Jean Crispin, Chair

Jean is Director of Staff Counselling at the University of Bristol running an internal but independent workplace service for the university's 6000 employees.  Her counselling career began with Relate over 25 years ago and led her into psychotherapy training.  She soon became drawn to short term work in organisational settings and worked in a GP surgery as a counsellor, alongside running a private practice and working for EAPs.  Jean was responsible for setting up a witness service for Victim Support and in 2000 she became a full-time staff counsellor in the Police Service working within an occupational health setting. 

Jean states "As my interest in workplace counselling has developed, BACP Workplace has been a fantastic resource, putting me in touch with practitioners in the field, finding appropriate supervision and supporting me as a service manager.  I have helped to run a local network group over the last few years, and have benefited enormously from the contact with colleagues and the opportunity to form special interest groups in coaching and service management."

As Chair of the Workplace executive committee, Jean is keen to encourage members to get actively involved: through the Journal, at conference, online and through networks.  “We not only want to meet the challenges currently facing the workplace sector, but also raise and develop the profile and identity of workplace counselling. We will be in a good position to do that if we have each other's support, knowledge and expertise to draw on.”

Telephone: 0117 930 0261
E-Mail: jean.crispin@bristol.ac.uk

Anne Scoging, Deputy Chair

Anne is currently the Head of Advisory and Counselling Services for the London Fire Brigade (LFB). This service offers both debt/money advice and counselling to all employees.  The service offers psychological support for the comprehensive range of difficulties that employees can face but also has a focus on providing psychological containment for those attending critical and/or catastrophic incidents as well as working in more depth with complex trauma responses.

Prior to entering the field of counselling and psychotherapy Anne spent over twenty years as a Clinical Scientist working in medical research and has retained a deep interest in researching and finding evidence to support best practice and what really works for our clients.  Anne spent eight years heading up a North London mental health agency delivering holistic services for people with mental health difficulties.

Anne states "I have a particular interest in looking at the range of services that workplace counsellors are often called on to provide today, the complexities of providing an in-house service and the areas in which counselling services can become involved to promote resilience and psychological wellbeing throughout organisational workforces.  I have joined the BACP Workplace committee with a real desire to contribute to the continuing work of developing and promoting best practice across the field, drawn from all our experiences."

Contact Details:
Telephone: 020 85551200 Ext 39563
E-Mail: anne.scoging@london-fire.gov.uk

Kevin Friery, Past Chair

Kevin is the immediate 'Past Chair' of BACP Workplace and is currently Director of Counselling for EAP provider, Right Corecare, having been in post since 2001.  Kevin has worked as a manager in the public, private and voluntary sectors and brings a varied experienced to BACP Workplace. Kevin has established and managed Primary Care Counselling in the NHS and has used CORE in a number of settings. He is BACP registered Counsellor and Trainer, but also has a background as a Behavioural Psychologist. Kevin states he is particularly interested in the development of better training for Counsellors to enable them to engage in the complex contracts that can exist in Workplace Counselling settings and is involved with BACP Workplace because he is keen to see it becoming a strong voice to represent this particular aspect of the Counselling profession.

Andrew Kinder

Andrew stepped down as Chair in June 2008 and is currently serving the Executive in the role of Past Chair. Andrew is a Chartered Occupational & Counselling Psychologist and BACP Accredited Counsellor and has been working as a manager and practitioner within the workplace counselling domain for over 11 years. He is responsible for all professional issues within the area of counselling within Atos Healthcare. Andrew is particularly interested in developing/expanding the role of counsellors within organisations, carrying out organisational stress risk assessments, CPD for workplace counsellors and in the evaluation of workplace counselling. His latest publication with co-authors Rick Hughes & Professor Cary Cooper is ‘Employee Wellbeing Support; a Workplace Resource'. The publisher is John Wiley.

Shirley Cullup

Shirley, a BACP Senior Accredited Counsellor, originally found her way into counselling from a career as a Human Resources Manager with a major brewer. She is now an Independent Practitioner with over 16 years experience of counselling in the workplace. She was elected to the ACW Executive in June 2002 and enjoys the challenge of moving workplace counselling forward. Shirley states "the various activities of BACP Workplace are a great platform for networking both personally and from a corporate aspect."

Currently Shirley has a small private practice in addition to receiving casework from EAP providers, private clients and specialist trauma work.

Contact Details:
Telephone: 01844 281671
Email: shirley.cullup@btinternet.com

Mandy Rutter

Mandy manages a department within AXA-ICAS that specialises in providing both trauma support and a range of ad-hoc counselling and psychological services outside the traditional EAP approach.  She became involved in supporting employees after major disasters and has participated in an EAP working group on developing a new approach to traumatic incidents in response to NICE (2005) guidelines on PTSD. She has experience as a telephone counsellor and case manager within an EAP service.

Originally Mandy trained as a psychologist and after completing her degree spent some time doing academic research.  She realised that she wanted to be with people rather than study them and became a Community Worker; she qualified as a Youth Worker and ran a youth centre on a secondary school campus and worked for 10 years with children, young people, teenage mums and parent groups. Mandy completed her psychodynamic counselling training and moved on campus to become the School Counsellor.  Mandy has also trained as a family mediator working with families in conflict.

