I commenced nursing in 1982, training as a Mental health nurse. My UK experience was primarily in adult acute mental health and after migrating to Australia continued to work in public mental health.

I have always valued having an experienced mental health nurse to assist me in my development, to reflect and gain from the experiences I have had over many years.

I am an avid knitter, which helps me to switch off from what could be a very stressful profession.

I worked within the NHS in the UK, managing a psychiatric hospital, prior to migrating to Melbourne. Since then, I have gained experience working with CATT, eating disorders and brief intervention prior to moving to infant child and youth mental health and held management roles both in the UK and here in Melbourne. I am now planning to semi retire at the beginning of 2025. My training and experiences that I have gained has supported me to navigate and understand the complexities of mental health and clinical supervision has always been part of my practice, both in the giving and receiving of supervision.

Having been a hospital trained nurse I returned to study and completed a Bachelor of Health Care Management.

I am currently working in a specialist team within ICYMHS. We conduct secondary consultations with all the Dept. of Education schools within our catchment, as well as all the Intergrated Family Services teams, also homeless services and some non-government schools.

I teach Youth Mental Health First Aid as well as coordinate and participate in mental health community education seminars to anyone working with youth in our region.

I studied Clinical supervision training with the Centre for Psychiatric Nursing, Research and Practice and Eastern Health, now engaging in supervision and becoming a clinical supervisor. I have also trained in solution focused brief therapy and ACT, which are both around reflection and looking forward, these are all useful to assist the supervisee to develop a positive way to be curious about their experience and learn how to manage complex situations they may find themselves in.

My ongoing participation with clinical supervision has enabled me to feel confident in my progression through mental health services. I believe that the groundwork for supervision is developing a trusting, supportive yet challenging supervision relationship which works for both supervisor and supervisee. I assist the supervisee to learn from their experiences and to enable them to have more positive experiences in their future endeavours.