Meet your candidates in the running to be the next Section Chair

As the chair of the Health and Wellbeing Board, I have provided public health leadership and governance at the highest level, including information, advice, and budgetary support for population health. The Emerald Literati Awards have Highly commended my research paper. The British Medical Journal has published my work. I have expertise in user-led qualitative, creative visual and participatory research. I have contributed to the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights OHCHR 2018/19.

I was the Chair of the British Psychological Society Community Psychology Conference 2022. My Unframed Lives Project received a certificate of achievement from the Festival of Learning supported by the Department for Education.

As a community psychologist, the values of CP are important to me and to support current and aspiring community psychologists. We need more local and regional CP-based events.

I represent Brighton and Hove City Council at Sussex Health and Care Assembly, an Integrated Care System (ICS) serving more than 1.7 million people. We work in partnership across Sussex, as well as within and across our populations of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex and West Sussex. I am a governor for the NHS hospitals across Sussex. I ran large budgets and had to make executive decisions on health and social care budgets.

Being part of the Community Psychology and Critical Psychology communities for the last 10 years has felt like a safe haven for me as a clinical psychologist. I want to continue being a champion of this Section and its members, as others have done for me, and for my hope that change is possible. I believe wholeheartedly in the importance of continuing to advocate for our ideas and values as community psychologists through creating opportunities for connection, collaboration and opening brave, passionate dialogues within the Section and beyond. As the organiser of the 9th Community Psychology Festival due to take place 17-19 October 2025 (consider this a save the date!) I recognise the importance of this festival and similar events in raising our profile and widening access to critical community psychology ideas and best practice. As Chair, I will champion running more smaller scale events such as webinars, discussion groups, and local gatherings within the Section to keep the conversation flowing between festivals. As in previous BPS committee roles I have held, I will use my voice within the BPS to ensure community psychology is on the agenda and not lost in institutional inertia. I will seek opportunities to collaborate with other groups within and outside of the BPS. I will advocate for wider dissemination of best practice through the continued creation of guidance and frameworks, as I have demonstrated in my current work contributing to the development of BPS guidance on community psychology placements. I will also advocate for a community psychology presence in future editions of The Psychologist magazine and special issues in BPS journals.

A sense of solidarity and connectedness can be felt in many ways; through online discussions, in person gatherings, pieces of literature and art, and in the simple act of receiving a regular newsletter. Creating accessible and inclusive spaces and opportunities to connect is important to me. To support these efforts, I would advocate for more online and in person events to bring people together, as well as greater communication with the membership. I will champion running more smaller scale events such as webinars, discussion groups, and local gatherings within the Section to expand opportunities for connection between festivals each year.  Improving communications and outreach to members is an important part of building community as it works to cultivate a sense of being part of something bigger with likeminded people.

I have used creative and outside the box thinking to help cultivate growth in our community in an inclusive and accessible way in a number of different settings. In my role coordinating the East Anglia branch of Psychologists for Social Change, I have used networking and organisational skills to bring different people with similar goals together in common cause. I am a creative person who often comes up with many new ideas, matched with my strong passion of creating connections with and between people through events (e.g. Practicing Social Justice Work as a Trainee Psychologist; and Black Minds in Mental Health). Communication, empathy and collaboration skills allow me to navigate complex issues of power, for example in 2019 I co-founded and co-developed a doctoral Equality Diversity Inclusion committee with trainees, doctoral staff, local psychologists and community members through which we created lasting structural changes. I'm confident in using social media and communication tools, knowing the importance these have in growing networks and being an accessible route into our community for a more diverse audience.

Transparency, accessibility, and good communication are fundamental to me in building confidence from the membership. To build trust, I support the need for openness on matters such as budget, committee activity, and general Section and BPS activities to our members. Through this trust, I hope members will gain confidence in our community and what it stands for. I would like to advocate for greater and easier accessibility to members - opening up to allow members to share their views and get involved in projects the Section may be running or want to run. I will look for new opportunities to engage with members, facilitating more open communications across the committee and between members. Through these conversations I hope to engender confidence in our members about our common cause and efforts that can drive real change in the profession as well as in the lives of those we work with. In all my actions to champion, cultivate growth and build community I strive towards our common goal - turning our ideas into action!