Society news: Practitioners of the Year

Emma Donaldson-Feilder, Rachel Lewis and Hamilton Fairfax are the joint recipients of the Professional Practice Board's Award for Practitioner of the Year 2014.

The award recognises, promotes and rewards good practice by Chartered Members of the Society by acknowledging their achievements in the preceding 12 months.

Donaldson-Feilder and Dr Lewis received the award jointly for their research, with colleagues at Affinity Health at Work (Rachel also works at Kingston Business School), which looked at how best to support and develop managers to create sustainable employee engagement, health and well-being. The research brought together two existing frameworks of management behaviours and competencies that enhance engagement and prevent and reduce employee stress. More recently, the research has taken an evidence-based approach to developing line managers' capability.

The initial work led to the creation of a freely available framework setting out what managers need to do to encourage engagement in their teams, whilst at the same time preventing stress and protecting well-being. The recent research has helped organisations to improve the effectiveness of their management development programmes.

The award was also conferred on Dr Hamilton Fairfax for his development of innovative therapeutic techniques when working with complex clients. In 2012 Dr Fairfax and colleague Dr Frances Gillies developed the Adaptation-based Process Therapy (APT), an integrative group-based approach for complex clients, especially those with a personality disorder diagnosis and another medical condition.   

Dr Fairfax practised and developed this intervention in North Devon NHS Services and is now furthering his work as Professional Lead of Psychological Services in the Torbay region in South Devon. Aware that this particular work was producing good therapeutic outcomes he co-facilitated and supervised a successful obsessive compulsive disorder group for complex clients.