Mental Health in Schools Conference

Hannah is Head of Training and Service Design at YoungMinds and has been with the charity for 8 years. Hannah’s team work to equip trusted adults with the tools they need to support young people’s mental health and champion the meaningful participation of young people in the services that are there to help them.

Hannah has over 18 years of experience in the young people’s charity sector having worked for the National Youth Advocacy Service, ChildLine, NSPCC, Kidscape and Parliament’s Education Service. Hannah is passionate about supporting young people, and the adults around them, to have the best possible mental health outcomes.

With nearly 30 years in the classroom, many years on SLT and eight as Deputy Headteacher, Andrew Cowley can draw upon his experience of teaching in every year group across the primary school range and upon leadership of a number of subject areas and a range of initiatives in changing educational times. Andrew now supports the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools as a coach, both on the School Mental Health Award and on the Senior Designated Mental Health Leader programme.  He also serves as chair of governors at a primary school in his local area. Andrew speaks at live events and on podcasts and webinars as well as being a guest blogger for a number of educational and mental health providers.  Andrew has written three books on wellbeing and mental health: The Wellbeing Toolkit discusses strategies for leading staff wellbeing in schools; The Wellbeing Curriculum sets the case for why and how we can embed wellbeing across our primary schools; The School Mental Health Toolkit is due to be published early in 2025. All are published by Bloomsbury Education.

Niki is a trained counsellor who joined Place2Be in 2002 as a School Project Manager before moving into the Learning Team, where she co-authored Place2Be’s Postgraduate Diploma course. As Head of Learning, she developed Place2Be’s professional qualifications pathway. She was appointed Clinical Director in 2019.

Place2Be is the UK’s leading third sector provider of school-based mental health support. Place2Be’s mental health practitioners are embedded within the school community, helping schools understand, identify and address mental health problems early on. This enables schools to support to children and young people, helping them to focus on their learning and giving them the tools to cope with life’s challenges and to thrive.

Jon is the visionary CEO and founder behind the renowned international school wellbeing platform, youHQ.co.uk. With qualifications in sports and exercise science, psychotherapy, and hypnotherapy, Jon brings a unique blend of knowledge and insight to the table. Following the successful sale of his previous venture, Jon has devoted the past five years to crafting innovative tools aimed at fostering holistic wellbeing within educational institutions.

Ben Levinson OBE is Director of School and Trust Improvement and Executive Headteacher at The Tapscott Learning Trust. In the Trust, he has led Kensington Primary School to flagship status in all manner of areas from inclusion to wellbeing. Under his leadership the school launched an innovative new curriculum, specifically developed to provide the best outcomes for children and prepare them for life in the 21st Century. Kensington was Primary School of the Year and Mental Health and Wellbeing School of the Year in 2020.

He has advised the Department for Education on workload and wellbeing and was part of the Expert Advisory Group responsible for the Education Staff Wellbeing Charter. He is a National Leader of Education, Chair of Well Schools, a Board member for Thrive at Five and an ambassador for the Youth Sport Trust, the British Council, and TeachActive.

Kate is an Operational Manger for CAMHS in Somerset managing the Mental Health Support Team which is part of the CAMHS Early Intervention service.

She is a mental health nurse by background and has worked for CAMHS for 20 years in various roles including Tier 4 Inpatient services, Enhanced outreach team, Community CAMHS and schools projects.

Kate is very passionate about early interventions work and working along side schools to help improve Mental Health for students, staff and parents/carers.

Katie is Programme Manager at Fullscope, a consortium of leading organisations supporting the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Fullscope delivers pilot projects, does research and works closely with other organisations to instigate system change. Recent work has included Ask Me How I Am, a film about self-harm co-created with young people with lived experience, alongside the development of accompanying resources and workshops for professionals. Katie is passionate about ensuring that young people’s voices are central to conversations around young people’s mental health.

Prior to joining Fullscope, Katie was Projects and Development Manager for a leading children’s theatre company, leading on education and wellbeing-focused outreach work. Katie has nearly 20 years’ experience of project work within the public sector, arts and education.

Maxine O’Neill is a psychologically responsive Headteacher and lead for the HEARTs project with significant experience with trauma informed schooling.  Maxine is passionate about the outcomes for children who find the traditional education system difficult to access and works across a number of schools in the Liverpool region in support of those children. Maxine has a particular focus on children with PDA.

Helen Barnes works at Mayden, a health tech company whose life’s work is creating digital technology that changes what’s possible for clinicians and patients. She brings the principles from her background in the voluntary sector to projects to improve health outcomes for children and young people.

Over the last few years, she has been focusing her efforts on helping Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) across the country find technology that genuinely works for their service, improves the lives of clinicians and allows children and young people greater access to the support they need.

Jo has over 30 year’s experience of working with children and young people in a full range of community, health and educational settings, eventually re-training as a counsellor and running a service in a multi-academy trust. She now works for the largest counselling and psychotherapy membership body as the children, young people and families lead and campaigns for access to Government funded counselling across all schools and colleges in England.

Sam Smith brings extensive experience in safeguarding and a strong commitment to improving mental health provisions across diverse settings. His professional background as a frontline police officer compelled him to establish a campaign for reshaping mental health standards within law enforcement. Later, he specialised in children’s safeguarding to shield vulnerable youth from exploitation.

As an Education Advocate and Development Manager at R;pple Suicide Prevention Charity, Sam collaborates with education providers to help them protect students and staff from harmful online content. He is a passionate advocate for transformative changes in mental health awareness and suicide prevention within the sector.

Letizia Perna is a psychotherapist, clinical social worker and supervisor with almost 20 years of experience in the non-profit/third sector focusing specifically on grief, loss and bereavement. Presently, she is the Director of Services and Service Transformation at Winston’s Wish, the UK’s first childhood bereavement charity, where her clinical leadership is helping transform grief support for the under 25s in the digital space. Letizia is a creative and compassionate clinician with a special interest in research, tech and innovation.

After completing his degree in The Teaching of English and career as an American Football player at The University of Illinois in the USA, Stephen Steinhaus turned down a professional wrestling contract to move as a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom to study for an MPhil in Shakespeare Studies and English Literature at the University of Birmingham.

Steinhaus has now lived in England for 24 years. and, in April 2018 he opened Solihull Academy (an Alternative Provision Free School for students in danger of Permanent Exclusion). In the nearly six years since then the Academy has continued to expand and became a Multi-Academy trust in September 2022. In his spare time, he is or has been a singer and songwriter, music director and presenter of a number of festivals, a founding trustee director of The Institute for Recovery from Childhood Trauma, and a published poet. He has also blogged on a variety of educational, fitness and musical topics.

Martin Staniforth has facilitated the Dove Self-Esteem Project, since its foundation in 2004, helping to create body image resources for teachers, youth leaders and parents that have been used with over 94 million young people around the world.  He co-leads Creative Beings CIC, a social enterprise that cultivates creative practices to promote wellbeing, working with groups including people with brain injuries, contemporary dancers and schools.

Martin lives in Devon where he has a parallel existence as a sculptor.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, is involved in planting a Food Forest and another project to replace a larch wood with 1,000 native hardwood trees.

Hannah is Head of Training and Service Design at YoungMinds and has been with the charity for 8 years. Hannah’s team work to equip trusted adults with the tools they need to support young people’s mental health and champion the meaningful participation of young people in the services that are there to help them.

Hannah has over 18 years of experience in the young people’s charity sector having worked for the National Youth Advocacy Service, ChildLine, NSPCC, Kidscape and Parliament’s Education Service. Hannah is passionate about supporting young people, and the adults around them, to have the best possible mental health outcomes.