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A new chapter for Mulberry Bush
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Our People

Meet our wonderful team of dedicated staff and trustees.

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Our leadership team

John Turberville

Chief Executive Officer

Dr Dave Roberts

Director of Training & Professional Development and Deputy CEO

Sarah Archer

Director of Finance

Joanna Mitchell

Director of Marketing & Development

Sarah Paget

Director of Insight & Influence

Lee Wright

Director of Specialist Therapeutic Practice

Our trustees

Chris Pugh

Chair of Trustees

Dr Amy Ludlow

Trustee

Geraldine Akerman

Trustee

Helen Sowden

Trustee

Keith Bird

Trustee

Kristi Langhoff

Trustee

Lucy Whitehouse

Trustee

Mark Thomas

Trustee

Michael Sarrington

Trustee

Rosemary Lilley

Trustee

Tim McMahon

Trustee

Toby Barratt

Trustee

Vicky Snow

Trustee

Zoe Lattimer

Trustee

Our PAtrons

David Astor

Patron

Ian Marber

Patron

Jon Snow

Patron

Lady Gallagher

Lady Heseltine

Patron

Lord Cameron

Patron

Lord Hurd

Patron

Rahul Moodgal

Patron

Sir Stephen Fry

Patron

Sir Tony Gallagher

Patrons

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Lady Gallagher

Hannah Curley

Head of Education

Jon Snow

Patron

Rahul Moodgal

Patron

Ian Marber

Patron

Lord Hurd

Patron

Lady Heseltine

Patron

Sir Tony Gallagher

Patrons

Sir Stephen Fry

Patron

Lord Cameron

Patron

David Astor

Patron

Dr Amy Ludlow

Trustee

Dr Amy Ludlow is Chief Executive of SHiFT, a systems change organisation that exists to break the destructive cycle of children caught up in, or at risk of, crime. Amy is an academic lawyer and criminologist. Before leading SHiFT, Amy was a Senior Researcher at the University of Cambridge, where she taught and published on a wide range of social justice issues, with particular expertise in prison leadership and management, prison culture and education, and public procurement in public services. Amy loves learning and doing at the intersection of research, policy and practice to bring about systems change. At home, Amy is mum to two daughters and the wife of a busy NHS doctor.

Kristi Langhoff

Trustee

Kristi is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Sussex and a qualified social worker. She has 16 years' experience developing and delivering trauma-focused group interventions for survivors of sexual violence and exploitation and has trained widely on trauma-informed approaches to multi-disciplinary practice with adults and children. Her current research is focused on 1) young people’s experiences of extra-familial harm and related child protection responses; 2) creative and participatory research methodology; and 3) trauma-informed practice and system change.

Toby Barratt

Trustee

Toby qualified as a Solicitor in 1994 and became a Partner of a South Coast law firm in 2004.

Becoming as much a business manager as lawyer, and with a keen interest in business strategy, he returned to University in 2017, completing his MBA in 2018.

Having previously been a trustee of One Trust, a South West London charity supporting adults with learning disability, he joined the executive in 2022.

Previous non-executive roles include four years as a Governor of a large secondary school.

Helen Sowden

Trustee

Helen received her Bachelor of Education degree in 1987, Masters in Education in 1994 and her NPQH in 2011. Her career in primary education spans thirty-seven years, including eleven years at leadership level, seven of which were in the role as headteacher. Helen led three different schools, including a small rural, large community and church school, in three different counties. She achieved a ‘Good’ Ofsted outcome in 2018, with her team, and was also instrumental in successfully moving another school from ‘RI’ to ‘Good’ through a seconded role as head. In addition to her work in UK primary school settings Helen has experience of international schools. (MOD Germany and PDO International Dutch/ British School Oman). She currently works as an LA School Improvement Adviser supporting schools with preparation for Ofsted; headteacher appraisals; leadership recruitment; focused reviews and whole school training. Helen is also an external primary consultant trained as a NASEN SEND reviewer. She is passionate about developing others collaboratively, drawing on her own wealth of experience. She enjoys travel and all things outdoors including open water swimming, running and camping.

Tim McMahon

Trustee

A member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, Tim started and developed his HR career working for companies within the food, service and engineering industries.

He went on to establish a HR consultancy which provides direction, guidance and support on all people-related matters to a broad range of small and medium-sized employers which are spread across the public, private and third sectors. In particular, there has been a focus on moulding a team-based culture and environment that encourages and obtains a commitment to the attainment of the organisations’ goals.

Sarah Archer

Director of Finance

Sarah joined the Mulberry Bush as Director of Finance in April 2024 and works three days per week. Sarah is a Chartered Accountant and brings with her over 20 years financial experience across a variety of industries. Prior to joining the Mulberry Bush Sarah worked as a Finance Director in Financial Services where she gained substantial experience, as well as supporting a number of charities on a voluntary basis.

