I am a seasoned and experienced expert witness with over 18 years’ experience in Family Law and Care Proceedings (parental mental health, adolescents, and children), including being instructed in over six hundred Care Proceedings cases.
I understand that solicitors and Judges rely on me to provide analytic rigor and objectivity in my area of niche expertise. However, I also appreciate that the Courts need reports that are inductive, comprehensive and evidence based. Each family case that I am instructed on receives full diligence, relying on a context driven scientist-practitioner approach to my investigation, and above all, a professional, clinical and therapeutic analysis of all the information and variables. Assessments need to be both highly sensitive but objective, building the clinical formulation from the bottom-up, based on inductive reasoning (and not on any a priori theory hypothesized by parties). My depth of experience and training with Cardiff Law school also affords me the ability to withstand cross examination when giving evidence and to provide helpful and objective evidence in Court.
I also have nearly 20 years’ experience providing psychological therapeutic services specializing in working with families with a history of non-accidental injury to the child and collaborating with non-offending parents in cases of abuse (protective skills work). My entire therapy caseload consists of parents who are on rehabilitation plans in relation to their children. Therefore, because I specialize in working with parents therapeutically, I am also appropriately placed as an expert to be instructed in terms of any therapeutic recommendations that may be required for Care Proceedings, pre-proceedings or private Family Law assessments.
Expert Witness Specialisms
Care Proceedings (Public and Private Law)
- Systemic and global family assessments
- Psychological assessments of children aged 7 and above (specialising in attachment-based assessments)
- Offending behaviour and risk analysis (risks of physical, sexual and emotional abuse to the child)
- Adolescent – systemic assessment
- Substance misusing parents
- Non-accidental injury to the child and protective skills with non-abusing parents
- Impact of parenting stress and coping upon parenting competency
- Personality disorders (specialism borderline personality disorder)
- Interpersonal partner violence and abuse (both perpetrators and victims)
- Adult attachment and parent-child attachment
- The unique developmental challenges of young parents (including care leavers as parents)
- Cognitive assessment and capacity to instruct
- Child Contact Resistance – including protracted and acrimonious separation processes
- Observation of contact – attachment style (parent to child)
- Maternal mental health – perinatal and postnatal emotional health
- Fabricated illness
- Impact of childhood experiences of trauma and abuse upon parenting in adulthood
- Culturally specific assessments (specializing with parents of Muslim faith)
- Extensive clinical experience of providing evidence based psychological therapies tailored to the needs of the parent, but with outcomes which are likely to impact on the parent-child relationship and overall care of the child, thereby reducing risk
- Potential for change/engagement in relation to therapeutic recommendations
- Transitioning difficulties and adjustment to parenthood
- Risk assessment of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) in relation to adolescents
- Systemic Family Assessments (parents and children)
- Adjustment issues (parent and child) – parents whose children suffer from a chronic life-threatening disease (e.g., cancer)
- Assessment of children aged 7 upwards – developmental trauma and loss, systemic assessments
- Autism Child assessments – ADOS-2
- Adolescent Gender Diversity assessments
- Clinical supervisor to a grade 8b psychologist working in a Forensic Child Care setting
Local Authority Referrers for Assessments and Therapy
- Reading Borough Council
- Bracknell Forest
- Maidenhead and Windsor
- Slough Children Forest
- Gloucestershire LEA
- Slough Children First
- Telford and Wrekin
- Sandwell Safeguarding Partnership
- Birmingham Children’s trust
- Action for Children
- National Youth Advocacy Service
- Shropshire Council
- Pembrokeshire LA
- Ceredigion LA
- Powys
- Denbighshire LA
- Conwy LA
- Local Authority : Cheshire West and Cheshire (Children and Families Team)
- Gwynedd (Children and Families Team)
- CAFCASS – Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. (Cheshire and Merseyside)
- Ynys Mon Anglesey LA