Our Training Associates

I was an original member of the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) National Training Team in 2007, when we took the Scottish MHFA course and adapted it for use in England. I was one of the two founding working Directors of the MHFA England Community Interest Company in 2009, when Poppy Jaman and I took MHFA out from the NHS and established it as an independent social enterprise. In England I have trained over 140 MHFA instructors, and I have delivered many MHFA courses to a wide range of audiences.

In January 2014 I went to Uganda with colleagues and delivered the first two MHFA courses in that country to members of the Ugandan Peoples Defence Force. I am passionate about improving mental health, and am now approved as a Standard, Armed Forces, Youth, and Lite Instructor.

I am an ASIST (Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training) trainer, and have designed and delivered several other training courses in suicide prevention and mental health awareness, including the MHFA Lite course, which I adapted from the Sevenoaks Area MH Awareness Group course. I also teach bridge, privately and with Kent Adult Education, and give business advice. I have been closely involved with West Kent Mind since 2002, and I am currently active as a volunteer, Chair of SMART (Sevenoaks Mind Awareness Raising Team), and as Training and Development Consultant. I have a PTLLS qualification, and a current Criminal Records Check (via Kent Adult Education).

I was one of the original 10 members of the Youth Mental Health First Aid National Training Team, and I am currently the Kent Project Manager for the Knowledge and Understanding Framework (KUF) programme. This is a national programme that supports people in working with people with a diagnosis of a personality disorder, or with personality difficulties.

My experience also extends to training foster careers, and I have an understanding of their support needs, the challenges they face with their foster children, family dynamics and the support required from external agencies.

I have worked with West Kent Mind to develop a one day course – ‘Mental Health Training for Frontline Staff’. I have delivered this course 14 times in 2013/14, and feedback has been excellent.

I enjoy teaching and training, and support others in their training skills by running nationally accredited training and education qualifications for individuals via both distance learning and class-based courses. I have co-authored a teaching book and written articles for tutors.

Fionuala started work in the NHS as a mental health nurse, and then managed older people’s services in East Kent. She moved into service improvement work in Kent, and then for the London Development Centre of NIMHE (National Institute for Mental Health in England) as Director of Service Improvement from 2005 to 2008. She was the North East London Sector Mental Health Lead with Commissioning Support for London from 2009 to 2011, and then switched to manage the Mental Health Payment by Results Programme in London. Fionuala’s current role is Year of Care Programme Manager for Public Health with Kent County Council.

Fionuala has a real passion for delivering MHFA across all sectors, both public and private, and views MHFA as an effective way to challenge stigma and discrimination. She strongly believes in the promotion of good mental health and wellbeing and continues to mix delivery of MHFA, and training new instructors, with her current role.

My qualifications are an Honours Degree in Business Studies from Brighton University; a 2 year Diploma in Psychodynamic Counselling; and a Teacher Training Certificate in Further Education. My background includes working for multinational companies BT and Philips Electronics as a Human Resources Professional. I worked for 10 years at Workability, a Community Mental Health project in Brighton, where I supported people in their recovery from mental ill health to access work, training & education.

In the past year I have delivered Mental Health First courses (including MHFA Lite) to organisations such as Unilever, Ernst & Young, and NHS England, and to a variety of voluntary/community groups.

On a personal level, I am also a single mum to a 12 year old daughter and have supported her father through alcoholism, chronic depression and suicidal behaviour. My training and skills learned through my involvement with MHFA has, I’m sure, helped him access mental health services and remain present in his daughter’s life. I am passionate about increasing mental health literacy in schools and colleges.
I have a current Criminal Record Check (Disclosure and Barring Service).

I have a PTLLS qualification, L4 Information Advice & Guidance (Careers Service). I have some understanding of the social care context within the children and families sector through working with Surrey County Council to deliver training to staff and by working with other agencies as part of my role providing support to people with mental health problems. I have some understanding and experience of the roles and responsibilities of foster carers and the challenging nature of fostering as my sister’s first child was fostered prior to adoption and I have attended a Surrey County Council information evening as I am interested in becoming a foster carer. I have a close friend who is a foster carer and my daughter and I often go out with her and her foster children. She has fostered short term and long term and I have seen the challenges with both.

