DFP Devolved Nations Forensic Psychology Virtual Conference

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Programme

Speakers

Lisa Davies and Jodi Symmonds

Psychological considerations in the assessment of victims and perpetrators of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery

There are a lack of formally recognised approaches to the evaluation of risk in victims and perpetrators of human trafficking and modern slavery. Progress has been made on identifying the characteristics of victims but there are challenges to gaining an adequate understanding of perpetrators. Drawing upon their experience of assessing risk in both victims and perpetrators of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery, Ms. Davies and Ms. Symmonds will provide an overview of human trafficking and modern slavery. They will offer a suggested approach to the assessment of risk in individuals engaged in human trafficking, and a discussion of important trafficking considerations for assessing risk in known or suspected victims. It is proposed that risk assessment should utilise relevant structured professional judgement approaches, with additional consideration given to the psychological characteristics of victims and perpetrators, the methods of coercion and control used to exploit victims and the presence of any additional case specific trafficking-related factors that drive and maintain the perpetration of harm. 

Lisa Davies is a Consultant Forensic Psychologist, and the Director of Expert Psychological Services Ltd, an expert witness consultancy in the UK. Ms. Davies has worked across low, medium, and high secure services, in prisons and community services. She provides psychological assessments for the purposes of the courts, immigration tribunals and parole board. In the last seven years, Ms. Davies has provided assessments of victims and perpetrators of modern slavery and human trafficking, and receives referrals for clients at all stages of the criminal justice system, from charge through to appeal against sentence and conviction and appeals against removal from the UK, with frequent instructions received to assess the risk of harm presented to the public by individuals convicted of offences related to human trafficking and modern slavery. Ms. Davies has been involved in the assessment of risk of adult males and females known or suspected to be involved in human trafficking and modern slavery and is regularly called upon to give expert evidence. She has provided psychological consultancy to peer mentors with lived experience of leaving criminal gangs and supporting individuals exiting from criminal gangs and has provided training in human trafficking and modern slavery within the UK. 

Jodi Symmonds is a Chartered Forensic Psychologist working full-time for HMPPS as the Clinical Lead of a Psychologically Informed Planned Environment (PIPE). Ms. Symmonds has worked across forensic mental health, including open, low, medium and high secure settings, research and community therapy. Over the last eight years, Ms. Symmonds has carried out research on the topic of contemporary slavery and human trafficking, including the completion of a PhD exploring the geographic crime analysis, methods of coercion in sexual and labour exploitation and news media representations of human trafficking. More recently, Ms. Symmonds has provided assessments of victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery and she provides training and awareness workshops to police departments on this topic. Ms. Symmonds has worked with several anti-trafficking charities for both awareness training and research. 

Dr Kerensa Hocken

Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) and Forensic Practice  

This introduction to the forensic application of Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT) introduces a compassionate understanding of the origins of harmful behaviour. It outlines key considerations in applying CFT to those who commit serious offences including an approach to case formulation that is based on trauma sensitivity and draws on a compassionate understanding of the difficulties that can emerge from the survival strategies that human beings deploy under adversity and their links to criminogenic need. This presentation will outline the importance of attending to  shame and self-criticism in understanding and working with harmful behaviour and illustrate how capacities for compassion helps individuals are able to lead non-harmful lives.

Dr Kerensa Hocken is a registered forensic psychologist. She has worked with people convicted of serious offences for 22 years and has a lead role in Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service. In 2016 she was the winner of the prestigious Butler Trust award for excellence in correctional services, presented by Princess Anne. Kerensa is a trustee and co-founder of the Safer Living Foundation (SLF), a charity to prevent sexual abuse by working with those who have offended or are at risk of, committing a sexual offence. Kerensa is a member of the Compassionate Mind Foundation and cofounder of the CFT forensic special interest group. Kerensa is a co-host on The Forensic Psychology Podcast.