Lucy Whitehouse

Trustee

Lucy Whitehouse is the founder of award-winning youth sex education charity Fumble. A digital journalist and a Relationships, Sex and Health Education specialist, Lucy's previous work includes a campaign on online harms for YoungMinds (the national mental health charity for young people), Fumble's pandemic support series and its Youth Manifesto campaign. She has appeared on Times Radio, BBC Politics Live and BBC News at 6, and has written for The Guardian, New Statesman, Independent and The Observer.
As a new parent to a toddler, Lucy's work and personal life constantly bring home to her the importance for young people of having a safe space and trusted adults. She is proud to be joining the Mulberry Bush team in this invaluable work.

Geraldine Akerman

Trustee

Hon. Professor Dr. Geraldine Akerman has worked in prisons for 26 years. The majority of this time has been in HMP Grendon therapeutic community. Geraldine has also worked with young adults in what was HMPYOI Aylesbury. Geraldine has been a member of the TC Accreditation Panel and is a TC Specialist for TCTC audits.

Keith Bird

Trustee

Keith has worked in the education sector for over 15 years in a number of marketing and communications leadership roles. He has recently semi-retired, having worked for Pearson, the global education organisation, for the past eight years, At Pearson he was responsible for their vocational education qualifications and resources portfolio, both in the UK and internationally.

Volunteer-wise, Keith is a member of the Oxfordshire Motor Neurone Disease Association (MNDA) board. He is also a co-opted trustee for the Witney Educational Foundation.

Keith has three adult children and was on the Board of Governers, representing SEN, at Aston & Cote Primary School, when his children were pupils in the late 1990s. His daughter recently worked at The Mulberry Bush School for five years as a Therapeutic Childcare Practitioner. Keith now lives with his wife in central Witney.

Vicky Snow

Trustee

Victoria received her degree in Economics from the University of Manchester in 2009 before going on to complete a masters in International Economics. She has 15 years’ experience in finance, working across both banking and hedge funds, most recently working to launch a specialised alternative asset manager focused on opportunistic credit investments across European markets. Outside of work, she is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Educators and volunteers her time to improve financial literacy, recognising the importance of equipping individuals with the knowledge and skills to make informed financial decisions. She does additional volunteer work to actively promote STEM careers for girls, advocating for inclusivity and diversity in traditionally male-dominated fields.

Jennifer Browner

Consultant Child Psychotherapist & Clinical Lead

Jennifer has worked at the Mulberry Bush since 2008 and in her current role since 2017. She is head of the Therapies and Networks team and Consultant Child Psychotherapist, as well as the school’s clinical lead. She began her career as a teacher of children with special needs, working in therapeutic schools and state special schools before going on to work in a residential therapeutic community for traumatised boys.

During and after her training as a psychotherapist, she worked in the NHS in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. Since then, she has worked in residential therapeutic units and therapeutic foster care agencies, before joining the Mulberry Bush. She has particular interests in the ways that psychodynamic thinking can be applied in a residential environment and in working creatively with families in difficulty.

Claire McCarthy

Head of Group Living & Registered Manager

Claire McCarthy is the Head of Group Living and Registered Manager.

Claire is an experienced leader and practitioner with over 30 years' professional experience in a range of therapeutic and social care settings working with children, families and networks.

Claire has a particular interest and expertise in the practice, management and strategic development of therapeutic residential care.

Angus Burnett

Referrals Manager

Angus has over thirty years’ experience of working in therapeutic environments. This includes working in therapeutic communities, children’s homes, CAMHS Teams and alongside social work teams. He has also helped inner city schools in their work with children and teenagers.

He has a passion for helping adults to develop how they understand and relate to children and has been leading successful teams for most of his career.

Now, whilst managing referrals for the school, his focus is on providing the best experience for families, carers and professionals wishing to get a place for a child at the Mulberry Bush School.

Angus has a keen interest and broad knowledge in the areas of leadership, organisational culture, communication, meeting design and coaching. Angus is also a qualified Level 7 Executive Coach.

Sarah Paget

Director of Insight & Influence

Sarah has worked in, with, and alongside Therapeutic Communities and Enabling Environments for the past 35 years. As an experienced consultant, she champions therapeutic ordinariness, kindness and curiosity in all organisations. Sarah builds genuine, authentic relationships, with people and places, which facilitate reflection and can lead to change and improved outcomes.

