Teaching Staff
Julie Hewson
Director of the Iron Mill Institute, BA (Hons) Post Graduate, Cert Ed Dip SW, CQSW, TSTA, CTA, BACP Registered Supervisor, registered with UKCP. Trainer and Supervisor for the European Association of Supervision.
Julie is the Director of the Iron Mill Institute, which runs both National and European accredited courses in Psychotherapy, Counselling, Supervision, Coaching and Management. This reflects the range of her application of psychological and other areas of expertise, including conflict resolution, mediation, consultancy and inspired teaching.
She teaches all over Europe and the UK training people as diverse as Government Ministers and other politicians, to the Procurator Fiscal’s Office, Doctors, Mentors, Managers, Psychologists, Teachers and Social Workers, to name but a few.
An internationally qualified and recognised Transactional Analyst, Trainer and Supervisor, she is also a UKCP Clinician and BACP registered Supervisor. She is also a trained Mediator Coach and Coaching Trainer, currently Vice President of the European Association of Supervision and Coaching.
She has a very good sense of humour, has a joyous personality and is a person of immense integrity.
Shirley Sines
Dip Couns, Dip Transactional Couns & Psychotherapy, Adv Cert in Professional Studies in Psychotherapy (HE Award).
Shirley particularly values the application of Transactional Analysis and the Gestalt approach to therapy. However, art and creativity is central to her beliefs for working with clients. Shirley has worked for NCH South West for many years as a counsellor and provided supervision for counsellors within the agency. She also worked as a counsellor for the Sure Start project at Ilfracombe, North Devon. Until recently she has been counselling young people up to the age of eighteen. Shirley is also very committed to the whole area of Addiction and Rehabilitation and currently works as a Criminal Justice Worker for the North Devon Alcohol Intervention Service 'Addaction South West’. This entails the provision of counselling and the facilitation of group work.
Kate Robillard-Day
BA Hons Phil, Cert Couns, Adv Dip Coun
Kate is a school counsellor and co-facilitates workshops, lectures and support groups for the South West Counselling Adoption network. She is a tutor on the Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling and previously trained here at the Iron Mill. Kate believes that much of her inspiration as a teacher comes from her experiences of being a student, a client and a counsellor. She is actively dedicated to the Jungian philosophy of theory and practice and gains most of her personal insights from the work of Jung, although Kate also draws on her inspiration from the Integrative model (Gestalt especially) and enjoys living and working both professionally and creatively with this approach. Kate’s style of teaching encourages the development of artistic expression, inspiration, imagination and creative intervention through the exploration of archetypes, fairytales, myths, collage, miniature model work, spirit and dreams.
Sue Hext
Adv Dip Couns, Adv Dip TA
Sue Hext has worked professionally for over 25 years with children and adolescents, and finally admitted that she has an abiding passion for the work and cannot stop educating, counselling and generally banging on about the needs of this group!
As a young, green teacher, Sue discovered an interest in and empathy for young people who experience emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) in many areas of their lives.
She worked as a specialist EBD teacher in mainstream schools, residential schools for children with epilepsy, for victims of severe abuse and subsequently severely challenging behavioural and a psychiatric unit for adolescents.
Sue studied for an MEd. at Exeter University (SEN/EBD) and went on to enrol at the Iron Mill where she has qualified as a counsellor and completed her TA Psychotherapy training.
She is now based at Bristol where she has a private psychotherapy practice, and is employed as a school counsellor and part time college/university lecturer. Sue also has an interest in eating patterns/body image and is opening a weight management and fitness club for women.
Sara Drew
BA Hons, MA Cert Couns, Adv Dip Couns
Sara is a counsellor with Young Devon, a countrywide youth agency. She is a tutor on the Advanced Diploma in Integrative Counselling and previously trained at the Iron Mill. She has worked with young people in a variety of settings, including personal development courses for the Prince's Trust and other voluntary sector projects in the South West of England.
Sara works from a Humanistic, Integrative framework and has a strong interest in the transpersonal. She has delivered Cognitive Behavioural Therapy to offenders in custody and is qualified in teaching adults.
Sara has worked in broadcast journalism as a reporter, editor and producer. She also held management posts and has experience of managing large teams through the process of change.
Sara enjoys exploring and deepening into her belief that it is the relationship between client and counsellor that affects transformation rather than the nature of the counselling modality or interventions offered.
