Who we are

Our leadership team brings many years of experience and specialist training, to the complex and often challenging circumstances and needs that both our communities and our multi-professional workforce encounter.

We are proud of the clinical leaders who comprise our team who bring exceptional expertise to our offers of therapeutic care, exceptional training and the psychotherapeutic innovations we inspire and lead. Our expertise is broad as we have embraced social care leaders; educational psychology and systems change and innovation expertise.

Dr Abigail Miranda

Head of Early Years and Prevention

I am the Head of Early Years and Prevention (EYP) and lead the EYP department. I am an Educational and Child Psychologist who specialises in the early years, having completed my doctorate at UCL. Before joining Anna Freud, I worked in the local authority, managing the Early Years special needs practitioners and providing support at schools, nurseries and children's centres. I sit on the Safeguarding Oversight Group.

Dr Alice Haynes

Deputy Head of Early Years - Systems

I am an early years specialist with an interest in families, public health, early intervention and public policy. I specialised in the perinatal period and child neglect at the NSPCC, and was Development Manager for the national A Better Start programme, which aims to promote good early childhood development in economically deprived areas of England. I gained a PhD in social work and psychology at Anna Freud for Research on Children and Families at the UEA. I represent Anna Freud on the First 1001 Days Movement Steering Group.

Claudia Coussins

Deputy Head of Early Years - Policy and Practice

My background in the non-profit and statutory sectors is in evidence-based service management and design. My areas of expertise include: working with parents and carers who have experienced trauma; children and families using services that intersect with the Education and Children’s Social Care sectors; and using research and practice to inform national policy. At Anna Freud, I lead the National Centre for Family Hubs, Early Years in Mind, and other policy and practice projects rooted in the Early Years. My work focuses on system design and how to make policy and research useful for system leaders and practitioners working with infants, children, young people and families. This includes recognising and challenging the deeply embedded structural inequalities in mental health and other services.

Dr Sheila Redfern

Head of Family Trauma Department

I am the Head of our Family Trauma Department in the Clinical Division at Anna Freud where I lead a multi-disciplinary team of therapists. I have been at Anna Freud for 8 years and before this I worked for 20 years as an NHS consultant clinical psychologist in CAMHS across London. I specialize in working on developing and delivering interventions for parents and carers and in working therapeutically with children in care, on the edge of care or in adopted families. My area of interest is in mentalization based approaches for both professionals and families. I established and ran an MBT-A service for self-harming adolescents in CAMHS. I am trained to advanced level in MBT and is a listed practitioner. I am an accredited MBT-A (Adolescent) practitioner and supervisor, an accredited Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) practitioner. I train professionals in mentalization interventions, particularly group-based ones. I have an interest in children and young people who are neurodivergent and am trained in a wide range of assessment tools including Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS), Autism Diagnostic Interview, Story Stems, Child Attachment Interview (CAI) and the Parent Development Interview (PDI). I innovated the Reflective Parenting and Reflective Fostering model to use with parents and carers individually and in groups where there are difficulties in the relationship. I have extensive experience of court assessments particularly in relation to care proceedings. Areas of expertise: Assessing attachment relationships, distinction between attachment and ASD disorders, Video Interaction Guidance (VIG), MBT-A, Reflective Parenting, Reflective Fostering. I have published a book for parents, Reflective Parenting: A guide to understanding what’s going on in your child’s mind.

Dr Theresa Schwaiger

Deputy Head of the Family Trauma Clinical Department

I am a senior Clinical Psychologist and Deputy Head of the Family Trauma Clinical Department. As part of this role, I develop and lead on interventions for parents and foster carers, as well as on projects that identify and address the needs of unaccompanied and separated children and young people. I originally trained as Clinical and Health Psychologist in Vienna, Austria before I completed my professional doctorate at University College London. I have worked with complex childhood and adult trauma for over 15 years and have expertise in providing assessment and treatment for refugees and asylum seekers, people experiencing homelessness and children/adults with history of attachment disruption, abuse and neglect. Apart from my Mentalization-Based Treatment work with children and families, I offer Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR; an evidence-based trauma therapy), and I have a particular interest in parent/carer-child EMDR with small children aged 2 to 7 years. I also act as an expert witness in front of the family court. I am an Honorary Teaching Fellow at UCL, and I regularly offer training and supervision to different professional groups. I am committed to disseminating learning from clinical research via conferences and peer-reviewed journals.

Anna Kennett

Head of Operations – Clinical Division

I am the Head of Operations in the Clinical Division. I have worked in the charity and healthcare sector for nearing 20 years and have specific experience in health and social care regulation. I am a member of Anna Freud's clinical governance and safeguarding oversight groups, and I am the Registered Manager for the Care Quality Commission (CQC). As part of my role, I monitor the systems and processes we have in place to ensure safe, effective, and equitable care for all. I also manage the clinical support team and have business and operational oversight within the Family Trauma team and other clinical projects.

Dr Dickon Bevington

Medical Director, Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Caldicott Guardian, Safeguarding Lead, Consultant to AMBIT Programme

As Medical Director and Consultant in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, I offer medical/psychiatric support (consultations and assessments) to clinicians across Anna Freud, and oversee the appraisal and revalidation of other medical staff employed at the Anna Freud. I chair the Safeguarding Oversight Group which oversees staff training and the safeguarding systems that are in place across Anna Freud. As Caldicott Guardian I act as the ‘conscience’ of the organisation in relation to questions about data-sharing, especially as this relates to patients and families. I have co-led the development of the AMBIT programme with Dr Peter Fuggle, which supports teams around the world in working with complex risky client groups and have published a wide range of material on this work as well as reviewing evidence-based practice. In parallel to my work at AFNCCF, I have worked continuously for 30 years in the NHS, focusing on young people with multiple and intersecting needs, who present with high risk and are frequently underserved by mainstream services. I am a father of three.