Dr. Carol A. Ireland 

Introducing the CASEE: Children Adolescent Sexual Exploitation Evaluation

This presentation will introduce the first draft of an empirically driven evaluation checklist for working with children/adolescents who are at risk of/felt to be at risk of Child Sexual Exploitation, the CASEE. This checklist is a product of a number of research studies, considering both vulnerability and protective factors for professionals to refer to when working with young people at risk of CSE. The CASEE is further grounded in the Protect and Vulnerability Model against CSE (Alderson, K., Ireland. C.A., Khan, R., Ireland, J.L. & Lewis, M, 2022). This model encompasses consideration to both the moment the young person is at risk, and how these risk factors and vulnerability factors may appear, in addition to protective factors and long-term functioning. This therefore offered scope for the development of the CASEE. 

Within the CASEE there are 19 items with 41 sub items. The items are split into three different sections "Vulnerability items", "Strain for the child items", and "Situational factor items". There are additionally, 9 items within the "protective factor" section. Each item has a description for context and theory as to the item, based on literature research. This presentation is an opportunity to present the CASEE, with a view to making the checklist accessible for use by a range of professionals.  

Dr. Carol A. Ireland is a Chartered Psychologist, Consultant Forensic Psychologist, Chartered Scientist and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. She is also a registered practitioner with the Health and Care Professions Council. Dr. Ireland works at CCATS, where she leads on assessment, intervention, research and consultancy. She has worked with individuals across the life span, addressing a wide range of forensic issues and trauma for over 25 years, and is both an Accredited EMDR Therapist and an EMDR Consultant. Her clinical practice has included both the assessment of and intervention with a range of clients, including individual and group therapies. She is also Senior Research Lead at the Ashworth Research Centre, Ashworth Hospital, as well as working at the University of Central Lancashire, where she is a Reader in Aggression, and where she supervises various PhD Doctoral students. Dr. Ireland has published extensively in the area of forensic psychology, and has over 80 publications, including journal articles and book chapters. Dr. Ireland was past Chair and past Vice-Chair of the British Psychological Societies Division of Forensic Psychology. 

Kieran McCartan

Refining processes in policy and practice in working with people accused or convicted of a sexual offence

Currently the criminal justice landscape is going through significant refection with great potential for change, especially regarding Trauma informed Practice, the service users voice, developmental criminology,  harm reduction, desistence, and the socio-ecological context of offending behaviour; Al of which encourages an EpiCrim (public health) approach to preventing, as well as responding to, offending behaviour. This paper will discuss these concepts, as well as the potential changes, in respect to recent Council of Europe recommendations for the assessment, treatment and management of people accused or convicted of a sexual offence, spelling out the recommendations and what they mean for the UK moving forward.

Kieran McCartan, PhD, is a Professor of Criminology at the University of the West of England (UK), an Adjunct Professor at the Queensland University of Technology (Australia) and visiting Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield (UK). He has a track record of public, academic and professional engagement on criminological issues, including the origins and causes of sex offending, and societal responses to sex offenders. He has developed a wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary network around sex offender management and reintegration. He has experience of qualitative, quantitative and mixed method research from funders including Ministry of Justice, Cabinet Office, Public Health England, ESRC, The Leverhulme Trust, Bristol City Council & Wiltshire probation. Professor McCartan is the international representative on the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers board, the Conference Chair of National Organization for the Treatment of Abuse, a member of the Confederation of European Probation working group on sexual offenses, a member of the ethics committee of Brave hearts and is a member of the International Working Group for the Prevention of Online Sex Offending. Professor McCartan has advised the Council of Europe, New Zealand Police, Bravehearts as well as Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia. Professor McCartan has several academic outputs, including, 130 academic publications (incl., Journal Articles, Books, Book Chapters, External Research Reports & Professional/Practitioner publications); 200+ blogs; generated over 1/2 million pounds in external research funding; & has given 200+ external presentations (incl., Conference Papers & invited Keynotes); & has taken part in 40+ media interviews nationally as well as internationally.

 Dr Rachael Wheatley

Improving responses to Stalking: The role of Forensic Psychology

Stalking can affect anyone. It is a prevalent and yet under-identified, under-reported, and poorly managed crime. Victims suffer immensely while criminal justice, health and social care responses (including forensic psychology contributions) are under-developed and under-funded. This keynote session explores the victim/survivor experience of policing responses in the UK and the super-complaint recently launched, provides an overview of doctoral research with people who have stalked, talks about the piloted Early Awareness Stalking Intervention (EASI), signposts to key features of the new BPS resource for psychologists working with people who have stalked, and suggests key areas to focus future research in. The session will allow for a Q&A session to conclude.

