Profile
I am a recipient of a NIHR Doctoral Clinical and Practitioner Academic Fellowship (DCAF) and is currently a PhD student in the Unit for Psychological Medicine at the Centre for Psychiatry and Mental Health, Queen Mary University of London. My research focuses on the experiences of parents feeding their premature infants after hospital discharge, with an emphasis on co-designing a supportive resource to aid families during this critical transition.
With over 25 years of clinical experience, I serve as Clinical Lead Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) at Barth Health NHS Trust. My work centres on supporting infants and children with medical complexity and eating, drinking, and swallowing difficulties, alongside their families, within community settings. I am passionate about empowering families and have a particular interest in shared decision-making for babies and children facing complex feeding challenges. I am also committed to exploring how best to support parental and child mental wellbeing when navigating potentially life-altering decisions.
Methodologically, I am an advocate for ‘co’-approaches in healthcare - co-design, co-production, and co-delivery. I believe that improving outcomes and reducing the burden of care for families of children with medical complexity requires healthcare professionals to deeply understand lived experiences and to collaborate meaningfully with those they serve in designing effective, compassionate interventions.
Supervisors: Professor Nathan Davies (https://www.qmul.ac.uk/wiph/people/profiles/davies-nathan-.html), Dr Deanna Gibbs (https://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/coursefinder/external-staff/deanna-gibbs-1.html) and Dr Christina Smith (UCL)
Research
Supervision
I regularly provide supervision and placements for MSc students as well as providing placements for In2Research students. I currently line manage three research assistants, one PhD student and one post doctorate research associate.