Our Staff and Advisors
HASCAS has a small, skilled staff team based at offices in London. Our service development advisers are highly experienced and provide advice and support to the services they work with.
Our teams are complemented by specialist advisors, reviewer associates, senior consultants and users and carers who provide additional expertise and capacity. These people have been selected for their credibility, experience of and empathy with the service. Many of them currently work in the NHS, social services and voluntary organisations and are familiar with the challenges with which services are currently facing.
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Dr Androulla Johnstone |
Androulla Johnstone is Chief Executive of HASCAS. She originally trained as a mental health nurse in Hampshire. After working in clinical practice for nine years she became involved in education and research work leading to NHS roles in community, general acute and health authority contexts.
Androulla has a background in operational service delivery as well as in strategic planning and commissioning. More latterly she was the Director of Nursing and Clinical Services at Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead PCT, from where she then took up post as Director of Nursing and Quality at East London and the City Mental Health Trust.
Androulla has worked as a reviewer for the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education between 1998 and 2000, and has also worked as a reviewer for the Healthcare Commission. She has a PhD in archaeology and history focusing on the epidemiology of nineteenth-century psychiatry, and has a special research interest in the built environment of mental health.
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Ian Allured trained as a psychiatric social worker at Cardiff University after gaining a History Degree at Lancaster University in 1969. Ian worked for Hampshire Social Services as a social worker in the Havant Child and Family Guidance Clinic before travelling to Australia where he worked for the South Australian Community Welfare Department in Salisbury, a suburb of Adelaide.
On returning to England, Ian worked for Hampshire Social Services as a senior social worker in the Fareham Child and Family Guidance Clinic. He went on to become a manager leading teams of social workers in the Southampton General Hospitals followed by the General and Psychiatric Health Services in the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Health Authority. He was locally responsible for the management of the Joint Finance developments. From 1990 to 1992 Ian gained an MA in Public and Social Administration from Brunel University on a part-time basis.
In 1990 Ian was seconded to Wessex Regional Health Authority to help implement the Community Care Reforms across the Region. A permanent post followed as both Community Care and Mental Health lead manager before becoming a civil servant with the NHS Executive South and West Region in Bristol having performance management duties and being the mental health and learning disability lead manager.
From 1998 to 2001 Ian worked with Dorset Health Authority as Assistant Director of Strategic Development having responsibility for commissioning mental health, learning disability and continuing care services, before joining the Health Advisory Service as Service Development Adviser for Adult Mental Health in October 2001.
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Since qualifying as a clinical psychologist, John Hall has worked in NHS and academic posts in Norwich, Leeds, Cardiff and Oxford. Before joining HASCAS he was Head Clinical Psychologist for Oxfordshire and Senior Clinical Lecturer in the University of Oxford, and had other managerial experience, including being a Clinical Director and Trust R&D Lead. Since 2002 he has been Research Adviser at HASCAS, and part-time Professor in Mental Health in the School of Health and Social Care at Oxford Brookes University.
John's clinical and research experience has been mainly in the field of adult mental health, with a special interest in severe and enduring mental illness. John has had extensive experience in national working parties and committees and he had conducted or been involved in a number of independent reviews of mental health and psychological therapy services before joining HASCAS. He has had many years experience in teaching and research supervision of members of all mental health professions, especially psychiatrists and nurses, as well as psychologists.
Wwithin HASCAS he contributes to the process of policy analysis, research appraisal and methodological design underpinning HASCAS projects. He has a special interest in mental health policy, standards development, and need and outcome assessment, and has published many practice-based and review articles. Recent work at HASCAS includes projects on commissioning mental health services, organization of psychological therapies, and the mental health of veterans.He has a personal academic interest in the history of health and social care services.
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Tina Coldham National Development Consultant |
When Tina became a mental health service user 15 years ago, little did she think this would herald the start of a new career for her! Having set up and run self-help and user groups locally, Tina began working as a project manager for a community mental health development unit for four years in the voluntary sector. In 2001 Tina joined the Centre for Mental Health Services Development (CMHSD) as a project coordinator working on the successful national pilot to implement direct payments in mental health. Since 2003, she has worked for the Health and Social Care Advisory Service (HASCAS) as an associate on various national projects including direct payments work, and the review of user and carer involvement in NIMHE.
Since 2002 Tina has taken part in several Clinical Governance reviews for the Healthcare Commission, and more recently worked with the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales on a review of Medium Secure Units in Wales . Outside of HASCAS she trains, lectures and does research and consultancy all from a user perspective.
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| Helen Waldock Director of Nursing |
Helen initially started her nursing career in 1980 when she trained as a general nurse where she worked for the NHS and the private sector implementing the Nursing Process in general medicine and diagnostics.
Later Helen qualified to work within mental health and has worked in a variety of settings, mostly in inner city multicultural areas. Initially, she was involved at an operational and clinical level in the closure programmes for the large psychiatric hospitals, involving work with the local population, user groups and the voluntary sector.
