The Directors of Psychological Approaches have accumulated between them over 100 years of experience in working in the NHS and the Criminal Justice System. All four have a core mental health profession - Jackie is a psychologist, Anne, John and Lisa are nurses - and all have held academic as well as clinical positions of seniority.  This has included wide-ranging managerial experience within the NHS, including responsibilities for quality assurance, governance, team leadership, evaluation and service delivery.

As well as extensive direct experience of clinical care, the Directors are highly experienced and valued trainers, having developed and delivered a range of training seminars, workshops and reflective practice groups for staff working in services for those with complex needs and offending behaviour.  Special areas of expertise include working with women as perpetrators and victims, sexual and violent offenders, and understanding personality disorder.

 Jackie Craissati MBE

Jackie Craissati is a  Consultant Clinical and Forensic Psychologist,  Chair of an NHS Mental Health Trust, Independent Governor of the University of East London and Trustee of Samaritans.   Until 2016, she was clinical director of a large and successful NHS forensic directorate, with secure hospital, prison health, and community treatment provision.  

She has a national profile for her work with high risk sex offenders, personality disorder and violence, and is author of six books and over 40 publications on these subjects.  In 2016, she was appointed as Chair of the Grendon (prison therapeutic community) Advisory Panel, and as Consultant Advisor across the south of England offender personality disorder pathways service. She advises nationally on complex cases, and works with NHS England on independent serious case reviews. 

She was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to mental health and is a Fellow of ATSA and Associate Fellow of the BPS. 

Anne Aiyegbusi

Anne Aiyegbusi is a Consultant Nurse and Psychotherapist with experience of the full range of mental health nursing roles ‘from ward to board’ as well as leadership roles in NHS quality governance.   She has experience of providing psychotherapy in forensic services and of delivering training and reflective practice groups. Her clinical experience includes 15 years as a senior nurse in high secure services for women and she has regularly contributed to national strategy and guidance including women’s mental health strategy and guidelines for implementing the recovery approach in forensic settings.
 
She specialises in developing the front line workforce to provide high quality therapeutic services to service users with complex needs. She is particularly focussed on how dynamics of trauma and offending can reverberate within forensic treatment settings, emotionally impacting on individual staff members, teams and the organisation. 

Anne has published and presented extensively in the area of the psychodynamics of forensic care including the implications for diversity and difference.  She is a visiting fellow at Buckinghamshire new university.

John Enser
John Enser is a Consultant nurse, and has worked in the field of forensic mental health since 1985. 
He has an MSc in Health Service Management at South Bank University.  His dissertation "The Missing Links" was an analysis of medium secure building design. This provided an examination of physical escapes from a large proportion of units around the country. 

For the past decade, he has worked as service director for a Prisons and Forensic Mental health Directorate.  He has  been instrumental in leading the service to become one of the largest providers of Prison Healthcare in the UK, as well as expanding the number of inpatient beds.   He has been at the forefront of developments to ensure a complete criminal justice pathway for mentally disordered offenders in south east London, including court and police liaison.
 
Key achievements also include working as an  external consultant in areas such as security reviews of medium secure services, providing advice on staffing establishment and structures and on serious untoward incident reviews.
 Lisa Dakin is a Consultant  Mental Health & Learning Disability Nurse and specialist in inpatient and prison healthcare, with  over 30 years, experience working as a nurse leader in forensic & prison mental health and learning disability services.  Formerly Head of Nursing and Associate Clinical Director for Forensic & Prison services in a large NHS Trust, and with considerable experience of incident investigations in prisons and hospital.  MSc in forensic mental health; post graduate training in leading & managing partnership working. A special interest in learning from lower harm incidents.