Ethics committee

Julie Stone is medical lawyer and ethicist who has shaped national policy in professionalism and healthcare regulation for over thirty years.  As CHRE’s (now Professional Standard Authority) inaugural Deputy Director and Executive lead of its Clear Sexual Boundaries project, Julie has published, drafted guidance, and advised regulators and membership bodies on all aspects of professionalism and boundaries.  She has authored books and chapters on ethics and therapeutic relationship and produced two key reports for the General Osteopathic Council, including, in 2022, Supporting Professionals: Protecting Patients. Shifting the Narrative on Professional Boundaries.  A current reviewer for NIHR studies, and a former Board member of the Health Research Authority, Julie is an advocate of evidence-informed healthcare, and the importance of co-production with experts by experience.  Non-Executive Director of an NHS Commissioner (to 2013) and an NHS Mental Health/Community Provider Trust (to 2023), she has promoted trauma-informed practice, Freedom to Speak Up, and staff wellbeing initiatives.  She seeks to embed moral courage into professional training to help protect against burnout and moral injury.  As a Professional Conduct panel member and policy advisor her work is directed towards prevention of harm towards patients and colleagues whilst simultaneously supporting healthcare practitioners. 

Fiona is an Integrative Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist and Adult Counsellor with a background in law, and experience of supervising and training counsellors and psychotherapists.   She is the Ethics Lead for the College for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapies (CCAP). Her engagement on the Ethics Committee reflects her interest not only in our psychotherapeutic offer but also in our ethical reflexivity about how we practice and how this supports us to be with complexity and uncertainty.

Natalie is an ethicist, policy advisor and educator. She works at the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, a leading independent policy and research centre and the foremost bioethics body in the UK, leading their programme of work on ethical issues arising from developments in neuroscience and psychology. Over the course of her career to date across regulation and ethics, she has led a government-commissioned review, as well as designing and leading multiple research programmes, delivering ethics training to healthcare professionals and advising on legislation, professional standards and education policy. Natalie has a wide range of research interests - from clinical culture to political theatre - and is co-chair of the Institute of Medical Ethics’ Postgraduate Committee. In her spare time, she is a director of a small social enterprise which hosts community well-being events and provides training and employment for adults with mental health challenges.

Helen Miskin has been registered with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapists (UKCP) since 2013. She is also an accredited member of the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP), a member of EMDR Association, and the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online (ACTO). Helen works as a psychotherapist, supervisor, and tutor using person-centred, psychodynamic, EMDR, and existential analysis, often in an integration.

Helen has worked in the NHS for over 20 years in total, the last 10+ years have been as a counsellor and supervisor in the primary care sector, alongside and in NHS Talking Therapies. She has taught and managed counselling and psychotherapy training courses, delivers workshops and runs her private practice, ‘embodied understanding’.

Helen has worked with charities for nearly 15 years, in a variety of capacities including counsellor, manager, business planning and policy writing. She has worked with Marches Counselling Service, in Herefordshire, since her training, and also with a number of other charities, including a being trustee and chairperson at The Family Place Foundation.

Promoting ethical practice has been an important part of all the roles she has worked in. Applying a principle to practice, to real-life examples, is one of the most important and valuable aspects of her work.

Melanie Carter is a lawyer specialising in professional regulation and public law. She has practised in her field for over 30 years and is ranked in the Hall of Fame for professional discipline in the Legal 500. During that time, she was the Director of Standards for the General Optical Council, sat as a Judge in standards of conduct for local government councillors, sat as a legal assessor on professional conduct cases and written many codes of conduct for different professions. She has worked for many years as a lawyer for different bodies representing those in the psychotherapy and psychoanalytical fields. She has experience of different modalities as a user of the services of members of UKCP and is a strong supporter of the important role of the profession. 

Susan Whitby is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist who has worked in the NHS (IAPT) Talking Therapies and the higher education sector for many years. In addition to holding clinical roles, she has experience improving team effectiveness for the Department of Health. There, she worked as a clinical team facilitator on a change management programme, supporting failing teams within the NHS to develop new capacity and skills.

In recent years, she has led and managed university student and staff counselling services. She has developed and shaped strategy within broader student wellbeing services, including implementing a whole-university approach to mental health that aims to work preventatively. She has also promoted new staff and student wellbeing initiatives within complex organisations.

She has acted as an educator, writing and delivering workshops and trainings on various mental health-related issues. She has also sat on steering committees in an advisory capacity, taking up a position of good practice to support further understanding of boundaries, managing own and other’s anxiety and containment within the organisational, team and individual context.

She has supervised clinically across modality and supported those working in frontline services with emotionally demanding roles to take up their authority and find another perspective. Promoting ethical practice is at the heart of her understanding of upholding the reputation of psychotherapy and those working to support others.

Marine Vernet is a counselling psychologist and psychotherapist in training, currently completing her doctorate at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. She is an accredited registrant member of the National Counselling Psychotherapy Society (NCPS). She holds a first-class bachelor’s degree in psychology with criminology and previously studied medicine and public health for two years before shifting her focus to psychology. Marine also holds a certificate in mental health leadership from the Harvard School of Public Health. Her interests are shaping policy to drive meaningful transformation in mental health care.

Alongside her doctoral studies, Marine is gaining diverse clinical experiences across multiple placements, including private practice, online therapy services and a charity organisation. Her research has explored the impact of social media on identity and her current thesis examines romantic relationships and erotic transference. As a trainee, she is particularly engaged in promoting ethical practice, recognising the unique position of learning ethical practices in theory and simultaneously striving to implement them in real-world settings. This dual perspective allows her to engage deeply with the complexities of ethical decision-making and share insights with fellow trainees. She is particularly interested in how ethical principles are taught, understood and applied. She is committed to fostering dialogue on navigating ethical dilemmas in psychological practice.

Carina Badger has been a solicitor for over 20 years and has broad experience in commercial law, particularly data privacy and intellectual property. Having moved to Manchester in 2017, she re-trained as a person-centred counsellor and is currently a trainee psychotherapist in the final stages of training in integrative transactional analysis with the Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy. She has a private practice in South Manchester. 

Carina has a broad and diverse experience in governance roles, particularly in the LGBTQIA+ sector and is passionate about equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. Carina is particularly interested in developing an ethical lens through training and supervision.

Christopher’s clinical background and training is in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and mentalisation based therapy. He is the principal psychotherapist in an NHS community mental health team and runs a reflective practice group for trainee clinical psychologists in a university. His roles have encompassed working in an adult community and inpatient services, including working in forensic mental health. He has worked with patients presenting with a range of complaints and difficulties, from personality disorder to psychosis. He has also facilitated reflective practice groups in teams. 

Christopher’s interest in ethics began whilst studying philosophy for his undergraduate degree, and subsequently, completing a master’s in psychology, which investigated the development of moral thinking in children. Christopher is interested in how clinicians and organisations can get stuck when understanding and responding to ethical dilemmas, such as breaking confidentiality, boundaries, managing risk and understanding and responding to complaints. Underlying this is a curiosity in the relationship between the ethics of psychoanalysis and public ethics.

Augusta is an Integrative adult psychotherapist with a background in the criminal justice system.  She also works as a psychotherapy tutor at Regent’s University London. She teaches ethics on the existential pathway and has previously worked as a fourth-year primary tutor on the Metanoia integrative programme.  Augusta has worked as a psychotherapist in the NHS and voluntary sectors and currently works in private practice.