Dr Laura Talbot

Joint AMBIT Programme Lead

I jointly lead the AMBIT (Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment) Programme. AMBIT is a framework that supports teams to improve their capacity to help clients who have multiple needs and who may find professional help hard to trust. AMBIT works with a wide range of teams and services across the health, social care, justice, education and community sectors both nationally and internationally. We disseminate AMBIT via several methods, including training, post-training implementation support, supervision, consultation, evaluation activities and strategic partnerships. I qualified as a Clinical Psychologist in 2010 and have since specialised in working with young people and their families in community outreach services. I worked as a therapist on the Multi-Systemic Therapy START trial in the UK and have also held clinical lead roles in a range of innovative multi-agency projects. This has included working in an edge of care team for adolescents in Children’s Social Care, in a youth-led multi-agency project for young people who are gang affected and in a local authority multi-agency team to prevent the permanent exclusion of children and young people from mainstream education. I am committed to focusing on how we can apply what we learn from young people, families and frontline workers to the design and adaptation of helping approaches to ensure that they are accessible, inclusive and effective for those who experience multiple forms of marginalisation, oppression and exclusion in our society.

Liz Cracknell

Joint AMBIT Programme Lead

I am the Joint Programme Lead for AMBIT at Anna Freud. As a Mental Health Nurse and Systemic Practitioner, I have specialised in work with young people with multiple, risky problems, in both outreach and secure settings, utilising the AMBIT approach. I have contributed to a number of key publications and the development of AMBIT and have trained and consulted with hundreds of workers in AMBIT in the UK and internationally.

Mark Carter MA MSc MACP

Operational Lead for the Child Psychotherapy Service

I am the operational lead for the Child Psychotherapy Service at Anna Freud. I trained at Anna Freud as a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist and I have worked in the NHS for 22 years. I currently also hold the Child Psychotherapy Discipline Lead Post in an NHS Child and Adolescent NHS Mental Health Service and I teach on a Masters programme and on a Child Psychotherapy Training. My interests include the relationship between Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis, psychotherapy with young people with neuro-developmental disability, play and stories in clinical work and the theory and clinical practice of Mentalisation.

Annabel Kitson

Senior Therapist - Psychotherapy

I am a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (MACP). I have worked in London for over twenty-five years with young adults, teens, children, and families and have a core psychoanalytic training, as well as having been trained in a variety of psychological therapies to work across the age range. I have been the Clinical Lead for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy for the last nine years where I head up the Psychotherapy Team and Service (CPS) at Anna Freud. As part of my leadership role, I oversee the training, supervision, and conference planning of this team of psychotherapists and trainers. My team also have a core psychoanalytic training and can provide assessments, brief, and long-term therapeutic help for a variety of emotional and psychological problems. As well as helping individuals and families, the Psychotherapy team also provide consultations to professionals, supervision, training, and conferences.

Dr Roslyn Law

Consultant Clinical Psychologist

I am a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and have been working with children, adolescents and adults for over 25 years. I specialise in work with relationship-based therapies, like Interpersonal Psychotherapy (IPT), Cognitive Analytic Therapy and Mentalization based approaches. I also lead on delivering a national programme of training and supervision in IPT for adults experiencing depression and modified versions for adolescents and pre-adolescents. This allows me to work with and learn from therapists working across the UK and internationally. In my work, I am interested in how the way we feel interacts with and responds to the people around us. I think of therapy as a way of restating the problem in a way that allow for solutions and recruiting the right team to support change. I feel fortunate in being able to find different ways to offer support to families, sometimes working with young people, sometimes with their parents and carers and sometimes all of us together. I have published two self-help books, based on IPT, to help adults and young people to help themselves to recover from depression and difficult times with the support of the people in their lives.

Dr Emma Morris

Consultant Clinical Psychologist

I am a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and I currently hold the position of Senior Clinician in the Family Trauma Team and Clinical Lead for Parental Conflict and Mentalisation Based Treatment for Children at Anna Freud. In my role I deliver therapy and support others doing the same, and I work with different teams to develop and test out new types of interventions. I have worked as a clinician for over 20 years in both the NHS and the charity sector. I specialise in work with children, young people and families who are struggling with things like anxiety, depression, relational trauma, parenting and family relationship difficulties. I use different approaches in my work, including mentalization-based therapies, systemic family therapy, multi-family therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy. I have over 15 years’ experience as an expert witness to the Family Court. I have held leadership roles in relation to CAMHS transformation and care pathways within the NHS and service development within the charity sector. I am interested in how we describe and capture change in mental health, and I am committed to improving the accessibility and effectiveness of psychological interventions across different social and cultural groups. I regularly provide teaching, training and consultation/ supervision across clinical and academic settings on a range of topics including mentalization-based therapy for children and families, multi-family therapy, parental conflict and the assessment of parenting. I have published research in peer reviewed journals and co-authored a book on parental conflict.

Katherine Mautner

Social Worker and Play Therapist

I am a Social Worker and Play Therapist who has been working with children, young people and families with complex needs for 20 years. My work has a strong focus on attachment and trauma and is informed by mentalization-based approaches. I currently hold the position of Senior Clinician within the Family Trauma Team. As well as developing and leading the Adoption and Special guardianship and Family Trauma Assessment and Treatment projects, I work therapeutically with individual children, parent-child pairs and family groups. I undertake assessments and therapy with families where children are on the edge of care or have been through the care system. I provide individual and group supervision, including to a London CAMHS team and teaches social workers, child mental health professionals and teachers on post graduate courses including those run by Anna Freud/University College London. I also deliver a number of professional training courses through Anna Freud and am a practitioner, supervisor and trainer for mentalization-based therapy for children (MBT-C).