Meet the team
The new steering committee of the CYP Staying Healthy Forum was formed in October 2011.
Chair - Ray McMorrow
A former member of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHs) Forum committee, Ray has been chair of the new forum since its development in 2010. He is the Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children in the city of Derby. In this role he has been the author of serious case reviews, led the health input into a child sexual exploitation investigation for which he was given a Chief Police Commissioner Commendation and he has worked on developing pathways for young people with self-harming behaviours. His role engages him with all areas of the forum’s community, from health visitor implementation planning and school nursing reviews to looked after children’s nursing, CAMHs and adolescent nursing.
Ray is also a trainer on his strategic health authority’s (SHA) Safeguarding Leadership programme, with a particular interest in coaching and team profiling. Prior to his current post he was Consultant Nurse for Community CAMHs at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and has a long history of working in child mental health and learning disability and has an MA in Child Psychoanalytical Psychotherapy. Of his hopes for the forum, he says: “I firmly believe that our nursing communities within the forum have a strongly linked agenda in providing nursing services in a complex multi-agency environment to the most vulnerable groups of children in our society.”
Mervyn Townley
Mervyn began his nurse training at the London Hospital in Whitechapel in 1975 and undertook an integrated state registered nurse (SRN)/ registered mental nurse (RMN) course over four years. His first job as a qualified nurse was in the Child Psychiatric Unit at Great Ormond Street Hospital – this was followed by posts in both an adolescent unit and at a children’s unit in Cambridge. Both these units were within a developing CAMHS.
Following a year in post as a nurse tutor in Bedford, Mervyn then moved to the West Country and took up a post as a mental health tutor in Bristol, which continued for five years. During this time he completed an MA in Mental Health Studies at Portsmouth University and in 1994 completed a third nursing registration in children’s nursing at Southampton University. Over the next nine years he developed and facilitated a series of child mental health modules at the University of the West of England for nurses and other professionals. In 2003 Mervyn took up his current post as Consultant Nurse for CAMHS at the Gwent NHS Healthcare Trust and has a current research interest in the issues relating to the transition from young people’s to adult services. He is currently exploring service models for youth mental health services. In addition, his current academic studies are focusing on the issues related to digital usage by young people. He has given a number of conference papers related to child mental health in various nursing arenas and has written a number of articles and book chapters on related issues.
Lindsey Emmerson
Lyndsey is currently the forum steering committee's school nurse representative. She was delighted to have been appointed last year and has relished the opportunities and challenges provided. Having qualified as a nurse in 1987, she first worked in intensive treatment units (ITUs) and theatres before moving into the community as a practice nurse in 2001. She then worked in two independent schools as a school nurse for five years before diversifying and commencing the specialist community public health nurse (SCPHN) health visiting pathway in September 2011. She is particularly interested in the transition stage as children begin primary school and would like to hear from school nurses (and health visitors) about how this works in practice. She is also keen to hear how both the HV Implementation Plan and the School Nurse Development Plan are being introduced and developed nationwide.
Liz Allan
Liz is currently Designated Nurse for Children in Care in Cornwall. She has a background in community health and health promotion and is keen to continue to raise the profile of the holistic health needs of vulnerable children and young people and the professional skills of those working to meet their needs. Liz’s role requires her to work in partnership with a wide range of health professionals and multi-agency partners. She has been particularly grateful for the opportunities that working within the RCN forum structure has given to both supporting the development of looked after children’s nursing and to ensuring that the specialist nature of this work has been reflected across the range of communities engaged in the Healthy Mum, Healthy Child Forum.
Angela Davis
Angela is currently employed as a clinical nurse specialist for CAMHS within a youth offending setting in an industrial town in south Wales. Angela originally qualified in 1982 as an enrolled nurse; completing the conversion course in 1992, she worked initially within adult mental health services across a wide variety of settings. She developed a specialist interest and a quest to understand borderline personality disorder (BPD) with pathological dissociation. Angela’s thirst for improved understanding resulted in winning the Nuffield Overseas Fellowship in 2003; this took her to the United States on a professional visit to the Trauma Institute in Timberlawn, Dallas, Texas.
Angela completed the ‘International Society of the Study of Dissociation’ psychotherapy training in the diagnosis and treatment of dissociative disorder in London in 2005. She won Welsh Nurse of the Year in 2006 for Innovative Practice, for her clinical review of the Trauma Model (Ross, 2000) in the treatment of BPD and pathological dissociation.
In 2009, Angela completed an overseas sabbatical in Brisbane, Australia with Evolve a Therapeutic Foster Service as a specialist working with emerging personality disorders and trauma. Angela has completed hours of self-directed studying on the subject of dissociation, has had several small articles published and is an international speaker on the subject.
Nina Heighington
Nina is a staff nurse on a 30-bedded medical ward at Derby Hospital Foundation Trust, where she is aiming to improve the service offered to adolescent patients. She became passionate about adolescent health whilst completing a BSC in children’s nursing at Birmingham University. While at Birmingham, she also completed an overseas elective on an adolescent ward in Australia. Nina’s dissertation on student attitudes towards adolescents in hospital has been published in the Journal of Children’s and Young People’s Nursing.
Cathy Burke
Prior to commencing her nurse training, Cathy worked in the private sector for five years in administration – she strongly believes that the attributes she gained there have continued to support her nursing career. She commenced employment at the Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) in the NHS as a student nurse in 1986. Following maternity leave, she carried on her nurse training, starting her first RGN appointment in 1991 at the LGI on an acute medical ward for the elderly.
Cathy then moved to Killingbeck Hospital to specialise in cardiology nursing; while there, she progressed from junior staff nurse to sister. In 1995, she was seconded to commence her specialist community public health nurse (health visitor) training, following which she practised for a short while as a health visitor in Wakefield. She soon moved on to heading up and fully managing a step-up, step-down community inpatient unit. This was a new innovation with only the service specification available when she came into post – Cathy successfully built it up to an eight-bedded inpatient unit.
After 18 months, she returned to health visiting in Wakefield, at the same time taking on the chairing role of the health visitors’ professional meeting. Shortly after this, Cathy took up the role of professional executive nurse, initially for the primary care group and then for a primary care trust, as a member of both the professional executive committee and the trust board.
After three years, Cathy left to take up the post of Professional Lead for Health Visiting in Bassetlaw – this roll evolved to incorporate school nursing, and the designated nurse for safeguarding children functions in her second year in employment. She continued with this role until she successfully secured the roles of Children Services Manager and Designated Nurse for Safeguarding Children following an organisational restructuring.
She continues to be committed and proactive as a senior clinical nurse leader. In 2010, she had two articles published: one in Community practitioner: the journal of the Community Practitioners’ and Health Visitors’ Association on the Bassetlaw Healthy Child Programme (May 2010) and one that was published in the Journal of Nursing Management on using the World Café model for engaging staff in transforming community services. She is currently writing her third paper, aiming to publish in 2012.