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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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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Yvonne Anderson is the lead director for child and adolescent mental health services at the Health and Social Care Advisory Service (HASCAS). Prior to joining the organisation Yvonne was service manager for CAMHS in Kingston and District Community NHS Trust and CAMHS Clinical Governance Manager in South West London and St Georges Mental Health Trust. Formerly she had been a health education consultant and senior research fellow at the University of Southampton .
Recent work at HASCAS includes national projects in CAMHS to adult transition, CAMHS partnership facilitation, CAMHS self assessment and best practice in ADHD. Local commissions have included needs assessment, service mapping, service review and workforce development.
Before joining the NHS Yvonne led a number of projects in multi disciplinary team work and developed teaching and learning materials for health professionals studying at post graduate level. Prior to that she ran a consultancy service to public and voluntary sector organisations, following earlier work in teaching and social care.
vonne has published a number of practice based and theoretical documents. Her doctoral research proposes a grounded theory of facilitative leadership for collaborative working. She has an academic interest in auto/biography and narrative method and is on the editorial board of the international journal, Health Education and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
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Chris Harvey trained and qualified as a Biomedical Scientist during the late 1970s at Grimsby General Hospital, where he specialised in Haematology and Blood Transfusion. In 1980 he moved to work at Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, where he completed his post graduate studies and was awarded the Fellowship of the Institute of Biomedical Scientists. Later he helped develop, lecture and administer undergraduate and post graduate training programmes in Haematology.
In 1984 Chris was appointed as Senior Biomedical Scientist (Haematology) at the Royal United Hospital, Bath. Here he continued to develop his technical and analytical skills as well as helping to lead, manage and teach junior staff.
During 1989, Chris moved to Salisbury Healthcare NHS Trust, initially to manage the Haematology and Blood Transfusion department and later appointed Pathology Business Manager. Chris was instrumental in modernising and leading the department through independent external accreditation, organisational review and successfully marketed services to gain new business. He developed, implemented and managed a comprehensive Information Technology system to electronically transmit and report laboratory results. At the same time he established an innovative internal trading system to manage the department’s £2.3m budget. He deputised for the Clinical Support directorate manager and was the Trust’s Controls Assurance project director. During 1999 – 2000 he studied for and was awarded a Post Graduate Diploma in Management. Towards the end of 2000 Chris was seconded to the Commission for Health Improvement as a Clinical Governance Reviewer and took part in some of the early Clinical Governance Reviews.
In 2001, Chris was appointed to the Commission for Heath Improvement as a Review Manager. He led a number of Clinical Governance Reviews in Acute, Primary Care and Mental Health Trusts culminating in the writing of and publication of public reports. Following the creation of the Healthcare Commission in 2004, Chris worked as an Operational Project Manager leading reviews into Heart Disease and the performance of early Foundation Trusts. He developed, in partnership with the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the improvement review methodology for Mental Health. More recently, Chris has been involved in the development and training of inspectors to assess healthcare organisations’ compliance with the Governments Standards for Better Health.
Chris is currently Deputy Chair of Governors and Trustee of a large independent fee paying school, of charitable status, in Wiltshire.
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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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Since qualifying as a Mental Health Nurse, Len has worked in day hospital settings, as ward manager of an acute psychiatric ward, as a community psychiatric nurse based in a GP practice and then later in one of the first UK community mental health centre. Eventually moving into management and education, he led a community mental health nurse course in Manchester, whilst also leading on the implementation of the Care Programme Approach and an associated mental health information system in local NHS services. At the same time as progressing through this clinical career, he studied part time for an undergraduate, masters and then doctoral degrees.
In 1996 he moved to City University, and in 1998 was awarded a personal chair in psychiatric nursing. He then began a programme of research into acute inpatient care, in particular conflict (aggression, violence, rule breaking, absconding, alcohol/substance use, and medication refusal) and containment (Sedation, seclusion, special observation, manual restraint, and psychiatric intensive care). The aim of this programme has been to derive means to reduce conflict and containment, and to improve the therapeutic impact of psychiatric care.
He has been a member of several Department of Health committees, and grant awarding bodies, and has reviewed applications for the MRC, ESRC, Wellcome Trust, Scottish Chief Scientists Office, DH Policy Research Programme, Health Research Board of Ireland, and the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, and has acted as referee for ten other journals. He is a visiting Professor at the University of South Australia, and is collaborating on research in both the Netherlands and Australia. His research based intervention to reduce absconding has been adopted by many NHS Trusts, and the contribution of this to acute inpatient care as been recognised in the Chief Nursing Officer's Review of Mental Health Nursing, and in the Eleventh Biennial Report of the Mental Health Act Commission. He speaks regularly at national and international conferences around the world on issues related to untoward incidents and acute inpatient psychiatry.
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Helen is the Nurse Advisor, National Consultant with the Health and Social Care Advisory Service.
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 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. More recently Helen combines her knowledge and experience through working in an advanced clinical capacity in primary care and as the Nurse Advisor at HASCAS
As well as service and systems development Helen is an External Professional Advisor to the Department of Health and a recognised Leadership at the Point of Care facilitator. Her professional interests are in personality disorders, personal profiling for professional development, leadership developments, and pre-registration nurse education. Helen has also co authored and edited the Oxford Handbook of Mental Health Nursing
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David Lamb is a freelance consultant in health and social services, primarily in mental health and associated areas.
He is currently working with The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and HASCAS. Work includes a DH-funded project to produce guidelines published by NICE and SCIE aiming to encourage better services for families in which a parent has a mental health problem, and local area CAMHS reviews supporting the national development agenda.
Prior to this for seven years David was a senior consultant in service development at The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (SCMH), providing development support to health and social care communities across the UK. His career started in local authority social work and he worked with a wide range of client groups, gravitating towards children and families services, mental health as an ASW, and was manager of a youth offending service.
He made a transition from service delivery work into consultancy and development by way of pursuing an MBA and Post-Graduate Diploma in Organisational Development, and around that time worked in research, development and consultancy in primary health and social care until his time at SCMH.
The majority of work in mental health over recent years has focused on supporting implementation of national policy, often working in facilitation of whole systems solutions for local issues, including strategic service re-design and workforce development.
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