Rachael is a BPS chartered forensic psychologist and HCPC registered (practitioner) psychologist who has worked for HMPPS Psychology Services Group for 21 years, and now manages a forensic psychologist practitioner programme. She maintains her independent practice, offering forensic risk assessments, interventions, consultancy, supervision and training activities, related to stalking and wider gender-based offending. She completed a Doctor of Psychology degree investigating what drives men who stalk and how practitioners can best respond to their needs, publishing widely on this topic.  Rachael is particularly interested in raising awareness of stalking behaviours and in working to improve (early) interventions with those who stalk, to better protect victims. She is active in driving forward stalking related research at the University of Derby in collaboration with partners and is often invited to contribute to roundtable discussions for example regarding legislative changes impacts linked to the new Domestic Abuse Act, and regarding risk indicators related to femicide, in relation to her stalking expertise. 

Rachael is a lead author on the BPS resource for psychologists working with individuals who have stalked, is the Founder of the UK academic collaboration for stalking and young people, and Deputy Chair for the Knowledge Exchange Network subgroup of the National Stalking and Harassment Offences Working Group, led by Deputy Chief Constable Paul Mills (NPCC Lead for Stalking and Harassment Offences). Rachael has been a trustee of the board for the Alice Ruggles Trust since May 2020, is on the editorial reviewer board for the British Journal of Forensic Practice. Rachael co-created and delivers therapy on the Early Awareness Stalking Intervention (EASI) for people charged with stalking in the West Midlands region, provides consultancy and training to criminal justice agencies on the topic of stalking, and has been active in multi-media activities to promote awareness and improved responses to stalking. Rachael is a DFP committee member and a proud trustee of the Alice Ruggles Trust. 

Dr. Stephen Wong

Assessing dynamic violence risk and risk change with treatment using the Violence Risk Scale (VRS) 

The presentation summarizes the use of the VRS to assess and predict violent recidivism, to identify  treatment targets, to assess treatment engagement using a modified Stage of Change model that is  integrated into the VRS, and to monitor and assess risk change with treatment. Recent VRS research  validated the use of a common-language-risk-level (CL) approach to improve the transparency and  precision in risk communication. A 5-level risk nomenclature, from 'well-below-average' to 'well above-average' risk levels that are associated respectively with 5 ranges of VRS scores as well as the  corresponding violent and general recidivism rates for 2-, 3- and 5-year follow-up, can be used to  communicate reoffending risk. The CL approach has advantages over the use of 'low', 'moderate' and 'high' designations to characterize risk. As well, VRS pre- or post-treatment total scores  together with VRS change scores can be used to generate measures of absolute risk (percent  recidivism) and relative risk (percentile score) using a risk calculator and percentile tables developed for the VRS. A hypothetical case is used to illustrate the formulation and communication of  recidivism risk and risk change at pre- and post-treatment based on the above information. 

Dr. Stephen Wong, Ph.D. is Adjunct Professor at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada and  Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. Steve started his career as a psychologist at the  Regional Psychiatric Centre, a maximum-security psychiatric hospital in the Correctional Service  Canada. He was later appointed Chief of Psychology and Research, and then Director of Research. In  2008, he left Canada to spend a year as Visiting Professor at the Department of Forensic and  Neurodevelopmental Science at Kings College, London, and later as Special Advisor at Rampton High  Secure Hospital, UK, and then as Honorary Professor at the Institute of Mental Health at the  University of Nottingham. His research interests are best described as a blending of applied research  and clinical practice with a focus on the assessment and treatment of violent, sexual and  psychopathic offenders. He is the lead author of the Violence Risk Scale (VRS) and the VRS sexual  offence version (VRS-SO), tools that can be used to assess the risks of violence and/or sexual violence, identify treatment targets and measure risk change with treatment. Steve and Audrey  Gordon also co-developed the Violence Reduction Programme (VRP) for the treatment of offenders and forensic mental health service users including those with psychopathic traits. The VRS, the VRS SO, and the VRP program are now used internationally. Among his 100+ publications, he co authored the Guidelines for a Psychopathy Treatment Program with Robert Hare.

 

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