Trustees
Dr Mike Shooter CBE - Chair
Mike Shooter CBE is the immediate past President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Gwent HealthCare Trust.
Mike’s whole professional life has been devoted to the welfare of children, adolescents and their carers deprived by one form of hardship or another. He has worked clinically as leader of multi-disciplinary Child and Adolescent service teams in Cardiff and the Welsh Valleys for 25 years.
As an officer of national bodies, he has negotiated with governments for better services, advised managers on the running of services and talked to audiences in lecture halls and the media on what he feels are the principles involved. Mike’s clinical interest in bereavement is well-known and he has developed a national and international reputation in the field.
As befits an ex-journalist, Mike has always maintained a keen interest in working with the media to promote the interests of the children and young people in mental distress, mental health services and psychiatry.
Ms Joan Baxter - Vice-chair
Joan Baxter has been a senior performance specialist at the Audit Commission for the past three years. She is the London regional lead for user focus and has undertaken performance audits across local government, health and the police. She is an accredited inspector for the corporate assessment of local authorities and is a joint area review (JAR) link inspector.
Prior to joining the Audit Commission, Joan was a senior education manager in a county council. She led on behaviour and held line management responsibility for the county’s six pupil referral units and its behaviour support team. She has also been a senior manager in the voluntary sector, delivering mental health support to children in schools through The Place to Be. Her professional background is in educational psychology.
Joan was recently appointed national lead on SEN, Inclusion, Behaviour, Children's mental health and Children's diversity in the Children and Young People's Services division of the Audit Commission.
Mr Peter Jenkins - Treasurer
Peter is Chief Financial Officer of The Calyx Group and prior to this he was Chief Executive of Numerica Group plc. Peter qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1981 and following 7 years working in accountancy firms (Neville Russell and Coopers & Lybrand) he moved into industry and commerce.
He has held senior financial positions at Lex Service plc, Coca-Cola & Schweppes Beverages Ltd and Harrisons & Crosfield plc and he was Group Finance Director of Regus plc from 1998 - 2000. In 2000 Peter co-founded an internet business before being approached to join Numerica as Group Finance Director.
Peter has been a Council member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales since 2003 and he was a member of its Audit Committee from 2003 to 2005. He is currently Vice-Chairman of its Business Advisory Board. Peter has served on the Parochial Church Council of St. Mary's Twickenham since 1999 and the Hampton Deanery Synod since 2003. Peter is married with two children, aged 14 and 11.
Other trustees on the board
Ms Amelia Curwen - Trustee
Amelia is currently embarking on a course at Medical School and has a particular interest and experience of working with charities for young people and drug users. Amelia also has several years experience of trusteeship, as both a general member of governing bodies and as the Chair.
Amelia’s most recent role was a Executive Director of Policy, Services and Research for Asthma UK were she lead the development and delivery of all the charitable output of the organisation and was also responsible for impact measurement, organisational planning and project management.
Amelia brings specific skills including change management, project management and conflict resolution.
Mr Brian Garvey - Trustee
Brian has a background in Psychology and has worked for several years in strategic marketing roles and is currently employed as Joint Managing Director for NFP Synergy, the specialist research consultancy for the not for profit sector.
Brian has experience of marketing, communications, research and both the commercial and not for profit sectors.
Mr Tom Wylie - Trustee
Tom Wylie has just retired as the CEO for the National Youth Agency, a post he had held for almost 12 years. Before that he had served as one of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Education for 17 years, lately as assistant director of Inspection within Ofsted where he managed some 40 HMI.
Before that Tom had been a teacher, a youth worker and a trainer of youth workers. He has served on various government bodies both in the UK and in Council of Europe and has authored various texts on youth issues. As a previous CEO Tom brings great skills in charity growth, finance and organisational development.
Professor David Cottrell - Trustee
David Cottrell has been Foundation Chair in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at Leeds since 1994. He is also Associate Medical Director for Child & Adolescent Psychiatry at the East Leeds Primary Care Trust.
He has a particular interest in education and was Head of the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds from 2004 -2005. He remains an active clinician and is also a UKCP registered Family & Systemic Psychotherapist. He has a wide experience of the development, management, delivery and evaluation of services for children in the community.
His research interests are in the evaluation of CAMH services and in the adaptation of children and families to chronic illness. He is part of a team that has recently completed an ESRC funded evaluation of the working of multi-agency community children’s teams.
He is joint author of a major DoH funded systematic review of effective interventions in CAMH and currently a member of the Childhood Depression NICE Guideline Development group.
Ms Melissa Adams - Trustee
Melissa Adams has worked in Children’s Services and Adult Mental Health for over 20 years. She has been involved in adoption and acted as an expert witness on behalf of either Social Services or for families in custody and access conflicts between separating parents.
She has been in her current Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) since 1986, based in a Children’s Hospital and Paediatric Department in Central London. She is Head of Profession for Family Psychotherapy in the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and heads up the largest Family Therapy service in the country.
The multi disciplinary team in the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, where she is the Team Coordinator, and Consultant Family Psychotherapist, particularly specialises in the mental health of adolescents. She has Family Therapists in all the CAMHS for each locality in the CNWL Mental Health Trust, in a Child Psychotherapy Unit, in Looked After Children Services, and in Sure Start.
She has been a central figure in developing a multidisciplinary Parental Mental Health Service for adult mental health patients, with either acute and chronic mental health difficulties, who are parents at the interface of children’s services and adult mental health services. This service has won a national award and a commendation by the Secretary of State.
Melissa has published a paper advocating early clinical intervention for both mothers and fathers to promote secure attachment, and is currently completing her doctorate investigating an attachment related clinical intervention with adolescents and their parents.
Melissa is a Board Member of the Association of Family Therapy and a member of various committees for terms and conditions and training.
Mr Steve Barrett - Trustee
Steve Barrett has been editor of Media Week, a Haymarket Business Media publication, since November 2006. He manages an editorial team of 15 staff producing the principal business magazine for the commercial media sector.
Steve was the editor of a weekly professional magazine for youth workers called Young People Now between 2003-2006. Prior to this he was deputy editor of the magazine during its transition from a monthly to a weekly title in January 2003. The magazine is a mixture of practice-based articles highlighting good work and projects in all areas of the youth sector, as well as policy-oriented articles that place youth work and work with young people in their political context.
The issues that the magazine covered, such as mental health; teenage pregnancy; youth crime; antisocial behaviour; votes at 16; youth health, obesity and diet; young asylum seekers and youth custody; are constantly at the top of the national news agenda. In the four years before he joined Young People Now, Steve rose from online editor to associate editor of Haymarket Publishing's internet business magazine: Revolution.
Steve was born in the west London borough of Hammersmith, where he has now returned to work and live. He is a trustee of a local youth club and his father was a youth officer in London, Liverpool, Edinburgh and the East Kent town of Folkestone, where Steve spent the majority of his childhood.
Steve subsequently moved to the West Yorkshire city of Bradford at the age of 18 to study social policy, a course that incorporated a placement year as a youth and community worker in the southeast London district of Bermondsey.
Ms Ann Cutting - Trustee
Ann Cutting is by profession a solicitor specialising in employment law with a particular bias towards claimant rather than employer cases. She sits on the Employment Tribunal. Ann Cutting has spent a larger part of her working life in the public services, having worked both as a university administrator and in the NHS.
For a long time Ann was a volunteer in a law centre, and is currently the Chair of Governors for a primary school in Peckham, which has a very mixed intake of pupils.
