ADVISORY GROUP
Our Advisory Group and Trustees have diverse and relevant experience and knowledge that helps drive and develop all of our services. We value their lived and professional experience equally and are stronger for their commitment, advice and input.
Kirsten Iles, Chair of Trustees
Kirsten has worked as a peer worker in children’s services and mental health services since 2009. She is a trained Peer Support Specialist, Applied Recovery in Practice Trainer and has a postgraduate qualification in Family Interventions for Psychosis.
Kirsten was Project Coordinator for Recovery Partners 2009-2016, worked in the NHS Early Intervention in Psychosis Service for ten years and was a Project Coordinator for i-Rock Youth Wellbeing Service in Hastings. She has strongly advocated for peer work and the development of the people participation clinical strategy at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. She is Senior Peer Support Coordinator in the Trust’s Peer Support Team, mentoring peer workers and team leads across 37 clinical teams.
Kirsten was recently diagnosed as neurodivergent and has established a support group for neurodivergent peer workers in SPFT. She believes passionately in early intervention, narrative therapies and peer supported, holistic approaches to mental health and wellbeing.
Martin Robinson, Trustee
Martin studied Social Psychology and developed an interest in alternative models of understanding mental distress. He worked in a variety of mental health settings including locked wards and therapeutic communities.
Martin trained as a Social Worker at Sussex University and completed his Master’s dissertation on Transcultural aspects of Psychiatric Social Work, looking at anti-racist practices in mental health work.
Working in London, he helped set up community-based schemes with voluntary groups and mental health professionals. In Brighton he worked as a Services Manager and Commissioner, and later as General Manager of the Recovery Services in East Sussex. From 2010 until his retirement in 2016 he was Head of Mental Health Services for East Sussex County Council.
Martin has worked with Recovery Partners from its inception and has always held the staff and services in high regard. He was delighted to first join the Advisory group, then became a Trustee in 2021.
Sara Meddings, Trustee
Sara has been a Trustee since 2019 and was previously a member of the Advisory Group.
Sara has long been passionate about recovery, co-production, peer support and the value of lived experience as an asset. She has over 30 years’ experience working with people with mental health challenges and their families. She retired from the NHS in 2021, having been the Psychology and Psychological Therapies Consultant Lead for Recovery and Wellbeing at Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust.
Sara has co-developed several recovery focused projects including Recovery Colleges, and trainings in recovery practice and family work. She has published widely and co-edited the first UK book on peer support in mental health. She works as a consultant with ImROC, a not-for-profit organisation supporting recovery-oriented service and practice development.
She manages her own recovery from ME/chronic fatigue, has used mental health services and draws on her personal experiences in her work.
Sara’s publications include:
Watson, E. and Meddings, S. (2019). Peer Support in Mental Health. London: Red Globe Press.
Meddings, S, King, T, and Harris, J. (2021). Recovery in the Real World / La Recovery nel Mondo Reale. In eds Giuseppe Nicolò and Enrico Pompili, Manuale di Psichiatria Territoriale, Raffaello Cortina Editore: Pisa, Italia
Gill Berry, Advisory Group member
Gill has a background in community development and research with NGOs and consumer groups, in the UK and in South Africa. She worked in mental health social work, management and training in local authority, and went on to become Senior Lecturer in Mental Health Social Work at a local University.
She was involved in course development and most of her own teaching was with the involvement of people with lived experience, and carers. Gill retired in 2013 and has been a supporter and advisor for Recovery Partners since its inception.
Tamsyn Milne, Advisory Group member
Since completing an Applied Psychology degree Tamsyn has dedicated her working life to improving mental health systems, and to suicide prevention. She managed the Place of Calm, the UK’s first suicide and mental health crisis service run in partnership with Recovery Partners. The service was 24/7 responsive and used an innovative model of peer support, including recovery planning to better support people during a crisis.
Tamsyn has worked as an Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Trainer with Living Works. She strongly believes that suicide is preventable. She has worked with a range of services including charitable foundations, the Civil Service and the Home Office.
Being a passionate advocate for peer support, Tamsyn believes that peer-led services should be integrated into all areas of person-centred support, providing a truly holistic, trauma informed approach.
Aiden Berry, Advisory Group member
Aiden is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Brighton. He has spent forty years in Higher Education and was the Director of Brighton Business School for twenty years prior to his retirement in 2017. Aiden has published extensively.
He has served on and advised management boards in the private and non-for-profit sector for many years and has a particular interest in small organisations.
Jane Harris, Advisory Group member
Jane has worked for over 25 years as a researcher, evaluator and consultant with not-for-profit organisations and charities, central and local government, the NHS and charitable funders.
She is a Director of Cordis Bright, an independent research organisation where she specialises in the evaluation of projects and programmes focusing on cross-sector partnership working and people experiencing multiple disadvantages.
