My Qualifications and Roles

• I qualified as a Paediatric Nurse in 2010 from Oxford Brookes University with a 1st Class BSc. I then worked at the world renowned Children’s Hospital in Oxford on a specialist surgical ward.

​​

• In 2013 I undertook a PGdip in Specialist Community Public Health Nursing and qualified in 2014 as a specialist family nurse (commonly known as a Health Visitor in the UK). The role of a Health Visitor is to roll out a public health programme called the Healthy Child Programme (HCP).  A Health Visitor works with families from late in their pregnancy through to when their children are 5 years old. A Health Visitors role is broad and covers physical health, mental health, social needs and safeguarding and child development. Health Visitors work with a huge network of other professionals who they will refer to, as often they may be the first person who a family raises concerns with, but they may not always be the best person to support with that particular challenge.

​​

• In 2015 I completed a MSc in Public Health Nursing with a focus on children and families (Distinction). This expanded my education and knowledge around the challenges that families face and how to support and empower them.

​​

• As well as working as a Health Visitor, I worked for a number of years at the University of Oxford in The Oxford Vaccine Group as a paediatic research nurse, senior programme manager and finally programme lead. The projects that I worked on were in the UK, Nepal and Bangladesh with the last project being to lead a large portion of the Astra Zeneca Covid Vaccine Trials.
   

• My time working at the University helped me develop and fine tune my research skills, meaning that I am able to critically evaluate bodies of research and draw out and utilise the evidence base effectively. This is an essential skill I utilise daily as I approach the huge amount of information there is about parenting and distil it down for my families into understandable, evidence-based, and reliable parenting advice. Working with families in Nepal and Bangladesh also gave me a deeper understanding of the diversity of child raising practices and how to embrace this when we think about parenting. I continue to do part-time research work at the University as well as run Our Parenting Journeys.

​​

• I have recently completed further training with GroBrain in order to expand my knowledge on brain development and how this can inform our parenting.