Sarah Scoble
Sarah Scoble lives in Devon. She is the Programme Leader of the Exeter-based MA in Dramatherapy, which is validated by the University of Worcester and approved by the Health Professions Council.
Previously, Sarah was Head of the Centre for Performing Arts and Media at South Devon College in Torbay, before moving to the University of Plymouth as Senior Lecturer/Academic Lead in Dramatherapy. She was one of the founder trainers, in the early 1980’s, of postgraduate education in dramatherapy in Devon. She is now a freelance academic convener/teacher/consultant.
In 1995, Sarah was elected to the Executive Board of the European Consortium for Arts Therapies Education (ECArTE), which currently draws members from 15 countries across Europe. In 2009, she was elected to the position of Chair. During the last ten years, she has directed international arts therapies conferences, for ECArTE, at universities in London (U.K.); Munster (Germany); Luxembourg; Madrid (Spain); Crete (Greece); Tallinn (Estonia). She has edited five publications on European arts therapies. Her most recent publication is: Scoble, S., Ross, M., Lapoujade, C.(2009) The Arts in Arts Therapy: a European perspective, UPP.
Sarah is the director of the Devon Shakespeare Project, which she founded in 1985, bringing leading theatre directors, designers and actors to the South West to work in the community. She performs throughout the year with Words for Voices and reads with the Exeter Shakespeare Reading Society. She is married to the international theatre director and screen-writer Jonathan Hales.
Jan Cavill
BACP Accred Adv. Dip. Couns. (UKRCP Reg.), Dip. Couns. Child & Adol., Dip. Supervision (EAS Accred).
Jan Cavill has worked for many years in an independent school and now teaches at both certificate and advanced diploma level, and is an enthusiastic researcher. As an experienced therapist Jan continues to advance her studies to include psychotherapy and supervision, all of which keeps her very busy. Outside the clinical environment she loves to walk her dogs through the countryside around the Taunton area, and further afield when time allows. Jan also hopes in the near future to return to her favourite pastime of drawing.
Mary O'Donoghue
MNAPCP and MLBCA (Ireland). Diploma in Life and Business Coaching, Post Graduate Diploma in Gestalt Therapy, Diploma in Counselling and Pyschotherapy, Certified Supervisor and Diploma in Business Studies. EMCC Coach and trainer. Holder of EMCC Quality Award.
Diploma in Life and Business Coaching, Post Graduate Diploma in Gestalt Therapy, Diploma in Counselling and Psychotherapy, Certified Supervisor and Diploma in Business Studies.
Mary has over twenty-eight years' career experience in business, finance and banking, auctioneering and estate agency. She also has fifteen years' experience in coaching, training, supervision and counselling.
She has established, and is, Executive Managing Director of three businesses in Ireland. Mary is an accredited Trainer with the Coaching Institute of Ireland and Director and Trainer with the Business and Life Coaching Academy in Ireland.
Jenifer Elton-Wilson
DProf (Middlesex)I, Chartered Counselling Psychologist, UKCP Registered Psychotherapist and BACP Accredited Supervisor.
Dr. Jenifer Elton Wilson has published and presented these ideas in a number of contexts, including National Health Trusts, Primary Care Settings, BPS and BACP conferences (invited), Employment Advisory Programmes, Counselling Services and Masters Level Training courses in Psychotherapy and Counselling. In 1996, Jenifer published “Time-conscious Psychological Therapy: A Life Stage to Go Through” London: Routledge. Since then she has extended and advanced the approach offered in this book in chapters included in several edited publications. More recently, she has co-authored with Gabrielle Syme, “Outcomes and Objectives: Questioning the Practice of Therapy”, the final volume of the Open University Core Concepts Series (ed .Michael Jacobs) Her workshops offer current theory and practice in the field of effective, eintegrative and time-conscious practice.
As well as a long-standing private practice, Jenifer has worked in psychiatric settings, has established and developed a large University counselling service and has tutored courses in integrative psychotherapy and counselling psychology. Until 2002, Jenifer was engaged in developing and leading a professional post-qualification Doctorate for innovative practice in psychotherapy.
Jenifer is a Chartered Counselling Psychologist and a BACP accredited Senior Practitioner and Supervisor.
Katrina Laydon-Walters
Dr. Katrina Laydon-Walters is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist (British Psychological Society), Associate Fellow of the BPS, Chartered Scientist, Registered European Psychologist and Registered Family Psychotherapist (UKCP).
