Dr Rachel James
Rachel is a co-author of the THRIVE Framework for system change (Wolpert et al., 2019) and the Clinical and Programme Director for the National i-THRIVE Programme, involved in supporting the national implementation of the THRIVE Framework.
Rachel is the Clinical Services Director at The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and a Consultant Clinical Psychologist, with over 25 years’ experience working with children, young people and their families across the health, social care, education and voluntary sectors, and she has led community, specialist and multi-agency child and adolescent mental health teams within the UK.
Rachel is committed to developing and delivering high-quality services that are evidence-informed, prevent and promote emotional health and wellbeing, and empower children, young people and their families to be actively involved in decisions about their care through shared decision making. Rachel integrates her learning from a UCLPartners Improvement Fellowship into developing ways to embed quality improvement within everyday practice to effect meaningful and sustainable change across systems.
Rose McCarthy
Rose is a Senior Organisational Consultant within National i-THRIVE Programme and is responsible for coordinating the programme of training nationally. Rose is the lead for delivering the i-THRIVE Academy modules to localities across the UK and can develop bespoke packages of training to suit each locality’s needs.
Rose holds a BA Hons in Psychology, an MA in Social Work and she is also a trained Video-feedback intervention to promote positive parenting and sensitive discipline (VIPP-SD) practitioner with the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust.
Rose’s background is in social care and she has over 15 years of experience working with children in need of protection and supporting children at every stage through their adoption journey. Rose has extensive experience of training and assessing prospective adopters and is passionate about improving outcomes for children, young people and their families.
Rachel Stephen
Rachel is an organisational consultant for the National i-THRIVE programme and supports organisations to implement the THRIVE Framework for System change. She also facilitates i-THRIVE Action Learning Sets, i-THRIVE communities of practice and co-facilitates training on some of the i-THRIVE Academy modules.
Rachel is a registered general nurse with a BSc Hons in community nursing. Rachel spent many years working in Health Visiting where supporting family mental health was fundamental to the role. Later she worked with the Institute of Health Visiting developing and delivering training in infant and perinatal mental health nationally. Rachel also has an MSc in the Psychodynamics of Human Development where she became particularly interested in organisational defences and how systems operate.
Rachel is passionate about mental health and the potential of i-THRIVE to support the change needed across systems so that every child can have a fair chance to ‘thrive’ regardless of their vulnerabilities or challenges.