Helen has extensive clinical experience with a broad range of mental health service users and has actively followed their care pathways through the development of integrated community mental health teams, assertive outreach teams, crisis response teams and acute inpatient care development. Helen has experience across a full range of services in primary, secondary and tertiary care.
Helen has worked at a clinical, operational and strategic development level for a large Mental Health Trust in London . Her focus has been on the development of Leadership Programmes, Infection Control Systems, Pre-registration Nurse Education and Multi-Professional Training in mental health. Quality of care has been the overriding theme in all of her work. Helen is also an accredited trainer for the national “Leadership at the Point of Care” programme. During her time at HASCAS Helen has led and contributed to several National Section 64 projects combining her knowledge and experience through working in an advanced clinical and strategic capacity, as well as leading Internal & Independent Homicide & Suicide Enquires.
Her professional interests are in personality disorders, personal profiling for professional development, leadership developments, physical health care in mental health and pre-registration nurse education. Helen has also co authored and edited the Oxford Handbook of Mental Health Nursing and is currently under contract for a further book.
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Joan Burgess National Development Consultant |
Joan Burgess trained as a nurse and was a staff nurse at Leeds General Infirmary. In 1970 she undertook midwifery training at St James’s Hospital Leeds and was a community midwife. She was a intensive care ward sister before entering nurse education as a Clinical Nurse Teacher. She gained a Diploma in Nursing from the University of London and a Certificate in Education from the University of Leeds. As a registered nurse tutor she held a variety of teaching posts in England and Northern Ireland (1979-1988). During this period she obtained a BA(Hons) degree in Social and Biological Sciences from the Open University.
Appointed as Senior Nurse Educator at Hillingdon in 1988, she was responsible for all nurse education at the Hillingdon Harefield and Mount Vernon hospitals. Recognising the importance of National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ), she qualified as an NVQ Assessor, Verifier and AP(E)L Advisor. This was followed by a Postgraduate Certificate in the Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL), a Postgraduate Diploma in Management Studies [CNAA] (1989) and Master of Science [Sociology], South Bank University (1992).
In 1994 she left higher education to set up her own Education and Training Consultancy Service whose clients were Southbank University, Amersham and Wycombe College, St. John’s Conference Centre, St John and St Elizabeth Hospital, Royal Brompton Hospital and Brunel University.
In 1995, she was appointed as the Education Development Officer at King Alfred’s College, Winchester and was responsible for the introduction of an NVQ Centre and AP(E)L Policies and procedures and was involved in the education of nurses and social workers. She was awarded Master of Science [Health Service Management], South Bank University (1995).
In 1998, she became the Associate Director of Nursing (Education) for the Portsmouth NHS Trust. This was a senior appointment in the Trust and was responsible for all educational matters for nurses. In addition, she held the Board Level appointment of Acting Director of Nursing (Dec 98–Aug 99).
In 2000, she was appointed as the Director of Education at the Hospital St John and St Elizabeth, London and was responsible for the development, implementation and evaluation of all mandatory training courses and management development education for professional and non-professional staff. During this period the work was expanded to cover the duties of an Matron which involved liaison with Local Health Authorities and the Operational, Health and Safety and Quality Committees.
In 2003, she was appointed as Principal Lecturer and Programme Leader for undergraduate and postgraduate healthcare courses.
Joan was appointed Project Director at HASCAS for the Care of the Elderly Project on part time secondment from the University of Winchester.
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| Susan Simmons National Development Consultant |
Sue Simmons studied a social sciences and general nursing degree at Edinburgh University and then went on to undertake mental health nurse training at the Royal Bethlem and Maudsley Hospitals. She worked for many years in community services in central London before moving on to nurse education at the University of East London as a principal lecturer. Her particular areas of interest were community mental health services and multi-disciplinary working. Whilst undertaking an MSc at the University of Surrey in Social Research Methods she researched, using qualitative methods, the burden on family and friends of caring for someone with long term mental ill-health. This programme of study was supported by a research studentship from the Dept of Health.;
Sue’s career in London and more recently in Devon has encompassed clinical practice, management, nursing and professional leadership (including at executive Board level), clinical governance, strategic development, education and research and she has written and contributed to a number of publications, including peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters. In much of her career she has been keen to facilitate service user and carer involvement, and was actively involved in developing frameworks for meaningful service user involvement in her senior posts in Devon. As a mental health service senior manager / director she has been involved in developing clinical risk and serious untoward incident policies and reviews. She has participated in both internal and external mental health serious incident investigations, always with the aim of learning from the tragedy of something going wrong. Throughout all her work she has been committed to providing the best possible service and to improving standards.
Over the past four years Sue has worked on the staff of the Royal College of Nursing in both a learning and development and management role. Alongside this work she has also worked independently and in that capacity has been engaged in a number of community service reviews in London PCTs.
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