Mandy states "I am very excited to be part of the BACP Workplace Executive. We are in incredibly challenging times as counsellors within the workplace... I hope to be able to bring some analytic thoughtfulness to the debate on workplace counselling and other sensitive workplace issues".

Contact Details:
Telephone: 01908 285221
E-Mail: mandy.rutter@axa-icas.com

Nicola Banning

Nicola Banning is an independent counsellor and trainer working with individuals and organisations.  She has particular experience of working with the public sector and has a specialist interest in promoting wellbeing in the workplace. Nicola is experienced at delivering training on issues including managing bullying and harassment, promoting positive working environments, stress management for managers and advocating health and happiness at work. 

She has contributed regular articles to the journal Counselling at Work, and is excited to be joining the BACP Workplace executive. Nicola says: ‘This is a particularly challenging time for counsellors, clients and organisations and the impact of the economic climate is very present in our work.’

Nicola, who has over ten years’ experience in the media industry, having worked as both a television and radio producer for the BBC, is keen to be involved further with BACP Workplace and to contribute to the debates and research which support the economic benefits for promoting wellbeing in the workplace.

Contact Details:
Telephone: 0794 1319127
Email: nicola_banning@yahoo.com

Barry McInnes

Barry practises as an independent therapist, coach, and consultant in service improvement and outcome measurement in psychological therapy. His journey in workplace counselling began in 1994 as head of service for the Royal College of Nursing counselling service. During this period he led a Department of Health-constituted working group to produce guidance for the provision of staff counselling in the NHS, as well as development of a range of RCN publications linked to employee counselling and wellbeing.

It was also at the RCN that Barry introduced a system (CORE) for routinely monitoring service quality and outcomes. By the time of his departure in 2005 the service was one of the highest performing services using CORE in the UK, with 84 per cent of clients completing their therapy journey and 85 per cent of those showing reliable improvement. 

Between 2005 and 2010 Barry worked with CORE IMS as director, providing consultancy in service improvement and outcome measurement to services and commissioners, offering support with system implementation and the application of evaluation data to service profiling and improvement. 

Barry sat on the BACP research committee between 1996 and 1999, and on the Association for Counselling at Work executive between 1999 and 2006 (as Chair from 2002 to 2005). He is an experienced trainer and presenter, and has published in a wide range of academic and professional journals.

Mary Parker

Mary is a cognitive behavioural and integrative counsellor, coach, counselling supervisor and EMDR practitioner in private practice. 

She is also an independent welfare and counselling consultant who specialises in working within organisations. As a welfare officer and counsellor with the police service for over 15 years, Mary was involved in providing critical incident stress management for major events such as Ladbroke Grove, the London Bombings, Bali and the tsunami.  

In addition, Mary has worked with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, providing trauma support for police officers seconded from the UK to overseas policing in the Balkans and Iraq, and debriefing not only single events but also tours of duty such as the secondments of family liaison officers to New York for 9/11.

Currently part of her consultancy work includes the provision of regular psychological support for police officers and staff who work within vulnerable roles and are identified by the Home Office as needing mandatory support; for example, child protection and hostage negotiations teams.

Contact Details:
Telephone: 07595 342280
Email: mary-parker@hotmail.com

Damian Stoupe

Damian worked in the defence industry as a purchasing manager prior to changing career direction and retraining as a counsellor ten years ago. He works as an independent counsellor providing support to both public and private sector workplaces. Although living in a rural location, much of his time is spent working with those issues raised in small businesses. He is currently the network coordinator for Bristol and Bath.

Damian is particularly interested in the development and impact of negative workplace behaviours, and has written several articles on workplace bullying for Counselling at Work as well as providing consultancy and training courses for a number of large organisations. The topic is the foundation of his research for his PhD.

‘A key emphasis for me is on the importance of communication and support for counsellors; it gets lonely out there,’ says Damian. ‘Developing diverse communication streams such as the website, Linked-In page and networking events, alongside the e-bulletin and Counselling at Work journal provide forums for asking for, and offering, help. The help can also be diverse but providing better access to quality research data and suggestions on best practice will all help – as will a place where you can go to have a chat, or a laugh, among friends!’

Contact Details:
Telephone: 07792 799017
Email: damianstoupe@somersetcounselling.co.uk

Rick Hughes - BACP Lead Advisor: Workplace

Rick is BACP's part-time 'Lead Advisor for Counselling in the Workplace', a new resource that bridges BACP Workplace and BACP and integrates the workplace counselling agenda firmly within BACP. This allows him the opportunity to champion workplace counselling within industry and Government. A former Deputy Chair of BACP Workplace and BACP Workplace member since 1996, Rick has extensive experience in the workplace counselling community having worked with some of the largest EAP providers in the UK. He's an advocate for organisations utilising a wide repertoire of support interventions to facilitate a conducive working environment and this was reinforced by his recent co-edited book 'Employee Well-being Support: A Workplace Resource', with Andrew Kinder and Prof Cary Cooper. 

E-Mail: rick.hughes@bacp.co.uk