Regional Support Group
ABOUT
EMDR WEST MIDLANDS
We are the West Midlands Regional EMDR Support Group, a regional member of the national association of EMDR UK and Ireland. Our mission is to provide affordable training, support and information to professionals who use EMDR in the West Midlands region.
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Our workshops are intended to provide education on all matters relating to EMDR particularly recent research, to foster best professional practice and promote the work of the Association. We also encourage networking, developments of special interest groups, and updating of EMDR research.
MEET THE COMMITTEE
EMDR West Midlands is run by a team of dedicated volunteers, each experts in EMDR in their own right. Find out more about our committee members below.
DAVID PIKE
Chair
David qualified as a Clinical Psychologist in 1972 at Birmingham University. In David's professional career he started in Adult Mental Health, but he has also worked in many other settings outside Psychology. After running an Out-patient Project in Heartlands Hospital in 1989 David worked in the Pain Clinic at Selly Oak Hospital for many years. Since then David has worked in other Pain Clinics, in a Burns Unit and set up Psychology Department to a Head Injury unit at Cannock Hospital before entering private practice to do Medico-legal Personal Injury assessments.
David trained with Derek Farrell when he set up his first EMDR Masters programme at Birmingham University, being accredited as an EMDR practitioner in 2012. His specialities are Complex-PTSD, Chronic Pain and Medically Unexplained Symptoms. He is now concentrating on supervision, training and research. David's role on the committee is to co-ordinate committee meetings and liaise with EMDR Association UK
MARYANN RICHARD
Treasurer
Maryann is an EMDR Europe Approved Consultant and Integrative therapist with 30 years experience working with adults, children and adolescents. She has worked in the NHS in a GP based Counselling Service and in Hospice work and now work privately seeing a wide variety of clients who come with trauma, relationship, health, and mental health issues.
Maryann worked for 9 years in South Asia raising a family, teaching nurses and community workers counselling skills for people with leprosy and spinal injuries and helped Humanitarian Aid workers and their children cope with the stresses and strains of living abroad in the developing world where there are fewer health resources.
A special interest of Maryann's is working with people who have grown up cross-culturally and/or lived or worked cross-culturally. Whilst most people feel very privileged to have lived abroad, there are particular issues that arise in these situations when people integrate into their new country such as: loneliness, isolation, bullying & coping with the traumas they may have seen or experienced whilst abroad. All of these and others can greatly inhibit and upset their lives and relationships.
Maryann is an experienced Clinical Supervisor and Supervise EMDR trainees, practitioners and Consultants. She particularly enjoys supervising CAMHS groups and is very excited as she sees the next generation of EMDR therapists develop personally and professionally.
ANGELA JOHNSON
Secretary
Angela is an EMDR Accredited Practitioner and a BABCP Accredited Cognitive Behavioural Therapist, working in independent practice. She has over 15 years experience in counselling and therapy, originally training in Transactional Analysis. She has a MA in Community Education, and is a qualified youth and community worker, having worked for many years in community development within the NHS and the charity sector.
Angela works with a wide range of clients and presentations. She is also a senior associate with HBDCA, a charity offering psychological support within the bleeding disorder community.
CLAIR CLIFFORD
Committee Member
Clair has been a Consultant Clinical Psychologist for 14 years, she is also an EMDR Europe Approved Consultant and Facilitator. Having qualified with a Doctorate in Clinical Psychology from the University of Birmingham in 2002, she has worked across a number of settings including the NHS in CMHTs, physical health (oncology and Cystic Fibrosis) and for the last 14 years at the Ministry of Defence with service personnel and their families. She has also undertaken medicolegal work and worked as a Consultant to several tech companies.
She is also qualified in Psychosexual Therapy and committed to the application of EMDR in this context, as well as coaching and occupational stress. She is also trained in other trauma approaches including Cognitive Processing Therapy, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, also Schema Therapy and Emotion Focussed Therapy.
Her passions are the application of EMDR for vulnerable communities who do not have easy access to psychological therapies. To this end, with Prof Derek Farrell, she has facilitated the training and led supervision of over 70 clinical psychologists in an NIHR funded RCT to develop an EMDR protocol for people with intellectual disabilities. A further interest that she has is in the understanding of intergenerational trauma, and cultural impacts on the experience of trauma, such as for displaced and immigrant groups, as she has direct experience of being second generation herself.
In terms of supervision, Clair delights in bearing witness to the EMDR skills development of her supervisees from NHS trusts, private practitioners, Trauma Aid (formerly HAP) and those in the NIHR research in the application of EMDR.
She is research active and most recently has published a chapter on online delivery of EMDR with Prof Farrell and is contributing to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of EMDR
COLIN HOWARD
Committee Member
Colin has been a Chartered Forensic Psychologist since 2003 and in 2009 became a Registered Practising Forensic and Clinical Psychologist. Colin completed his EMDR training in 2006, and gained Accredited Practitioner status in 2011, and is an EMDR Europe Approved Clinical Supervisor and Consultant. Colin started his professional career in the Scottish Prison Service in 1999, which is where he developed his interest in the assessment and treatment of complex trauma.
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Colin was in private practice in Edinburgh for several years before co-founding a specialist inpatient trauma centre in Scotland between 2012 and 2016. Colin is in private practice in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, specialising in treating complex trauma and dissociative disorders in adults, children, and young people. Colin also provides psycholegal services to solicitors, Local Authorities, and Family and Criminal Courts. Colin regularly provides supervision, trainings, and consultancy for specialist therapeutic and support services.
MARK WALKER
Mark is an EMDR Europe Accredited Consultant and Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) practitioner, trainer and supervisor and have worked in the area of mental health for over 30 years.
Mark has gained a wide range of experience having worked as a team manager within the National Health Service and in private psychiatry as well as offering psychotherapy and counselling interventions to clients with chronic and enduring mental health problems.
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He has a special interest in Clinical Supervision, developmental trauma and attachment and the integration of our therapeutic work with disciplines that make space for spirituality and the body.