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy in Leeds and with NEWPIP in Newcastle. She also offers psychoanalytic consultation to perinatal services.
Job Titles:
- OFFICE and FINANCE MANAGER
Bio
Jason is an experienced finance, accounting, and administrative professional with over a decade of experience in the third sector. He began his career as part of the finance and audit team at a large and diverse community organisation in Toronto, Canada, before making the move to London, UK in 2015. Since then, he has worked for a number of organisations centred around children, education and research.
Jason joined the Parent-Infant Foundation due to a growing interest in early childhood development - how parent-child relationships, family setting and economic resources affect a child's mental and physical well-being, and how this impacts that child's life going forward.
Outside of work, Jason can be found out and about in the Wimbledon and SW London, at the cinema, or attending concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.
Bio
Keith brings a vast amount of experience and expertise in helping families, including spending over a decade as CEO at leading multiple birth family charity, Twins Trust. Keith has also previously worked in public affairs and campaigning roles and is a previous Chair of the Pregnancy and Baby Charities Network, which represents UK charities focused on improving outcomes for babies and families in several different ways.
Job Titles:
- Social Worker
- Scotland Development Lead
Bio
Lucy is a qualified social worker with over 25 years' experience in the child protection field. Lucy's early career was based in disadvantaged communities in the west of Scotland, her experience also includes multi-disciplinary teams, management and service development roles .
Lucy's interests include increasing the evidence base for preventive approaches, the application of mental health expertise within community settings and foster care and how services can be developed with the needs of young children at the core.
Out of work Lucy enjoys swimming in lochs and dreams of sailing to South America.
Bio
Nick has been chief executive of the National Childbirth Trust and London Youth and director of UK programmes at Save the Children. He has also served on the boards of a range of charitable and public institutions and as a policy advisor to Cabinet Office and HM Treasury. Now his time is divided between three young children, involvement in his local community, a small number of non-executive positions and work with the Centre for Charity Effectiveness at City University Business School.
Job Titles:
- HEAD of POLICY and COMMUNICATIONS
Bio
Tamora is an award-winning campaigner, committed to improving health and care services. Her recent campaign for the Royal College of Surgeons secured government funding for surgical hubs, improving access to surgery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tamora is committed to supporting the wellbeing of children. As Director of Communications at the British Lung Foundation she developed a campaign to protect children from the dangers of air pollution. In 2018, she chaired the Liberal Democrats' Working Group on Health and Care, developing policies for the General Election, including the ‘wellbeing hour' for children. As a Trustee of the Twins Trust Tamora helped campaign against cuts to family support, and to influence schools' admissions policy.
Bio
Tia McPhee is a Marketing Communications professional with over 20 years of experience, predominantly with media and government organisations. She is currently the Global Brand Director of the Financial Times, and has also worked at Tech Nation, delivering the UK government tech strategy, and spent 12 years at the BBC in marketing and strategy roles across news, politics, current affairs and factual content.
She has served for six years on the board of governors for Jack Tizard, a specialist school for children with profound and multiple learning difficulties. This requires her to keep up to date with latest governance and child safeguarding issues and she serves as chair of their curriculum committee. Her passion to contribute to early years support structures was only intensified by recently having her first child.
Bio
Wook has a background as a counsellor and has a wealth of experience in project and senior management across the charity sector, spanning 30 years. During this time, she has worked in the fields of homelessness, mental health, youth work, substance misuse and domestic violence.
Some highlights of her career include working for Trust for the Study of Adolescence national charity where she lead on developing training and research projects on issues relating to parenting young people.
Alongside this career, she has retained an interest in teaching and training and has worked as a consultant to several national charities. Wook's passion is in the value of the relationship as a vehicle of change in any front-line work with people. She is also the author of various publications in relation to young people's emotional health and resilience.
Wook continues to work as a trainer for Sands (Still Birth & Neo-Natal Death charity), training health care professionals in bereavement care. She joined the Parent-Infant Foundation in March 2021.
Wook has a grown up daughter in her early 20s, and is also a musician, playing the clarinet in various genres including folk, hip hop and jazz.