Dr. Laydon-Walters has over 15 years clinical experience of working with adults and children experiencing psychological difficulties and distress arising from complex problems, and/or every-day issues, Dr Laydon-Walters practice includes cognitive behavioural therapy and systemic family therapy. Her aim is simple: to enable clients to alleviate their symptoms, maximise their potential and create a more positive future.
In addition to her busy clinical practice, Dr. Laydon-Walters undertakes Expert Witness assessments and Medico Legal Reports relating to psychological injury; trains practitioners in mental health and allied professions nationally; provides clinical consultation and supervision, and offers psychological consultation to those in senior positions in their profession (private, public and corporate) who may wish to seek an external source of support.
Rose Bedford
BA(Hons)Psych, Adv. Dip. Int. Couns., MBACP
Rose has been involved professionally with equality and diversity related work for over 20 years, starting with child protection, moving into the field of disability, then onto social care management and higher education access programmes, initiating new project work and formulating policy change with AHEAD at DCU in Ireland. Her career as a counsellor began in the late 1980’s with family therapy and family systems training, and she’s been hooked ever since, training as an Integrative counsellor here at the IMI, and currently continuing her professional development with an MA in Professional Studies and Supervision.
In 2006 Rose placed her energy, enthusiasm and experience into creating her very busy private practice in Exeter. She offers creative integrative counselling from an existential perspective. Counselling and supervision are her main passions, and she happily spends much of her time doing just that. However, she also provides board member coaching, counselling, staff training and group development for local and international organisations, and is skilled in facilitating sensitive exploration and change.
Rose is a warm and down-to-earth person who enjoys play, nature and the outdoors and has a great belief in the power of creativity, which shapes the way she lives and works.
External Staff
Johan Pfeiffer
Johan Pfeiffer was born in Czechoslovakia, as it was named then. He had the “privilege” to experience and “study” totalitarian systems in day to day life for more than 30 years. Johan is a medical doctor, specialised as a psychiatrist, psychotherapist and supervisor. He started his professional carrier in the mental health field about 26 years ago.
At the very beginning of his involvement in the mental health field he felt care or help based work, which was dominated by a worldwide institutional-paternalistic principle at that time, was not a way for human beings to be treated. He recognised early that democratic, community based systems had to replace the “classical “ institutional-totalitarian model of care. Throughout his career he has worked as a clinical practitioner-psychiatrist as well as care-system reformer. He was involved in institutional care system reforms in several countries especially in Central and Eastern Europe and also in Mid Asia. For his effort in this field, especially for campaigning against middle age practices as putting children to cage beds, he was in 2004 awarded as European Hero by Time magazine.
He is working now for an international charity named Children High Level Group (CHLG), the Founder and chairperson of which is JK Rowling. The charity is registered in UK , having headquarters in London. He is busy, especially in EU Commission and EU parliament as well as in concrete EU member states and pre-accession countries with supporting the process of reform of institutional care / health–social / in general, but in institutional care of children especially.
Johan through his many varied places , situation and cultures of working, has gained vast experience in supervising and “coaching” on all levels in a helping-profession field. He has also been involved for a long time in teaching psychotherapy and supervision.
Phil Lapworth
MSc. Integrative Psychotherapy (Middlesex), Dip. Systemic Integrative Psychotherapy (Metanoia Institute), Dip. Counselling (S.W. London College), Clinical Transactional Analyst (ITAA). Senior Accredited Member of the British Association for Counselling & Psychotherapy and a Registered Psychotherapist with the United Kingdom Council for Psychotherapy.
Iron Mill Counselling Course Staff Supervisor and Consultant.
Phil started out as a teacher in Special Education in London before training as a counsellor and psychotherapist. He has been in private practice for over 25 years and works in an idyllic location near Bath providing psychotherapy, supervision and consultancy.
He has written several papers and chapters on therapy and, with Charlotte Sills and the late Sue Fish, has published three books on different psychotherapeutic approaches. Charlotte and he are just completing work on a 2nd Edition of their book ‘Integration in Counselling and Psychotherapy – Developing a Personal Approach’ which will be out in December this year. they hope subsequently to update and develop their TA book and then their Gestalt book. As might be apparent, Phil enjoys writing and was very pleased to get a short story published recently (not surprisingly, about psychotherapy) which has inspired him to write more fiction.
There are further staff profiles to be added to this page and will be made available in due course.