The Locked up Living Podcast

Neil Scott Gordon. The fascinating account of a career in psychiatry, psychotherapy and the development of the National Personality Disorder Knowledge...

Dr Neil Scott Gordon is a forensic psychotherapist and has worked for over 40 years as a senior clinician and supervisor in high secure and community settings. He has had an extraordinary career in psychiatric nursing and forensic psychotherapy. The final years of his working life were devoted to the development and roll out of KUF (Knowledge and Understanding Framework), the major training development in the field of 'personality disorder' in the past half century.
He has conducted research into the client’s view of psychotherapy and has explored how psychotherapists in high secure environments adapt their therapeutic style in a context sensitive way. He has a Professional Doctorate in Psychotherapy and holds Masters Degrees in Organisation Development & Consultancy, and in Advanced Mental Health Practice. He co developed and delivered the Schema therapy group programme at Rampton High Security Hospital UK with Dr Kerry Beckley and was formerly responsible for multidisciplinary training and workforce development in the personality disorder service.He worked as a Senior Fellow in the Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham University, where he was responsible for the development of the the National Personality Disorder, Knowledge and Understanding Framework (KUF) commissioned by the UK Department of Health and Ministry of Justice. He has published articles on a wide range of topics including: schema therapy, personality disorder, organisational change, mental health education and qualitative research. He co-edited a text book on 'Working positively with the challenges of personality disorder in secure settings' which was published by Wiley in 2010.
https://www.institutemh.org.uk/images/KUF_prospectus_Final_OU_Approved.pdf

Jennifer Rodriguez, attachment-based psychotherapist talks about trauma, wellbeing and the ‘between us‘ connections beween people

Jennifer Rodriguez is an attachment-based psychotherapist specialising in
attachment-related issues and trauma. She holds a special interest in how the quality of our earliest attachments impact on our health, social and mental well-being; and in the neuroscience, neurobiology, ethology, phylogeny and how it shows up in the ‘between-us’ in the therapeutic space. She believes that there is a sacred primal wisdom in the body (mostly forgotten now in our fast-paced western civilisation), and in the wholeness of the mind-
body-spirit in what it means to be human. As when Mother Nature designs things that work, she then replicates it everywhere, Jennifer believes that we are a species that thrives not only in connection to ourselves but to every living being/creature on Earth as well as being of the Earth, and of being part of a greater intelligence beyond our capacity to understand it right now... .
She was educated, worked and lived in Trinidad, the UK, the US and France,
which ignited her interest in the ties of culture and nationhood, multi-cultural
perspectives and experiences.
Alongside this, and with over 30 years of international commercial and corporate
experience of advising senior professionals and their organisations, Jennifer is
experienced in coaching individuals to improve their leadership skills. She began
her career as a chartered Civil Engineer working across the UK construction
industry.

Marguerite Schinkel talks about important questions. Can imprisonment ever be transformational? What is it like being imprisoned during a pandemic?

Marguerite Schinkel is a criminologist at the University of Glasgow and the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research. Her research has focused on the meaning of sentences for those who serve them, focusing on long-term and persistent short-term prison sentences. She is also involved in another project funded by Community Justice Scotland, along with two colleagues, Cyrus Tata and Beth Weaver at Strathclyde University. The Meaning of Sentences is a pilot project which looks at the meanings given to the sentence imposed by the different actors in the courtroom. What meaning does the judge want to communicate, what meaning does the person sentenced perceive and what role does the defence lawyer play in these processes of meaning making?
 
More recently she has explored the impact of Covid-19 and the lockdown on penal experiences in Scotland and she is hoping to explore local ways out of harm in her next project. She is the co-founder of the Coalition Against Punishment, which aims to disrupt the punishment system in Scotland: https://capscotland.com/

Kimberley Brownlee.The right to hope. The Philosopher in prison working with staff on the use of language. And much more

Professor Kimberley Brownlee is a philosopher. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political & Social Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Canada. Prior to that, she lived in the UK for close to 20 years and was a professor at the University of Warwick and senior lecturer at the University of Manchester. Her work focuses on loneliness, belonging, social human rights, punishment, conscientious belief, and civil disobedience. She is the author of two books: Conscience and Conviction: The Case for Civil Disobedience, and of Being Sure of Each Other: An Essay on Social Rights and Freedoms. She has engaged with senior management teams in UK prisons who are working to improve the ways they speak - and think - about the people in their care. 