Before joining Cordis Bright in 1999, Jane worked as a lecturer in voluntary sector management at the London School of Economics. Earlier in her career she was a finance director in charities in the fields of homelessness and substance misuse.
Jane has served on the boards of a number of charities over the last 30 years, mainly as Treasurer. She has a first degree in English from Durham University, a Master’s in Social Policy from the LSE and qualified as a chartered management accountant in 1992.
OUR ASSOCIATES
Alison Faulkner
Alison is a survivor researcher with around 30 years’ experience of working in mental health, mainly in the voluntary and community sector. She has personal experience of mental distress and self-harm and of using mental health services, including inpatient care, medication, psychotherapy, A&E and crisis services.
Alison has a PhD from City, University of London on the role and value of experiential knowledge in mental health research. She has been self-employed for 20 years and has worked for most of the major UK mental health charities, including NSUN (the National Survivor User Network), Mind, Together and the Mental Health Foundation during that time.
In recent years, much of her research and consultancy has focused on peer support; facilitating online spaces during Covid for a VCSE consortium including Mind and NSUN, writing guidance for online peer support, and researching and evaluating peer support in different contexts.
OUR STAFF
Anna Stratford, Operations Manager
Anna is a co-founder of Recovery Partners, leading on service development and project management.
Anna has her own lived experience of severe and enduring mental health issues and manages these using a variety of self-management techniques, peer support and statutory services. She was trained as a Peer Support Specialist by Recovery Innovations, Arizona, USA in 2008 and has been working in peer support/lived experience work in the statutory and voluntary sector in Sussex since then.
Anna is a registered Social Worker with 30 years’ post-qualifying statutory and independent experience. She taught at Sussex University on the BA, MA and post-graduate courses in Social Work for 15 years. She also works as an EMDR Accredited Practitioner and for the Ministry of Justice.
Anna works with all stakeholders from people using services, staff and senior managers, partners and commissioners.
Anna also enjoys improvised comedy, walking football and Zumba.
Howard Pearce, Business Manager
Howard is a co-founder of Recovery Partners. He leads on business-related aspects of the organisation, including finance, funding, payroll and HR.
Howard delivered the original Applied Recovery in Practice training for mental health teams in Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust [SPFT]. He also helped design and deliver training in recovery for mental health service users with SPFT.
He was trained as a Peer Support Specialist by Recovery Innovations, Arizona, USA in 2008 and is working in peer support in the statutory and voluntary sectors in Sussex. He also works for the Open University, supporting students with health issues.
He has degrees in mechanical engineering and psychology.
Howard has lived experience of mental health issues. He has been active in Capital Project Trust, a West Sussex mental health user-led organisation, since 2002 and was the Chair for three years. He is a former Samaritan, committed to suicide prevention.
Anthony Stevens, Project Co-ordinator
Anthony is the Project Coordinator for Recovery Partners’ lived experience, peer supported community arts projects.
Anthony trained and worked as a Peer Support Specialist with Recovery Partners in 2011, prior to which he had extensive experience working in both in-patient and community mental health roles. He describes this period of working with Recovery Partners as one of dynamic growth and ‘a matter of discovery, and recovery’. Anthony has a keen interest in the role that peoples’ innate creativity has to play in their wellbeing and recovery, and using his own creativity is an integral part of the management of his own mental health challenges.
When not working in peer support, Anthony is an internationally exhibited Textile Artist. He is currently represented by galleries both here in the UK and in Europe. He is also part of the exhibitions committee of a large national arts charity.
Tracy Hind, Project Co-ordinator
Tracy is an experienced youth and community development practitioner, and leads on community involvement projects for Recovery Partners.
She recruits, trains and co-ordinates a cohort of Experts by Experience involved in the education and training of social workers across Brighton and Hove and East Sussex. This piece of work is funded by and developed with the South Coast Regional Centre for Social Work Education Teaching Partnership.
In her role at RP Tracy develops partnerships with people with lived experience, and with grass-roots community organisations, to deliver user-led projects that aim to improve the lives of people living with mental health issues and other challenges. Her role also includes fundraising, undertaking community research projects and developing and delivering training.
Tracy has a long-term partner who lives with severe and enduring mental health challenges, and has significant lived experience of engaging with mental health services as a carer.
Jo Rhodes, Peer Support Specialist
Jo first joined Recovery Partners in 2012 and has been involved in a variety of their projects, including one to one peer support, community drop in sessions and community- based art projects. Jo is currently taking part in further peer support training with IMROC to develop and strengthen her skills. She enjoys the variety of experiences that working with Recovery Partners can offer, as well as the broad range of people it enables her to meet and work alongside.
Jo has her own lived experiences and hopes to continue to use these experiences to tackle stigma around mental health issues and to support others in their recovery.
OUR FUNDERS / PARTNERS