I started in mental health in 1996 in London Borough of Redbridge as a generic social worker and then qualified as an Approved Social worker. I worked in a newly formed crisis team before moving to Kent in 1999. In Kent I worked in an Assertive Outreach Team before moving into a senior practitioner position in 2002. In 2003 I became manager of Shepway Mental Health Team, and then manager of the Early Intervention in Psychosis Service in 2005.

I am currently training to be a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and am interested in developing the Open Dialogue approach to working with psychosis. I have been involved in a project looking at developing Youth Mental Health Services in a qualitatively different way to how it is delivered now. The service would look to work with young people from 12 to 25, covering the maturation process from childhood to adulthood. I am currently working with Penny Southern from KCC and commissioners to look at the model and how this can develop in Kent. I have presented on this in the county and South East region, and worked closely with Rethink in this area.

Lee qualified as a MHFA trainer in early 2008 and as a Youth MHFA trainer in 2010. During this time he has delivered to a wide range of professionals and lay people including statutory service staff across health and local authority, universities, colleges, schools, community groups & volunteers, commercial enterprises and the clergy. In 2010, Lee became a National Training Team member for MHFA England, training instructors to deliver Standard MHFA, Youth MHFA and, since 2013, the MHFA Armed Forces courses.

Lee is an external verifier for the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) and has contributed to the development of the RSPH Youth Health Champion programme.

He regards the Youth Mental Health First Aid course as wonderfully informative but it is the potential for stimulating discussion about a school’s specific circumstances and potential that he finds especially exciting. Some delegates are surprised that Dick can become so engaged in potentially emotional issues given the suicide of his son, but each course teaches him something new, reveals new insights and is good therapy!

Using a mixture of passion, humour and personal experience, Dick aims to inform and enthuse but above all he wishes to prod and provoke, so that pressure builds on decision makers to do more than pay lip-service to the issue by issuing sporadic platitudes. The poor mental health of young people is a hidden epidemic that is a national disgrace. We can and must do something about it!

Dick has appeared on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 5 and on several local radio stations, together with BBC TV’s Breakfast. He is fascinated by military history and is a passionate supporter of Fulham FC!

Drawing upon my background in theatre, my approach to training and facilitation emphasises dialogue, understanding and emotional literacy. Although I am not a mental health professional, I have lived experience of mental health issues and a considerable portfolio of delivering training in business and public sector organisations. The feedback I get is that I make courses interactive and facilitative of the learning needs of the group.

I have a Master’s Degree in Ethical Leadership from King’s College London (graduated with distinction), and specialist knowledge of social ethics in training and community development. An example of this is the development of the Wellbeing Project that I have set up in Tanzania with a Shia Muslim organization. The sixteen people who attended the MHFA Standard course in March 2014 have gone on to form a group that has short term and long term goals to provide support in the community and make sure that mental health awareness and first aid availability is linked to welfare, marriage guidance, bereavement services and crisis interventions. The group is planning a big mental health awareness-raising project for Ramadan this year and they are already making significant positive changes in a society that has considerable stigma attached to mental health issues. I was also part of the MHFA England team that went to Uganda in January 2014 to train the army there in an initiative that is designed to reduce mental health problems in soldiers serving as peace-keeping forces in Somalia.

Being a service user myself with over 15 years lived experience I have an insight and empathy with some of the challenges people experiencing poor mental health may face. This led me to becoming committed to helping others understand the truth about mental health and remove some of the common myths that surround such a sensitive and sometimes taboo subject that can prevent others from offering, seeking or receiving help. I have seen the positive effects of people learning Mental Health First Aid and the benefits it has then brought to individuals, families, employees and employers. I feel very privileged to have been able to play a part in that and continue to be a passionate committed mental health advocate.

