Jonathan is the Senior Fellow at the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland (www.qnis.org.uk). He is the Programme Lead for QNIS’ new initiative ‘Healthier Pregnancies, Better Lives’. This is supported by the Cattanach Trust and The National Lottery Community Fund.
Since moving to Scotland in 2005, Jonathan has served as the Director of Research, Policy and Programmes at Children in Scotland and then as the Scotland Director of the WAVE Trust. He was also a Trustee of the Children’s Parliament. Previously, he had academic appointments, including Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the School of Education and Psychology at North Carolina State University. Jonathan was the leader of the North Carolina Child Advocacy Institute, as well as coordinating child-focused progressive policy coalitions.
He is the author of numerous published articles, book chapters and reports in the US, Scotland and Australia. He has an established track record on rural community education/development, child and family health/wellbeing, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders and, especially in recent years, on preconception health, education and care.
Rebecca qualified as a physiotherapist in 1983, and worked both in the UK and Australia. She specialised in women’s health and paediatrics, notably as a Senior Paediatric Community Physio working with children with severe learning difficulties. When she had her own children, Rebecca’s great-aunt, a founder member of The National Childbirth Trust, encouraged Rebecca to attend an NCT antenatal course. Rebecca went on to train and work as an antenatal teacher for the NCT, which she has been doing for 26 years, currently facilitating antenatal groups in Cornwall.
Rebecca’s career with the NCT developed and broadened. She trained as an Assessor and Tutor, gaining a Degree in Adult Education in 2008. Alongside this, she worked as a Birth Doula supporting many new parents through labour and birth. With tutor colleagues, she wrote the NCT’s Birth Doula training modules, validated by the University of Worcester.
Rebecca works full-time as an NCT tutor. She is the Tutor Lead for Level 4 nationally, a Core Tutor for students in the South-West of England, a Tutor on the Level 4 Reflective Practice and Listening Skills module, and Lead and Tutor on the Level 5 NCT Birth Doula Pathway.
Robin was for many years Professional Lead for Child Psychotherapy and Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist in Gloucestershire CAMHS.
His interest in working with adopted children led him to the field of Infant Mental Health and early preventative intervention. Until 2018, he was clinical director of PIP UK, a national charity dedicated to help establish parent-infant projects across the UK.
Bridget is an international speaker and an award-winning antenatal educator, working in the charitable sector with the NCT and The Twins Trust (formerly TAMBA), and within the NHS at one of Britain’s largest maternity units where she has both headed and been part of the Parent Education team for 15 years.
As founder of ‘Your Baby’s Biome’, she shares information and runs workshops for health professionals and parents about how to give babies the best bacterial start.
She also works with the charity Birth Companions, teaching pregnant women in prison. Bridget lives in Shropshire with her husband, four children and a menagerie of pets.