Lindy Simpson

Senior Lecturer

School of Social Work, Care and Community

Harrington Building, HA 340

+44 (0) 1772 89 5125

lsimpson9@uclan.ac.uk

Subject Areas: Social Work, Sociology, Social Policy, Participation and Social Pedagogy

Lindy is a Senior Lecturer teaching across a variety of courses in the School, she qualified as a social worker in 1985 and spent 22 years working in statutory Children’s Services. She held the position of Children’s Rights Officer before moving to NHS inpatient Child and Adolescent Mental Health services for 10 years. Lindy’s work is influenced by Gerison Lansdown and Ruth Sinclair she is passionate about rights based practice and participatory methods of working.

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  • BA (Hons) Social Science UCLan 1984
  • CQSW Manchester University 1985
  • Post Graduate Certificate in Safeguarding Children UCLan 2015
  • Teaching Toolkit UCLan 2016
  • MA Contemporary Practice with Children and Young People UCLan 2017

Awards:

  • Excellence in Audit Award Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust 2009
  • Chief Executive’s Overall Achievement Award Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust 2010
  • NHS England Excellence in Participation Award 2014
  • Positive Practice in Mental Health National Award for Making a Difference 2015

Lindy began her career in social work as a generic social worker later specialising in children and families. She has experience of child protection, adoption, care proceedings, fostering assessments, children leaving care, youth justice, disabled children and children with mental health difficulties. She has a great deal of experience of developing services in partnership with the children, young people, carers, parents who use them while also working closely with professionals managers and elected members.  With Local Authorities she has developed implemented and established evaluation of Leaving Care Services, Independent Reviewing Services, Advocacy, Independent Visitor Service, Looked After Children’s Participation. She held the position of Children’s Rights Officer with Cumbria Children’s services for 5 years.

In 2006 Lindy moved to the NHS to develop the Child and Adolescent Inpatient Mental Health Service covering Lancashire, South Cumbria Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen. Her work achieved national accreditation as best practice for the quality and impact of the participation of children young people and families in this work.

Lindy has also provided independent training and consultancy to a number of organisations which include Action for Children, Hillingdon Children’s Services, North West regional circuit judges, South West Independent Reviewing Officers Forum, Think Ahead Mental Health Social Work MA programme, Lancaster University, University of Cumbria, NHS England Commissioning Support Unit. Royal College of Psychiatrists.

Lindy’s is passionate about children and young people’s active influence on decisions about their own lives. Her work to enable adults to embrace children and young people to chair their own review meetings has been recognised as best practice. This work has been undertaken with looked after young people and children and young people in in-patient CAMHS..

Publications

Ketchen, Lindy (2010) A Design for Life. Youngminds Magazine, 104 . pp. 32-33.

Ketchen, Lindy (2005) Isn't it all a bit dangerous? Empowering Young People to Chair their own Reviews. Representing Children, 17 (4). pp. 263-271.

Ketchen, Lindy (2005) Young Drivers: Children and Young People Chairing their own Reviews. Seen and Heard, 15 (2). pp. 15-30. ISSN ISSN 1744-1072

Ketchen, Lindy (2009) What Services Should be in Place to Support Young People Aged 16 and 17 Years with Acute Mental Health Needs in Lancashire? Project Report. Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, Lancashire.

Membership of professional and learned bodies

  • Associate Director of the Centre for Children’s Participation
  • Member of Social Pedagogy Development Network
  • Member of Positive Practice in Mental Health Collaborative

Research Activities

The development and impact of adult values on their approach to children and children’s ‘agency’ in decision making.

Projects

  • Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust CAMHS Community Team Participation Strategy development

Teaching Activities and Responsibilities

  • BA Social Pedagogy  - Participation in Practice
  • BA Social Work - Looked after children and Children Leaving Care. Mental health and advocacy. Participatory Practice
  • MA Social Work - Child and adolescent mental health. Person centred planning
  • FEC -  Participation, children’s rights and decision making processes
  • Children Schools and Families - Services and Systems and Child and Adolescent Mental Health
  • Integrated Masters Event planning and management

External Activities

  • Participation consultant CAMHS Lancashire Care NHS Trust
  • Clinical supervision provided for social workers in NHS
  • Independent training and consultancy

Conferences

Presentations to national and regional conferences

  • 2004 North West After Care Consortium Annual Conference. Wigan
  • 2005 NAGALRO National Conference. Children Chairing their own Reviews. Oxford University
  • 2005 Engage to move forward Conference Preston
  • 2008 Public Health England - National CAMHS Support Service. Manchester
  • 2008 National CAMHS Conference. Leicester
  • 2009 CSIP and Regional Partnership North West. Bolton
  • 2009 National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Conference. Working Together to Improve Age Appropriate Services. Leicester
  • 2010 Early Intervention Services Conference. UCLan
  • 2010 AIMS Conference. Royal College of Psychiatrists. London
  • 2010 Uthink Conference. Developing age appropriate inpatient services for 16 and 17 year olds. Manchester
  • 2010 National CAMHS Conference ‘No decision about me without me’. Leicester
  • 2011 Royal College of Psychiatrists Regional Day. Manchester
  • 2013 British Psychological Society FICAPS National Conference. Formulation and beyond. Participatory practice in inpatient CAMHS
  • 2014 British Psychological Society FICAPS National Conference.
  • CROA National Conference. Manchester
  • Quality Network Inpatient Consortium Royal College of Psychiatrists