Sarah worked at the Royal College of Psychiatrists for 17 years, developing and leading on Quality Improvement and Accreditation Programmes for a range of services including a quality network for Therapeutic Communities and the Enabling Environments Award, of which she was co-founder. Before this she managed a Voluntary Sector Therapeutic Community for people with severe and enduring Mental Health problems.

Sarah has an MA in Psychoanalytic and Systemic Approaches to Understanding Organisations and Leadership from the Tavistock, a BA (Hons) in Social Psychology and Cognitive Science, and a Mental Health Nurse Training. She is a Trustee of The Consortium of Therapeutic Communities and Member of the International Editorial Advisory Group for the International Journal of Therapeutic Communities. She has written and taught Therapeutic Community principles and practice to a wide range of audiences.

Mark Thomas

Trustee

Mark has worked in Social Care since graduating from Liverpool Polytechnic in 1988. He spent his first 5 years at the Cotswold Community as a Residential Social Worker and Household Manager gaining a Diploma in Therapeutic Childcare.

Mark then joined the West Swindon Family and Community Project as Project Co-Ordinator and was part of developing services for families in this newly created part of Swindon. In 1999 he completed his MSc in Group Relations at the University of the West of England. Mark worked as a Consultant to newly developing organisations in the Charity and Not for Profit sectors within Wiltshire.

Mark joined ISP Foster Care in 2000 as Centre Manager of the new ISP Centre in Watford. He continued at ISP becoming the Registered Manager for the Centres of Chesham and Milton Keynes, Wisbech and Bromsgrove. In 2018 Mark moved to a newly developed Fostering Agency, ALL4U Fostering, closely associated with a Charity for supporting young people leaving care, The Layberry Foundation, as Service Development Manager and is now Head of Service.

Michael Sarrington

Trustee

Michael has a background in business and learning & development.

Michael runs his own business offering facilitation and learning. He has worked with disadvantaged and vulnerable adults as well as corporate teams. He has worked for a number of global organisations in the steel and gases industry both in the UK and overseas. In the latter part of his corporate career he specialised in communications.

Michael is a governor of a primary school and for five years a chair of governors.

Chris Pugh

Chair of Trustees

Chris received his degree in Economics and Statistics from Southampton University in 1992 before going on to become a Chartered Accountant with Touche Ross in 1995. He then spent a number of years in financial services in London before being invited to help set up and run a business in Cambridge in 2007, from which he retired in 2015.

Since retiring Chris has followed charitable, philanthropic and sporting endeavours, his charitable interests being mainly in the fields of child abuse & trauma, whilst on the sporting front he has completed a number of Ironman challenges and several ultra-endurance bike events. He has three daughters.

Rosemary Lilley

Trustee

Rosemary’s working career was entirely within the children and family’s sector primarily with national children’s charities in both residential, day care and home visiting roles. Following initial residential childcare training (1967), which introduced her to psycho-dynamic understanding, she went on to undertake the Advanced Residential Child Care Course at Bristol University (1975) and later an MSc in Public Policy (1988). In her last full-time position, managing a Family Centre, the work particularly focused on trauma in early childhood and maternal mental ill health.

Since retiring Rosemary continues to manage a local charity providing counselling for parents. She Chairs the local voluntary sector Children and Young People Forum and represents the sector on the local Safeguarding Children Partnership.

Rosemary was a Trustee of the Planned Environment Therapy Trust for 11 years and Chair of Trustees for 5. She was an inaugural member of the Child Care History Network and is now a member of the Child Care History Advisory Group. She is a school governor at a Local Authority primary school taking particular responsibility for SEND, safeguarding and staff welfare.

Zoe Lattimer

Trustee

Zoe got her degree in Human Biology at London University and then went on to do a PGCE at Goldsmiths College. She began work as a lecturer at West Kent College of FE before giving this up to have a family.

After working as a supply teacher for a while she became a hospital teacher at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, for 5 years, working with acutely ill children and those with cancer. During the next 10 years, Zoe worked with the Local Authority eventually becoming Head of the Pupil Referral Services and serving on many committees. She left this to become Head of a Secondary Special school in Swindon and then became an executive Head Teacher by taking on a failing Primary school in the same area.

Zoe moved back to Reading and took up post as Principal of Barnardo’s High Close School, a day and residential school for children with complex needs in Wokingham. She retired after 8 years. She is now an active member of the Rotary club, trustee of the charity, Dogs for Autism and The Mulberry Bush Organisation and last, but not least, champion for the Charity Music Junction.

Joanna Mitchell

Director of Marketing & Development

Joanna works at The Mulberry Bush three days a week, managing the charity’s fundraising and marketing and business development. Her original background was in advertising and marketing before moving into the charity sector where she led the fundraising and marketing team at Helen & Douglas House Hospice before becoming Chief Executive of a medical research charity, The SMA Trust.

