Verity Westgate

I am the Trial Coordinator for the Oxford arm of the Relationships in Good Hands Trial.  This is a trial examining the effectiveness of Dyadic Dynamic Psychotherapy in children who have maltreatment associated psychiatric problems and are now in care.  The project is led by the University of Glasgow and my role is a mixture of project management and research support for the qualitative aspects of the study.

I have an eclectic career path.  Before joining the Department of Psychiatry, I worked with the Critical Care Research Group at the Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences managing the large Wellcome Trust/Department of Health "Hospital Alerting Via Electronic-Noticeboard" (HAVEN) project aiming to identify patients at risk of deterioration in hospital. Prior to that, I was a librarian for ten years and my first degree was in history, before an MSc in Library and Information Management and more recently a MRes in Health Research.  I am a Fellow of the Association of University Administrators and am a Chartered Member of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals.

Outside of my work in the department, I pursue my interests in perinatal mental health and autism.  I sit on the NHSE Perinatal Coproduction Group, am a patient representative with the Royal College of Psychiatrist's Perinatal Quality Network and with their National Autism Training programme, and deliver very successful autism training for community perinatal mental health teams with Autism Oxford.  I am PPIE lead/co-investigator on the NIHR funded ACORN-II project led by the University of Exeter testing an intervention for antenatal anxiety.  In my spare time, I am doing a PhD at the University of Exeter looking at autistic women's experiences of community perinatal mental health teams, building on the work of the successful ESMI-II project.