Tamsin Ford
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Tamsin Jane Ford (born 17 September 1966) is a British
psychiatrist A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry. Psychiatrists are physicians who evaluate patients to determine whether their symptoms are the result of a physical illness, a combination of physical and mental ailments or strictly ...
specialising in children's mental health. Since 2019 she has been based at the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
where she is now Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Head of the Department of Psychiatry and Fellow of Hughes Hall. She has been heavily involved with the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (TCM) programme, created by Carolyn Webster-Stratton, which aims to raise and improve children's mental health in
primary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...
s across Devon. Her work also ties in with the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), created by UK psychiatrist, Robert Goodman.


Education

Ford received a
MB BS A Bachelor of Medicine, Bachelor of Surgery (; MBBS, also abbreviated as BM BS, MB ChB, MB BCh, or MB BChir) is a medical degree granted by medical schools or universities in countries that adhere to the United Kingdom's higher education tradi ...
from United Medical Schools of Guy's and St Thomas's,
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
in 1990. As a
junior doctor In the United Kingdom, a resident doctor, previously (until 2024) known as a junior doctor, is a qualified medical practitioner who is either engaged in postgraduate training or employed in a non-training post. The period of being a resident docto ...
in 1991-1992, she held posts at Guy's and Lewisham Hospital (
surgery Surgery is a medical specialty that uses manual and instrumental techniques to diagnose or treat pathological conditions (e.g., trauma, disease, injury, malignancy), to alter bodily functions (e.g., malabsorption created by bariatric surgery s ...
),
Orpington Hospital Orpington Hospital is an acute general hospital in Orpington, London. It is managed by the King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. History The hospital has its origins in a military hospital built for soldiers originating from the Provinc ...
(
medicine Medicine is the science and Praxis (process), practice of caring for patients, managing the Medical diagnosis, diagnosis, prognosis, Preventive medicine, prevention, therapy, treatment, Palliative care, palliation of their injury or disease, ...
),
King's College Hospital King's College Hospital is a major teaching hospital and major trauma centre in Denmark Hill, Camberwell in the London Borough of Lambeth, referred to locally and by staff simply as "King's" or abbreviated internally to "KCH". It is managed by ...
( A&E) and
Royal London Hospital The Royal London Hospital is a large teaching hospital in Whitechapel in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is part of Barts Health NHS Trust. It provides district general hospital services for the City of London and Tower Hamlets and sp ...
(
eldercare Elderly care, or simply eldercare (also known in parts of the English-speaking world as aged care), serves the needs of old adults. It encompasses assisted living, adult daycare, long-term care, nursing homes (often called residential care), hos ...
). She began her core professional training in
psychiatry Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of deleterious mental disorder, mental conditions. These include matters related to cognition, perceptions, Mood (psychology), mood, emotion, and behavior. ...
in 1992, passing her MRCPsych examination in 1995. She was then appointed
Senior Registrar :''This article primarily explains the Senior Registrar doctor grade within the United Kingdom until 1996'' A Senior Registrar was a grade of doctor in the United Kingdom or Ireland before being superseded during reforms in the 1990s. The senior ...
in
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Child and adolescent psychiatry (or pediatric psychiatry) is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders in children, adolescents, and their families. It investigates the biopsychosocial fac ...
with the Bethlem and Maudsley NHS Trust, obtaining a CCST in 1998. Between 1995-2005 Ford did her
fellowship A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned or professional societies, the term refers ...
in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the
Institute of Psychiatry The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) is a centre for mental health and neuroscience research, education and training in Europe. It is dedicated to understanding, preventing and treating mental illness, neurological co ...
,
King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...
while working in the Clinical Research Worker Department at King's, as well as holding clinical posts at
Great Ormond Street Hospital Great Ormond Street Hospital (informally GOSH, formerly the Hospital for Sick Children) is a children's hospital located in the Bloomsbury area of the London Borough of Camden, and a part of Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS F ...
(Tourette's Clinic and Epilepsy Surgery Clinic) and
Maudsley Hospital The Maudsley Hospital is a British psychiatric hospital in south London. The Maudsley is the largest mental health training institution in the UK. It is part of South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, and works in partnership with the I ...
(National and Specialist OCD Clinic). Ford received a MSc (distinction) in
Epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and Risk factor (epidemiology), determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population, and application of this knowledge to prevent dise ...
at the
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) is a public university, public research university in Bloomsbury, central London, and a constituent college, member institution of the University of London that specialises in public hea ...
in 2000, followed by a
PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...
in 2004 with the thesis "Services for Children with mental health disorders: rates and predictors of specialist service use". Towards the end of her fellowship, Ford worked briefly for the Croydon Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service as a member of their Children Looked After Team. She was also one of the editors of the book ''A Practical Psychiatric Epidemiology'' published in 2003 and highly commended in the BMA book competition held the following year. In 2005 she was appointed MRC Clinician Scientist for the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London.


