Tutors

Meet our highly qualified tutors who deliver the Human Development Scotland (HDS) training programme.

Here are some of the tutors currently working with HDS.

Alison P Brown

Alison's first career was in criminology and legal and social research in universities, government and charities. She trained in psychodynamic counselling at the University of Edinburgh. She has a particular interests in gender, trauma, neurodiversity, and the psychodynamics of organisations. She currently manages a local mental health charity counselling service in Forth Valley alongside private
practice as a supervisor and counsellor.

Liz Cairns

Liz has worked in educational settings in a variety of roles for over 35 years. She was a teacher for 11 years before undertaking further training. As a result, she has Graduate and Post Graduate clinical qualifications from all 3 Glasgow Universities, as well as Edinburgh University.

Liz has supported a number of voluntary sector organisations to create and deliver Counsellor and Arts Psychotherapy training at Graduate and Masters level. Most recently here at HDS she has developed the Psychodynamic Counsellor training for HDS in conjunction with RGU and continue to lead that highly regarded clinical training programme.

Her clinical work focusses mainly on work with children, young people and their families. On leaving teaching Liz set up, developed and ran the highly regarded Youth Counselling Service for NHS Lanarkshire. Based in both North and South Lanarkshire it was the first service in Scotland to roll out universal provision of Counselling in all its secondary schools.

Liz now works privately with young people in schools and in the community and provide clinical supervision and specialist supports to individuals and organisations working with trauma and abuse.

She is a proud Glaswegian, having lived all her life in the city. She has 3 grown up daughters with their own lives and careers. Liz enjoys travelling and reading nonclinical texts. She cooks to relax and destress.

Ross Chalmers

Ross is lead tutor for the Professional Practice 1 module in year one of the diploma course.  With a background in education, Ross began to explore the world of counselling some time ago and in recent years trained as a psychodynamic counsellor at HDS.  He currently has a private practice in Glasgow.  He has studied to Masters level and used this experience to build on his interest in attachment theory by exploring mentalisation in a non-medicalised therapeutic context.  In his free time, Ross likes to read, cook and go for long walks with his dog.  

Debbie Hindle

Dr Debbie Hindle is a consultant child and adolescent psychotherapist, trained at the Tavistock Clinic. For 10 years, she was Head of the Clinical Training in Child Psychotherapy at the Scottish Institute of Human Relations in Edinburgh and worked clinically in a specialist Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Glasgow for children who were fostered or adopted. 

She has written extensively, including 3 co-edited books – Personality Development: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (1999); The Emotional Experience of Adoption: A Psychoanalytic Perspective (2008);and Sibling Matters: A Psychoanalytic, Developmental and Systemic Approach (2014). Now retired from the NHS, she continues to teach, supervise and lecture. 

Fanny Lena

Fanny is a Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist who trained at the Tavistock Centre in London. 

Fanny has worked clinically with children, young people and families for 15 years, in a variety of NHS settings and in private practice. 

Before training at the Tavistock, Fanny qualified and worked as a psychologist in Italy and developed a specialist interest in parent-infant interventions and attachment research.

Fanny worked in CAMHS for several years, where she gained extensive experience of supporting therapeutically children and young people with a wide range of mental health difficulties including depression, anxiety, self-harm, eating disorders, attachment difficulties, externalising problems, complex and intergenerational trauma, and neurodevelopmental difficulties. As well as offering long term and time limited psychotherapy to children and adolescents, Fanny developed a specialist interest in parent work and parent-infant psychotherapy.

Fanny worked as a highly specialist child psychotherapist in mainstream and specialist educational settings, both as part of CAMHS outreach services in schools and as a member of a multidisciplinary team in a therapeutic school for children with complex social emotional and mental health needs. Fanny has taught Infant Observation, Work Discussion, Psychoanalytic Theory and Child Development Research on MA programmes at the Tavistock Centre and has been offering supervision to professionals working in a variety of settings.

She is currently working in private practice in Edinburgh.

Katherine Waumsley