Ethics committee

Julie Stone is a medical lawyer and ethicist who has shaped national policy on professionalism and healthcare regulation for more than 30 years.

As the inaugural deputy director of the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (now the Professional Standards Authority), Julie was executive lead for its Clear Sexual Boundaries project. She has published widely, drafted guidance and advised regulators and membership bodies on all aspects of professionalism and boundaries.

She has written books and chapters on ethics and the therapeutic relationship. She has also produced two key reports for the General Osteopathic Council, including Supporting professionals: protecting patients. Shifting the narrative on professional boundaries (2022).

Julie currently reviews studies for the National Institute for Health and Care Research and is a former board member of the Health Research Authority. She is an advocate of evidence-informed healthcare and of co-production with experts by experience.

She was a non-executive director of an NHS commissioning body until 2013, and of an NHS mental health and community trust until 2023. In these roles, she promoted trauma-informed practice, Freedom to Speak Up and staff wellbeing. She wants to embed moral courage in professional training, to help protect against burnout and moral injury.

As a professional conduct panel member and policy adviser, her work focuses on preventing harm to patients and

Fiona is an integrative child and adolescent psychotherapist and adult counsellor with a background in law. She has experience of supervising and training counsellors and psychotherapists.

She is the ethics lead for the College for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapies. Her work on the Ethics Committee reflects her interest in what psychotherapy offers and in ethical reflexivity: how we practise and how this helps us work with complexity and uncertainty.

Natalie is an ethicist, policy adviser and educator. She works at the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the UK’s leading independent bioethics body, where she heads its programme of work on ethical issues arising from developments in neuroscience and psychology.

Across a career in regulation and ethics, she has led a government-commissioned review and designed and led several research programmes. She has also delivered ethics training to healthcare professionals and advised on legislation, professional standards and education policy.

Natalie has a wide range of research interests – from clinical culture to political theatre – and is co-chair of the Institute of Medical Ethics’ Postgraduate Committee. In her spare time, she is a director of a small social enterprise that hosts community wellbeing events and provides training and employment for adults experiencing mental health difficulties.

Helen Miskin has been registered with UKCP since 2013. She is also an accredited member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and a member of the EMDR Association UK and the Association for Counselling and Therapy Online.

Helen works as a psychotherapist, supervisor and tutor. She draws on person-centred, psychodynamic, eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) and existential analysis approaches, often integrating them.

Helen has worked in the NHS for more than 20 years. For the past 10 years, she has worked as a counsellor and supervisor in primary care, including NHS Talking Therapies. She has taught and managed counselling and psychotherapy training courses, delivers workshops and runs her private practice, Embodied Understanding.

She has also worked with charities for nearly 15 years, as a counsellor and manager and on business planning and policy writing. She has worked with Marches Counselling Service in Herefordshire since her training, and with several other charities, including as a trustee and chair of The Family Place Foundation.

Promoting ethical practice has been central to all her roles. She sees applying principles to real-life practice as one of the most valuable parts of her work.

Susan Whitby is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist with many years of experience in NHS Talking Therapies and higher education.

In addition to her clinical roles, she has experience improving team effectiveness for the Department of Health. She worked as a clinical team facilitator on a change management programme, helping NHS teams facing difficulties to build new capacity and skills.

In recent years, she has led and managed university counselling services for students and staff. She has shaped strategy within wider student wellbeing services, including introducing a preventative, whole-university approach to mental health. She has also promoted new wellbeing initiatives for staff and students within complex organisations.

Susan has written and delivered workshops and training on a range of mental health topics. She has also sat on steering committees in an advisory role, promoting good practice and a better understanding of boundaries, containment and managing anxiety, both our own and others’, at organisational, team and individual levels.

She has provided clinical supervision across modalities and supported people in emotionally demanding frontline roles to take up their authority and find new perspectives. For Susan, promoting ethical practice is central to upholding the reputation of psychotherapy and of everyone who works to support others.

Marine Vernet is a trainee counselling psychologist and psychotherapist, completing her doctorate at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling. She is a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and serves on the UKCP Ethics Committee.

Marine has clinical experience in private practice, online therapy services and charities. Her research has explored the impact of social media on identity and her current thesis examines romantic relationships and erotic transference. She also has a strong interest in public mental health and holds a certificate in mental health leadership from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

As a trainee, Marine brings a valuable perspective on how ethical principles are taught, understood and applied. She is committed to encouraging open conversation about ethical dilemmas in practice.

Carina Badger has been a solicitor for more than 20 years, with wide experience in commercial law, particularly data privacy and intellectual property. After moving to Manchester in 2017, she retrained as a person-centred counsellor.

She is now in the final stages of training as an integrative transactional analysis psychotherapist at the Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy and has a private practice in south Manchester.

Carina has extensive experience in governance roles, particularly in the LGBTQIA+ sector, and is passionate about equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging. She is especially interested in developing an ethical lens through training and supervision.

Christopher’s clinical background and training are in psychoanalytic psychotherapy and mentalisation-based therapy. He is the principal psychotherapist in an NHS community mental health team and runs a reflective practice group for trainee clinical psychologists at a university.

He has worked in adult community and inpatient services, including forensic mental health, with people experiencing a range of difficulties, from personality disorder to psychosis. He has also facilitated reflective practice groups for teams.

Christopher’s interest in ethics began while he was studying philosophy as an undergraduate. His master’s in psychology then explored how moral thinking develops in children.

He is interested in how clinicians and organisations can get stuck when facing ethical dilemmas, such as breaking confidentiality, maintaining boundaries, managing risk and responding to complaints. Underlying this is a curiosity about the relationship between psychoanalytic ethics and public ethics.

Augusta is an integrative adult psychotherapist with a background in the criminal justice system. She is a psychotherapy tutor at Regent’s University London, where she teaches ethics on the existential pathway. She previously served as a fourth-year primary tutor on the integrative programme at Metanoia Institute. Augusta has worked as a psychotherapist in the NHS and the voluntary sector, and now has a private practice.