Career

In 2005 Ford was appointed MRC Clinician Scientist for the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College London. In 2007 she moved to
Exeter, Devon Exeter ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Devon in South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio ...
, where she was appointed Clinical Senior Lecturer at the Peninsula Medical School,
University of Exeter The University of Exeter is a research university in the West Country of England, with its main campus in Exeter, Devon. Its predecessor institutions, St Luke's College, Exeter School of Science, Exeter School of Art, and the Camborne School of ...
, setting up the Child Mental Health Research Group in September. At the beginning of 2008 she was appointed to the Exeter and Mid Devon Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service ( Devon Partnership NHS Trust) as an honorary consultant. Later that year, her publication "Five years on: public sector service use related to mental health in young people with ADHD or hyperkinetic disorder five years after diagnosis", of which she was a co-author, was selected as one of the top ten publications of the year by editors of the ''
Child and Adolescent Mental Health ''Child and Adolescent Mental Health'' (CAMH) is a quarterly peer-reviewed medical journal published by Wiley-Blackwell in Britain on behalf of the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. The journal publishes peer-refereed child and ...
'' journal. Another honorary consultant role followed in May 2011, when Ford was appointed to the Exeter Liaison team on the Devon NHS Partnership Trust. Two years later she was appointed as personal chair of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Exeter Medical School, in 2014 she was awarded a FRCPsych - becoming a fellow of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for representing psychiatrists, for psychiatric research and for providing public information about mental healt ...
, and became a Fellow of the
Academy of Medical Sciences The Academy of Medical Sciences is an organisation established in the UK in 1998. It is one of the four UK National Academy, National Academies, the others being the British Academy, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society. Its ...
in 2020. In 2012 Ford started setting up of the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management (TCM) programme to promote awareness and understanding of mental health in children aged 6–11; by 2018 this programme was implemented in 80 Devon primary schools. In 2018 Ford was voted as one of the 100 most influential women in Exeter by Grow Exeter. In the summer of 2019, Ford was awarded a
CBE The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two o ...
for her work in transforming mental health services and schools in the United Kingdom, with her work regularly cited in
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
,
NHS The National Health Service (NHS) is the term for the publicly funded health care, publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom: the National Health Service (England), NHS Scotland, NHS Wales, and Health and Social Care (Northern ...
and education policy. She moved to the
University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...
Department of Psychiatry in 2019.


Honours

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences CBE *Fellow of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists The Royal College of Psychiatrists is the main professional organisation of psychiatrists in the United Kingdom, and is responsible for representing psychiatrists, for psychiatric research and for providing public information about mental healt ...
*Chair of the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Surveillance Service *Founder member of the Child Outcome Research Consortium (CORC)


Selected publications

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *


Notes


References


External links


The Incredible Years
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Tamsin 1966 births Living people Alumni of King's College London Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) British child psychiatrists British women psychiatrists Commanders of the Order of the British Empire