Speech and Language Therapy in a forensic setting. Jacqui Learoyd describes her contribution to a multidisciplinary team in a new prison

Jacqui is a Speech and Language Therapist at HMP Berwyn.  Hidden within the prison walls are people with various needs which are a risk to their health and wellbeing.  Jacqui works across all ages from 18 to end of life, trying to support the communication needs of this marginalised group at all stages of their prison sentence.  She has specific interests in de-escalating tense situations via communication, supporting competence in social communication and helping everyone understand that just because a person can talk, doesn’t mean that they are skilled in understanding and expression. 

Kerry Beckley, bringing dynamic, relational work to forensic settings.

Dr Kerry Beckley is Consultant Clinical Forensic Psychologist who has worked in a range of forensic hospital and community settings. She is known for her work in developing and training others to use schema therapy in these contexts, and is an accredited trainer/supervisor in individual and group schema therapy. Having spent 23 years working for the NHS, she now runs her own independent psychology practice, primarily providing expert witness reports for parole hearings and mental health tribunals, in addition to offering clinical supervision to other practitioners. One of her latest ventures is Forensic Conversations, a webinar series that she co-hosts with fellow psychologist Dr Jackie Craisatti, where they discuss a range of topics relevant to those working in the criminal justice system, sometimes inviting guests to join them. 
https://www.psychological-approaches.org/forensic-conversations.html

Andy‘s Man Club. Weekly meetings help to stem the epidemic of male suicide with Oliver Viske

We have long wnted to give voice to Andy's Man Club and International Men's Day, 19th November is a good opportunity to do so.
ANDYSMANCLUB are a Men’s Mental Health Charity – Offering free-to-attend talking groups for men and challenging the stigmas around Male Mental Health. We started off as one group in the small, northern town of Halifax. That first night 9 men turned up and spoke. There was a magic in that room that everyone knew had to be shared.
We knew other guys across the country needed this same experience. We have worked tirelessly through Andy’s memory to
grow our clubs. We now have 69, and we continue to grow across the UK.
Andy's Man Club is described as "a talking group, a place for men to come together in a safe environment to talk about issues and problems they have faced or are currently facing". It was formed by Luke Ambler and his mother-in-law Elaine after his brother-in-law took his own life
https://andysmanclub.co.uk/

Alison Liebling reflects on how the quality of prison life can be ‘seen‘ and how it changes over time.

Alison Liebling, is a British criminologist and academic. She has been Director of the Prisons Research Centre at the University of Cambridge since 2000, and Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice since 2006.
In 2016, Liebling was awarded the Perrie Award.  In July 2018, she was elected Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences. 
She has written two books: Suicide in prisons and Prisons and their moral performance,  as well as many other texts.   Her work has been tremendously influential for a generation of criminologists and for the English and Welsh prison service.

Finding a safe place for the mind in prison. Kirstine Szifris discusses her work teaching philosopy in some of England‘s high secure prisons.

Kirstine is a criminologist with ten years experience in research and evaluation. Kirstine has been working with the Policy Evaluation and Research Unit at Manchester Metropolitan University since January 2021 and has a wealth of experience evaluating programmes in and around the criminal justice system. Prior to this, Kirstine completed her PhD at Cambridge University focusing on philosophy education in prison. She has recently published a book based on her PhD work entitled Philosophy behind bars: Growth and development in prison.  
 
Long-term prisoners need to be given the space to reflect, and grow. This ground-breaking study found that engaging prisoners in philosophy education enabled them to think about some of the ‘big’ questions in life and as a result to see themselves and others differently.
Using the prisoners’ own words, Kirstine shows the importance of this type of education for growth and development. She demonstrates how the philosophical dialogue led to a form of community which provided a space for self-reflection, pro-social interaction and communal exploration of ideas, which could have long-term positive consequences.

The training of our ‘elite‘. The repression of empathy in public school education. Richard Beard, prizewinning author.

Richard Beard describes his experiences at boarding school and considers how the emotionally bleak culture represses empathy. The reward is a pathway to a lucrative career.
Richard Beard’s six novels include Damascus, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Acts of the Assassins which was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. His memoir, The Day That Went Missing, won the 2018 PEN Ackerley Award for literary autobiography. His new book, Sad Little Men, is about his experiences of boarding school from an early age .