Introducing our Clinical Lead
Introducing Lisa Thomson
Meet Lisa Thomson, who’s worked with the Charlie Waller Trust for many years and has recently taken on a new and exciting role as our Clinical Lead.
Lisa originally trained as a mental health nurse and first worked with children and young people and their families in 1995. She says: “I felt drawn to this work in the hope of preventing the development of mental health issues and believed that working with young people (and those they depend on) when they were young could make a positive difference.”
She first came across the Charlie Waller Trust when working within CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services).
She explains: “I was offered the exciting opportunity to work with an incredible team from the NHS and the Charlie Waller Institute (the Trust’s sister organisation) to develop and deliver a training project across the Thames Valley and Hampshire. The Charlie Waller Trust was involved from the outset and provided incredible support to the project.”
It was a great success, and the evidence-based training has helped thousands of professionals to better recognise mental health issues and support young people and their families.
It was this project that drew Lisa to the work of the Trust and led to her becoming a freelance trainer in 2014. “The work of the Trust aligned so closely with my own personal values,” she says, “and I recognised the importance of that work.”
As a trainer within the Trust’s schools and families programme, Lisa delivered training in a range of settings, including schools, youth and sports clubs. “I loved the variety,” she says. “No two training sessions were ever the same!
“It was always great to hear how much people appreciated the training and how it made a difference in their confidence, knowledge and skills supporting young people and their families.”
Even with years of experience, Lisa admits to still getting nervous when delivering training.
“I think that my nerves are based on how passionate I am about the work,” she says, “striving to get it right and make a good fit with diverse audiences.”
The Clinical Lead post Lisa now holds is a new role in the Trust, so it continues to be developed and defined. The benefits, however, are clear: “It means holding a clinical perspective on all aspects of the Trust’s work, which will ensure that we are offer evidence-based, high-quality outputs that are inclusive of the perspectives of young people, parents and carers, and are as accessible as possible to everyone in our communities.”
Lisa’s background means she is ideally placed to carry out the role. As well as being a mental health nurse, she is a family and systemic psychotherapist and holds a postgraduate diploma in evidence-based psychological treatment for children and young people.
“For most of my career,” she says, “I have worked alongside families and young people – often at incredibly difficult times in their lives, and I have witnessed incredible resilience as families move through their challenges.”
On a personal level, Lisa is a parent of three children, now young adults, which has given her “an in-depth understanding of both the joys and challenges of being a parent and the issues our children and young people face.”
Lisa is already collaborating with the Trust’s families team, giving a clinical perspective on a portfolio of resources and training to make sure that they are high quality and based on the best evidence available.
What’s next? She says: “I’m excited to develop the role of Clinical Lead and to work closely with all of our teams and freelance trainers.”
