Programme and Speaker Information

Christine Davies CBE - Independent LSCB Chair

Christine Davies has been the Independent Chair of the Sutton Local Safeguarding Children Board since 1 April 2014.

She is a former Chief Executive or C4EO (Centre for Excellence and Outcomes in Children and Young People's Services). C4EO's aim was to identify and disseminate 'what works' in order to significantly improve the outcomes of children and their families, working with Local Authorities in England and Wales, Health Services, and the Voluntary and Community sectors.

Christine established and led the previous Government's 'Narrowing the Gap' national programme, which identified leading practice in improving outcomes for vulnerable children and young people and helping close the 'gap' between advantaged and disadvantaged groups.

She was formerly a Director of Children's Services and was the President of the National Association of Chief Education Officers.

Christine was previously a teacher, psychologist, and Director of Education, before advising the British Government on education, child poverty, safeguarding, and early intervention. She has also advised the Australian, Netherlands, and Russian Governments.

Christine has been an advisor to the LGA Children and Young People's Board on all aspects of Children's Services and supported the development of leadership training for Directors of Children's Services, through the National College and the Virtual Staff College.

Until December 2017, Christine was a member of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales; sat on the Advisory Board for the Office of the Children's Commissioner and formerly chaired two Local Authority Children's Improvement Boards. She is currently a Trustee/Vice Patron for four national children's charities.

Beth Ingram - Hearts & Minds

Beth Ingram is a Lived Experience Advisor on Youth Mental Health & Director of Hearts & Minds, a Peer Support Charity for Young People experiencing Mental Health Difficulties. She is also a National Council Member for Rethink Mental Illness, Youth Participation Lead for SWL Partnership’s CYP Mental Wellbeing Project and a Non Exec Director of CORC, Youth Mental Health Research Consortium. But most importantly, she is a 21 year old learning to live fully again with humour, sensitivity & curiosity.

Fall Seven Times, Stand Up Eight.

Please email heartsandmindsinfo@gmail.com or Follow @beth_1day on Twitter for more information.

Dr Gemma Trainor - King's College London

Prior to taking up her post as lecturer with King's College London, Dr Gemma Trainor worked as a Nurse Consultant and clinical lead for a Tier 4 CAMHS day service in Manchester. She specialised in working with young people who self-harm and has over 30 years direct clinical experience of working with young people with complex mental health difficulties.

She has also worked 20 years as an active researcher. In 2001 she completed her PhD thesis, evaluating a group treatment for self-harm, which she co-designed. She has been a lead clinician of this promising treatment in three large randomised multi-centre trials (Australia and UK) investigating its outcomes, transferability and cost-effectiveness. This work is referenced in the 2004 NICE guidelines on self-harm. Additionally she has provided regular supervision to MSc and PhD students.

Her research and other work has been published in peer reviewed journals and books, and has been presented at several national and international conferences. She is the co-author of a well-received book “Helping Children and Young People who Self Harm -An introduction to self-harming and suicidal behaviours for health professionals”

She is also a panel member of several national expert groups (e.g. NICE, IAPT Tier 4 CAMHS, CRG, RC Psychologists Steering Group on self-harm) and a specialist advisor to CQC.

Adrienne Katz - Youthworks Consulting

Adrienne is an author, CPD accredited trainer and practitioner. She provides training and consulting on e-safety based on the experiences of children and young people and a knowledge of practice. Since 2008 Adrienne has run the annual Cybersurvey, a time series dataset and research programme which consults young people to learn about their online lives and e-safety education. Adrienne served for six years as a director of BIG Award, the national award for excellence run by the Bullying Intervention Group. Prior to that she was a Regional Advisor for the Anti-Bullying Alliance supporting fourteen local authorities and their schools. Adrienne has helped bring young people’s views to the development of government guidance and reports for the Children’s Commissioner and in evaluations of services for children.

Steve Bather - Realise Group

Steve is Director and Practice Lead at Realise (Europe) Ltd. He’s been a Meeting Practitioner for 25 years working with meeting productivity software since the mid 90’s. Steve has run over 2500 workshops and conferences using meeting technology to ensure participants actively participate and engage; ensuring better results. In 2011, Steve founded MeetingSphere Inc (www.meetingsphere.com) to bring accessible, easy to use, collaboration technology to everyone who wants to maximise engagement and high-quality decision making. He remains Executive Director of MeetingSphere and now practices through Realise the European services partner for MeetingSphere.

His public-sector work focuses on enabling several US, UK, and European Government departments to collaborate more effectively; he regularly supports safeguarding children and vulnerable adults multi-agency learning reviews, cold case murder investigations, stakeholder engagement and policy development workshops.

His corporate work has focused on large scale conference facilitation where collaboration and engagement is crucial in defining and delivering new strategies, mergers/acquisitions and major change programmes. Steve supports a large World Wide network of ‘Meeting Practitioners, delivers Master Classes to customers and speaks internationally on collaboration and group engagement.

Sutton Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS)

Sutton CAMHS gives assessment, advice, information and treatment in respect of children and young people whose behaviour suggests they have psychological, developmental or mental health difficulties affecting their wellbeing.

The service is for children and young people under 18 years of age, their parents/carers and other professionals who work with them.

Anyone who uses the services first gets an assessment of their mental health needs and a plan of the care and support they will receive. They will also have one named person who co-ordinates their care and support. This person will be called either a named professional or, if the client’s needs are more complex, a care co-ordinator. This person should be the client’s main point of contact, and can advise on how you treatment and support is going.