Your speakers
Dr Elena Alexandrou, Consultant Clinical Psychologist
Dr Elena Alexandrou is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist with over 18 years’ experience in mental health services. She has worked on a number of projects within health, forensic, social care and in the charity sector alongside young men impacted by youth violence, in pupil referral units, with survivors of the Grenfell Tower Fire and in specialist services for refugees and asylum seekers who have been displaced by war and experienced human rights violations. Most recently, she has worked in a number of secondary care services alongside adults with severe and enduring mental health distress.
Elena currently holds an NHS post as a complex trauma lead based in East London working as part of a team leading on the implementation of trauma informed approaches and therapeutic provision to residents with complex trauma presentations. She also holds a post in Oxford leading a staff wellbeing service that offers psychological support to NHS employees who are experiencing burnout, moral injury and/or work-related PTSD.
Elena is a Chartered member of the BPS and an affiliated supervisor for the London and Thames Valley clinical psychology doctorate courses at University College London, Royal Holloway and the University of East London. She is a Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET) trainer, accredited EMDR Practitioner and committed to improving access to trauma focused therapies for people with trauma spectrum conditions.
She is a founder member of London ACEs Hub, a CIC that work to enhance the recognition and understanding of Adverse Childhood Experiences across London and beyond and a Trustee for Derman, a charity that offer holistic health and social care services for the Turkish, Kurdish and Turkish Cypriot community in North London.
Ben Curtis, Senior Strategic Co-ordinator Trauma Informed Practice, Barnardo’s (and the West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit)
Ben Curtis has 10 years of experience working in education in a variety of schools, teaching history and working in pastoral roles as a Head of House. He has an MA in Educational Innovation from Warwick University and has contributed to published work on exam technique.
Ben has spent three years working as a Strategic Co-ordinator for Trauma Informed Practice with Barnardo’s, a project commissioned by the West Midlands Violence Reduction Unit. The project has trained over 3500 people from over 450 organisations and assisted numerous organisations in beginning to embed trauma-informed practice in their organisational culture.
Ben has also worked to provide consultancy to the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Violence Reduction Network and Barnardo’s in training their entire early help workforce in trauma informed practice over the last year.
Professor David Shemmings OBE, Emeritus Professor of Child Protection Research
Professor Shemmings is the author of more than 60 articles, books and chapters on relationally-based social work theory, research and practice.
Currently, Professor Shemmings leads the Advanced Child Protection stream within the West London Alliance Post-qualifying Initiative (involving eight London boroughs) and directs the Attachment and Relationship-based Practice training in 40 child protection organisations across the UK and Europe.
He is also visiting Professor of Child Protection Research at Royal Holloway College, University of London.
Professor Shemmings qualified as a teacher in 1974 at the University of Sussex and worked with traumatised children for a number of years before becoming a Senior Policy Adviser in services to children and families to the Director of Social Services in Essex, and then Deputy Director of Social Services in Southend. He then spent 17 years lecturing at the University of East Anglia before becoming Professor of Social Work Research at Middlesex University in 2005. He joined the University of Kent as Professor of Social Work in 2007. He was also Deputy Head of the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research from 2007-2010.
Professor Shemmings has an advanced post-graduate qualification from Cambridge Institute of Education and a Master’s degree and PhD from the University of East Anglia. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 2014 for 'Services to Child Protection'.