David Bowman

Finance Director

BA, FCA

David works at The Mulberry Bush two days a week. He acts as part-time Finance Director for a small number of organisations.

He is a chartered accountant who initially worked in audit for Grant Thornton and was then Finance and HR Director of Oxford Lasers before taking on a portfolio of part-time appointments. He has also been Finance Director of Highcroft Investments PLC (a real estate investor), a non-executive Director of Shared Interest and of Traidcraft plc (both engaged in the global fairtade sector) and Chair of CORE which seeks to protect human rights and the environment in relation to the global operations of UK companies.

Dr Dave Roberts

Director of Training & Professional Development and Deputy CEO

Dr Dave Roberts - Head of Outreach / Deputy CEO / Organisational Therapist/ Visiting Fellow for UWE

A qualified Social Worker and organisational therapist, Dave has worked in residential child care and special schools since the early 1990s. He became head of Mulberry Bush training in 2006, leading them to two National Training Awards, in 2007 and 2012 and two prestigious HRH The Princess Royal Training Award in 2021 and 2024.

He was integral in developing the award-winning Level 5 ‘Foundation Degree in Therapeutic Work with Children and Young People’, with the University of the West of England, for which he was programme leader for 14 years, and the new Level 4 Certificate in Therapeutic Child Care. He has acted as a Specialist Leader in Education (SLE) with a focus on understanding behaviour as a communication and developed and delivered on a wide range of Education, Health and Social Care training programmes across the UK, and Europe.

Dave leads Mulberry Bush Learning and Research, which includes the Outreach support service who have worked with over 1000 organisations, and is currently piloting a reflective supervision in schools programme, which draws on models of reflective practice to support staff well-being and the application to, particularly, mainstream schools.

His PhD study, though IoE/UCL, used a case study approach to follow the lives and stories of four children and their families through the children's placements at the Mulberry Bush School. The study explored the need for robust staff support systems when working with children made vulnerable through their life experiences.

Lee Wright

Director of Specialist Therapeutic Practice

Lee has over 20 years’ experience of working with children in the care system. He trained as a teacher in 1993 and started working at a school in London in 1994 and in Buckinghamshire in 1998.

Following a short break from teaching, when Lee worked at a management consultancy firm, he started working for a therapeutic fostering organisation, ISP, as a teacher in 2001.

Over the following 16 years Lee was responsible for teaching children who lived with ISP foster carers both at their schools and in the agency centres. During this time Lee became the Education Manager at ISP and was then responsible for managing and supporting the organisation’s Outreach Education Team across all of the 11 centres in south east England. Lee was also responsible for developing and delivering training to all the foster carers at ISP and to schools that requested help with managing their looked after children.

Lee was appointed as the Director of the Mulberry Bush School in 2017.

John Turberville

Chief Executive Officer

John Turberville is the Chief Executive Officer of The Mulberry Bush, a national charity dedicated to transforming the lives of people affected by trauma in their childhood. He leads the development and delivery of an integrated range of specialist therapeutic and educational services, with a focus on expanding the charity’s range and reach and ensuring the highest standards across all services — guided by its three core values: Collaborative Working, a Psychodynamic Approach, and a Reflective Culture.

John joined The Mulberry Bush in 1994 after a successful career in business in central London, bringing over three decades of experience in therapeutic practice, with an MA in Therapeutic Childcare and a certificate in Family Therapy. Formerly the School Director and Chief Operating Officer, he became CEO to further develop the charity’s ability to link teaching, research, and practice, aiming to deliver the highest quality services and excellent outcomes.

John is Chair of the Community of Communities Advisory Group at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, supporting quality assurance and accreditation for Therapeutic Communities in the UK and internationally, and is a Therapeutic Communities (TC) specialist, auditing TC prisons.

John is also a Governor of a village primary school, reflecting his commitment to both specialist and mainstream leadership.

John Diamond

CEO

BA (Hons.), MA in Therapeutic Child Care, MA in Consultation & The Organisation.

John is CEO of the Mulberry Bush Organisation. His working career has been in residential therapeutic work with children and young people. John has published papers and lectured in the UK and internationally on this work.

He is founder and Chair of the International Centre for Therapeutic Care, Editor of The Therapeutic Care Journal, Chair of the Dartington Centre for Social Policy and a Trustee of The Consortium for Therapeutic Communities. John has trained in group work at the IGA, the Tavistock, and with OPUS, and has an MA in ‘Therapeutic Child Care’ (Reading University) and an MA in ‘Consultation and the Organisation; Psychoanalytic Approaches’ ((D10) Tavistock Clinic and UEL). John is a member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists and APPCIOS.