Webinar: Session 8: NHS APA Conference 2022 - Keynote Speaker Sue Baker & Live Panel by NHS APA

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About This Webinar

Welcome to the final session of the NHS APA 2022 Virtual Conference.

In this session Karen Biggs, Chief Executive of Phoenix Futures, will host the final session and introduce the Anti- Stigma Network and keynote speaker, Sue Baker.

We will also be joined by our expert panel; Owen Baily, George Charlton and Danny Hames to answer questions from our online delegates. The session will conclude at approximately 4.00pm

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Presenters

Karen Biggs

Chief Executive of Phoenix Futures

Karen became the Chief Executive of Phoenix Futures in 2007. Phoenix Futures are experts in psychosocial treatment. With a turnover of £20m and employing 500 staff, it is the largest provider of residential rehabilitation services and the only housing association providing specialist substance misuse services. Phoenix also delivers a range of psychosocial treatment services in the community and prisons across England and Scotland. Phoenix Futures’ unique approach is informed by its origins as a self-help organisation and is rooted in its commitment to empowering people with problematic substance misuses to take control of their own recovery.

Karen has represented the sector on many Government working groups. She was the founding Chair of Collective Voice, a group established to represent the benefits of substance misuse treatment. Other Trustee positions include the European Federation of Therapeutic Communities and the Wimbledon Guild.
Before joining Phoenix, Karen worked within the housing sector for supported and general needs housing organisations. She has an Msc in Housing from London School of Economics and a BA Honours in History from Stirling University and is a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIHCM).

Sue Baker OBE

Global Director, Time to Change (2018-2021) Founding Director, Time to Change (2007-2021) Co-Founder, Global Anti-Stigma Alliance (2012-present)

Sue has worked to de-stigmatise mental health for over 25years in the UK, New Zealand, and globally. She set up the Time to Change campaign in England in 2007 that has led to a "sea change" in public attitudes and reductions in discrimination in England but has worked on shifting stigma since joining Mind (the UK’s largest mental health NGO) in 1995.

She co-founded GASA in 2012 to share strategies, tools and facilitate mutual learning to build capacity in many regions and contexts and founded Time to Change Global in 2018 working with partners and people with lived experience in Africa and India.

She now advises international bodies, Governments, NGOs, funders, and networks of people with lived experience on social change programmes aimed at improving public attitudes, reducing discrimination, and empowering people with lived experience to lead change.

She is an independent consultant currently working on stigma projects in Kenya, the Caribbean, Lithuania and across Europe, and Hong Kong. She is also Mind’s International Mental Health Advisor. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Lancet Commission on Stigma and Discrimination in Mental Health (2020-2022).

She was awarded an OBE for services to mental health in 2016.

Owen Baily

Lived Experience Consultant

Owen’s roots in addiction to gambling, alcohol and other drugs emerged as a young teenager, a response to challenges in his life at the time, the consequences of which led him to leave school with no qualifications, beginning a 20-year journey of homelessness at 17, quickly followed by a stay in a young offender’s prison, and a 16-year journey into drug, alcohol, and gambling treatment from the age of 20.

Today, Owen has overcome many of his challenges and has realised and is living once unknown freedom this brings to his life, recovery, a beautiful journey of discovery and is living a happier, stable, balanced, meaningful and purposeful life.

The difficult past behind him, Owen is unrelenting in his commitment to putting to good use his life experience and 10 years ago decided to get involved in the gambling sector leading to the acquisition of vast experience, knowledge, and insight he has been able to combine with his lived and learned experience of addiction and multiple disadvantages.

And today, Owen is a Lived Experience Consultant and a regular speaker at events who also helps others through his role as the first Gambling Peer Support Worker at the NHS CNWL National Problem Gambling Clinic. He is involved in NHS England's Gambling Harms and Clinical Reference Group which oversees the strategic development of the NHS’s expansion of the specialist NHS gambling clinics. He also sits on the National Institute for Clinical Excellence

Gambling Harms Committee developing the first ever gambling guidelines for NHS Gambling Treatment.

Some other areas Owen has worked in and is passionate about are the development and nurturing of the lived experience workforce in the gambling sector, systems change, the use of language and stigma, recovery capital, aftercare, commissioning, meaningful coproduction and lived experience engagement.

George Charlton

George Charlton MA, MBACP

George Charlton lived with personal addiction to drugs and alcohol and struggled with extreme mental health problems for well over 15 years. Growing up in South Tyneside George was excluded from school at the age of 15, did not sit any exams and left without formal qualifications. He became involved in crime, drug dealing and wider criminal activity resulting in him spending several years in the prison system.

Over the years George spent much time within mental health services and at times was detained under the mental health act owing to significant episodes of self-harm and a desire to take his own life. He went on to find personal recovery after a year-long stay in a residential rehabilitation centre in the year 2000.

George trained as a counsellor in 2003 and qualified with a Diploma in person-centred practice in 2005 before going on to complete a Master of Arts in Social Sciences and Health at Durham University in 2006.

George now works as an independent trainer and consultant across the UK, developing and delivering innovative and dynamic drug and alcohol awareness and harm prevention programs, all of which are co-produced in partnership with people who use drugs and those impacted by addiction and adverse mental health issues.

George is the UK’s only independent Community Reinforcement and Family Training (CRAFT) Trainer & Supervisor to be endorsed by CRAFT Founder Emeritus Professor, Bob Myers, from the University of New Mexico. Over the past 10 years, George has gained recognition as the leading voice across the UK who promotes and trains individuals, practitioners & companies in the global evidence-based CRAFT approach. For his commitment to working in the field of addictions, George was recognised with the prestigious accolade of UK Skills National Training Award, presented by Joanna Lumley at the Guildhall in London.

Danny Hames

NHS APA Chair

Danny Hames has 18 years’ experience working in the public and voluntary sectors, within criminal justice, long terms conditions and the drug and alcohol treatment sector. He has worked as a Practitioner, Operational manager and Head of Development. In September 2018 he became the Head of Inclusion which is part of the Midlands NHS Foundation Partnership Trust. Inclusion is the largest NHS provider of drug and alcohol services in England working in both prisons and the community. Inclusion also provides Sexual Health and Improving Access to Psychological Therapy services. Danny is an accredited PRINCE2 and MSP Practitioner and holds a PG Certificate in Drug and Alcohol Policy and a MA in Voluntary Sector Studies.

Danny initiated and is a founding member of the NHS Substance Misuse Provider Alliance which was founded in 2016, this is a collaboration of thirteen NHS trusts who provide drug and alcohol treatment services with the aim of supporting and developing best practice in the sector, this included, with Collective Voice producing “Improving Clinical Responses to Drug Related Deaths Best Practice Guidelines (April 2017)”. The NHS APA also aims to provide a NHS treatment service voice to the benefit of the sector and as part of this runs annual conferences. The NHS APA currently work in over 50 prisons and 35 community services across England. NHS APA is currently establishing an initiative across 12 NHS trusts in England to eliminate Hepatitis C. Danny is the current chair of the NHS APA.