Qualifications:
National Training Team Member – Mental Health First Aid England
Adult and Armed Forces Mental Health First Aid Instructor
ASIST – Suicide Intervention First Aid trained.
(TRiM) Trauma Risk Management Practitioner
Licensed NLP Practitioner and coach (INLPTA)
Accredited Belbin facilitator
Qualified and licensed MBTI Practitioner Step 1 and 2
Diploma Workplace Psychology.

Since leaving the Police, Nicole has worked proactively as a freelance trainer and consultant. Her MHFA clients have included:

Lewisham NHS, Brent NHS, The College of Policing (was The National Policing Improvement Agency), British Transport Police, Croydon Council, Barking and Dagenham Council, Croydon College, Surrey County Council, Carshalton College, The University of East Anglia, Islington Mind, Croydon Mind, Croydon Voluntary Action, Sutton Voluntary Action, Merton Voluntary Action, Hexagon Housing, Quo Vadis Housing, Croydon Group of Churches, Kingston’s Peoples Project, Croydon Job Centre Plus, Peckham Job Centre Plus, Shepherds Bush Job Centre Plus, Newham College, Islington College.

Qualifications include:

Degree International Relations and Communications, Masters Contemporary War and Peace Studies, Certificate In Education, qualified Equalities Trainer. Nicole has also recently spent a month working in Vietnam with orphans with mental health problems.

I am now passionate about delivering MHFA courses and believe that I can bring a combination of my psychological knowledge from more than 17 years as an integrative psychotherapist working with a range of difficulties, including trauma and severe and enduring mental health issues together with my broadcast skills from more than 15 years as a BBC radio journalist and correspondent.

My priority is to create a safe space for colleagues to learn by sharing and interacting with each other on the course. So my style is personal and creative, one in which I bring aspects of my own experience to the material in the hope of modelling this sharing. In my professional life, I have wide experience across a range of sectors – educational – Higher Education and secondary school, health – NHS primary and secondary care, media – BBC World Service, The Guardian and Agence France Presse, as well as the corporate world and the voluntary sector.

I am an experienced trainer currently delivering on health, mental health and well-being, child safeguarding and early intervention. I have management experience and over 20 years work with children, young people and families including child protection, looked after children and leaving care.

I have worked with both child and adult /parental mental health and my specialism is childhood abuse and trauma. As a manager I have dealt with mental health issues with staff, parents and volunteers and, of course, delivered MHFA to them.

I deliver to all client groups currently to agencies across the children’s workforce. Clients include NHS, LA, CVS school nurses, foster carers and many more.

Qualifications:
PTTLS/CTTLS professional training qualification
NVQ level 4 Management
Youth MHFA Instructor
Open University Diploma Health and Social Care
Working for Health (Open University K203)
Working with children, young people and families,(OU)
BA /BSC Hon Health and Social Care (Ongoing)

David works at the Private Therapy Clinic where he facilitates mindfulness sessions, carries out psychological screenings and is training to do some low intensity CBT work with clients. He has previously worked as a training facilitator for Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust, and has also worked with MHFA England researching the mental and emotional health difficulties of children under 12, and how best to help and support them.

David holds a PTTLS qualification and is also a Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming. He has appeared on Sky New This Morning discussing travel anxiety.

David is passionate about promoting mental and emotional wellbeing and challenging stigma wherever possible.

He works as a consultant to MHFA England on the development and evaluation of MHFA products and delivers a range of programmes relating to mental health & wellbeing including the OU/Nottingham University Personality Disorder Knowledge & Understanding Framework.

With over 30 years’ experience as a mental health clinician, including as Director of Nursing for a large mental health NHS Trust, Clive is also active as an executive coach and professional mentor and is an independent consultant in process, workforce and system redesign with a Motorola University 6 Sigma Green Belt to his credit and significant experience of running Lean programmes, appreciative inquiry and solution focused team interventions.