Kate Penhaligon, Head of Research and Development, Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Kate Penhaligon is the Head of Research & Development at Berkshire Healthcare a community and mental health trust, providing a wide range of services to people of all ages living in Berkshire. Her role is to provide strategic, operational oversight and leadership of research delivery across Berkshire Healthcare services. Kate has links with a number of key stakeholders, academic institutions, NIHR Clinical Research Network, Applied Research Collaboration, Academic Health Science Network, and other partners. She started her career at Southampton University Hospital Trust has worked within the clinical research setting for over 20 years.
Ray Percy, Clinic Director, Anxiety & Depression in Young People (AnDY) Research Clinic, University of Reading
Ray is a Clinical Psychologist in the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading and AnDY Research Clinic Director. Within AnDY, Ray oversees clinical assessments and the delivery of low-intensity psychological treatments for children and young people with anxiety and depression. He is also involved in developing and evaluating new evidence-based treatments for anxiety and depression alongside clinical researchers; and in finding ways to provide improved access to evidence-based treatments for children, young people, and their families.
Hannah Vickery, Director of Training, Charlie Waller Institute, University of Reading
Hannah Vickery is an Associate Professor and Director of Training within the Charlie Waller Institute, University of Reading. She leads an academic team in designing and delivering a range of graduate and postgraduate clinical training programmes; the programmes are for practitioners working with individuals, across the lifespan, experiencing mental health difficulties. Hannah’s clinical and research interests include enabling equitable mental health care, and post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in children and adolescents.
Alice Farrington, Professional Lead for the Berkshire CAMHS Anxiety and Depression Pathway
Dr. Alice Farrington has been working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services since qualifying as a Clinical Psychologist in 2000 and is currently the professional lead for the Berkshire CAMHS Anxiety and Depression Pathway based at Reading University. Alice is passionate about using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to help children and young people with OCD, anxiety and depression. Alice has always been keen to support parents, and has developed and facilitated a number of workshops for parents of children in Berkshire CAMHS. Alice presented at the BABCP conference in 2019, and the OCD-UK conferences in 2021 and 2022. She has published on topics related to dissociation in adolescents, depression in children, increasing access to specialist treatment for difficulties with childhood anxiety, as well as using imagery to augment OCD treatment. Alice is the chair of the Berkshire CAMHS Research Committee and also facilitates the Berkshire CAMHS Research Special Interest Group, and is currently involved in research projects into cognitions related to vomit phobia in young people, using parent-led CBT to treat childhood OCD, as well as improving parent-led CBT for autistic children who are anxious.
Pauline Peters, Senior Transformation Lead – Children and Young People (RBWM)
Pauline Peters works for Frimley ICB as a Senior Transformation Lead, with responsibility for the children and young people’s physical and mental health programmes of work. She is an accredited Counsellor and Child Psychotherapist who previously worked as a Clinical Team Lead for both Oxford and Berkshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS). Pauline has successfully led on the roll out and implementation of early intervention and preventative services across East Berkshire and an innovative project for Hertfordshire Children’s Centres to reduce inequalities within communities due to social determinants of health. In addition, she was employed as a lead for acute paediatric services and has worked across a wide variety of educational settings and the voluntary sector, to help improve mental health and wellbeing. She currently manages her own clinical practice which has been up and running for more than 18 years.
Suzanna Rose, Honorary Professor, University of Reading; Board Advisor, Charlie Waller Trust
Professor Suzanna Rose is a Visiting Professor at the School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading. She originally trained as a nurse and health visitor and took her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 1999. She retired from the NHS in 2014 where she set up and clinically practiced in three specialist services treating Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. She was also head of Psychological Therapies and head of Research at Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. She then became a Governor of Berkshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in 2015. She is Patron of the Berkshire Branch of the British Red Cross. She has published extensively and has spoken at conferences in many parts of the world.
Claire Williams, Professor of Neuroscience, University of Reading
Professor Claire Williams is Chair of Neuroscience in the School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences at the University of Reading, UK. She received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Reading in 2000. Her research group, the Nutritional Psychology laboratory, investigates the health benefits of plant-derived chemicals. The main focus of her laboratory is the interplay between dietary intake and measures of psychological well-being such as cognitive performance, food preference, mood, and quality of life using a wide range of techniques (e.g. animal studies, randomised controlled trials, neuroimaging) and population groups (e.g., school-aged children, healthy adults, older adults, patients with mild cognitive impairment). She has published more than eighty peer-reviewed research articles, five book chapters and is listed as an inventor on six international patent families, including 34 worldwide granted patents.
Clare Stafford, CEO, Charlie Waller Trust
Clare has over 25 years’ experience of managing and developing NHS mental health services including psychological therapies and specialist services and was a Senior Policy Advisor at Department of Health for the National Personality Disorder Programme. Clare joined the Charlie Waller Trust as CEO in 2014 and has overseen a significant expansion of the Trusts’ work since then. Clare is Vice-Chair of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, a membership body of leading organisations from across England who combine their voice to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people.
Holly Joseph, Director of Language and Literacy Development, University of Reading
Holly Joseph is a Professor of Language and Literacy Development at the Institute of Education, University of Reading. Her research interests lie in reading development, in particular how children’s reading difficulties manifest in their eye movements. She completed her PhD in children’s eye movements during reading at the University of Durham in 2008. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, investigating reading behaviour in children with comprehension difficulties. Since then she has looked at reading in children with dyslexia, autistic young people, and multilingual children.
Joanne Tombs, Senior Public Health Programme Officer (secondment), Wokingham Borough Council, UKPHR Practitioner PR0594
Joanne Tombs is an experienced Public Health Practitioner specialising in delivering Health and Wellbeing projects within local authorities including Physical Activity, Workplace Health, and Dementia projects. Joanne’s current portfolio focusses on the Healthy Child 0-19 programme (25 SEND)