Speakers

Fiona McQueen CBE

Fiona McQueen's career spans three decades of executive public sector leadership, primarily across the health system and latterly within the Civil Service. She was appointed as an Executive Nurse Director in 1993 and has held a variety of roles, including the Chief Nursing Officer for the Scottish Government. She is passionate about good governance being at the heart of an organisation and also that people are at the heart of decision making. She has wide ranging experience in supporting organisations to transform and improve, and is committed to openness and transparency as well as reducing inequalities. Fiona is a non-executive board member for Ayrshire College and is currently the Interim Chair. Fiona McQueen was awarded a CBE for services to the NHS in June 2021.

Deputy Chief Constable Fiona Taylor QPM

Deputy Chief Constable Designate Fiona Taylor QPM has executive responsibility for Professionalism, Strategy and Engagement, which includes the following areas of business:

Professionalism and Assurance

Policing Together

Strategy and Analysis

DCC Taylor began her career as an officer with Lincolnshire Police and has also served in Lothian and Borders Police, Strathclyde Police and the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS).

Prior to leaving the MPS, she was Temporary Assistant Commissioner for Professionalism with strategic oversight and leadership of the Directorate of Professional Standards, Met Training, the Serious Crime Review Group and Operational Support Services.

DCC Taylor joined Police Scotland in 2018 and was initially appointed Deputy Chief Constable – Local Policing before taking on her current portfolio. She was awarded the QPM in June 2021.

Audrey Nicoll MSP

Audrey Nicoll is the constituency MSP for Aberdeen South and North Kincardine and Convener of the Criminal Justice Committee of the Scottish Parliament. With a policing career spanning 31 years in Grampian Police and Police Scotland she has significant experience in operational policing, investigating serious and complex sexual offences, counter extremism and developing policy on policing mental health. Following her retirement, Audrey joined the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedic Practice at the Robert Gordon University, supporting the development of inter-professional learning and developing the University’s Prevent Policy. In 2019 Audrey was elected as a councillor in Aberdeen City, then again in May 2021 to the Scottish Parliament. Audrey remains passionate about ensuring access to justice, improving the experience of victims and supporting those working across the sector in particular those on the front line.

Gill Moreton

Gill is a psychological therapist at the Rivers Centre for Traumatic Stress in Edinburgh specialising in the treatment of adults who have developed traumatic stress reactions. She is involved in training and research in the UK and internationally, and has a particular interest in work with emergency service personnel and other staff with occupational exposure to potentially traumatic stressors.

Gill began her professional career in 1991 as a child and family social worker and team manager in Central Regional Council with a special interest in work with survivors and perpetrators of domestic violence and child sexual abuse. In 1996 she was involved in the immediate response to the shootings at Dunblane Primary School and in the establishment of the Dunblane Support Centre where she worked for the next five years. Since then she has specialised in the treatment of children and adults affected by trauma, completing psychotherapy training in CBT and EMDR. She was coordinator of the CAMHS Child Sexual Abuse service in NHS Lothian prior to joining the Rivers Centre for Traumatic Stress in June 2002.

Gill is the lead clinician for all of the Rivers Centre’s external contracts and manages the services The Rivers Centre provides to a number of Scottish Police and Fire services, the Scottish Ambulance Service, City of Edinburgh Council and the Scottish Jury Service. She has developed a “Buddy” model of peer support for police firearms officers and has also developed resources for the friends and family of Rivers Centre clients, establishing a group model of support for adult and child “supporters”. She provides supervision to staff working in the CAMHS CSA team and EMDR supervision to a wide range of NHS colleagues.

Dr Karen Goodall - Trauma Informed Policing

Dr Karen Goodall is a Director of Postgraduate Research in Clinical Psychology at the University of Edinburgh with interest in individual differences in adult attachment and emotion regulation. Dr Goodall's work focuses predominantly on the development of psychology and mental health, where she recently co-authored a report titled 'Moving towards trauma-informed policing: An exploration of police officers' attitudes and perceptions towards Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).

Dr Jess Miller (Director of Research at Police Care UK) Police Care UK

Dr Miller is a consultant for The Royal Foundation, Director of Research at Police
Care UK and a Principal Investigator in the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. She is the author of 'The Policing Mind.' In this book she uses the most recent neuroscience and real-life examples to explore risks to individual resilience. She offers practical resilience techniques and policy recommendations for police offers facing crime in a post-COVID world. Dr Miller translates the latest neuropsychology into the reality of operational police trauma resilience training and surveys police wellbeing across the UK. Her other work includes:

Leading UKs largest police wellbeing survey (and the first to quantify prevalence of PTSD and CPTSD in UK Police). This collaborative research was covered extensively by the BCC and has featured in several documentaries;

Training for operational police across the UK in Trauma Impact Processing
Techniques, offering bespoke modular courses for high-risk roles such as Counter Terrorism and atypical digital and auditory trauma exposure (e.g. child sexual exploitation and call handling);

Producing trauma new trauma exposure management tools such as the UK's first Police Traumatic Events Checklists

Vernon Herron – Baltimore Police Department

Vernon Herron is Director of Officer Safety and Wellness for Baltimore Police Department, one of the only dedicated directors of safety and wellness in US policing.

A traumatic experience early in Vernon Herron’s policing career gave him a personal insight into the services officers need to maintain their mental health and wellbeing; now he uses that experience, and many others gained during more than 30 years in policing, to ensure Baltimore PD officers have the right safety and wellness support.

William Cairns – Walking with the Wounded

Project Designer and Manager for MEDALS (Mindfulness Education, Developing Active Lifestyles via Sports ) and VC Project (Veterans in the Community ) including Research , Contracting and Negotiating, Implementation, partnerships , oversight , financial oversight and dealing with funders and corporate partners and veteran engagement through face to face meetings as well as most digital platforms and social media . Implemented and gained funding for a free Veterans Breakfast Club for homeless veterans in Glasgow.

During lockdown secured a grant variation request to start to deliver programmes online and was successful in developing MEDALS Online that supported veterans digitally including partnering such organisations as Glasgow Rangers Charity Foundation , The Soldiers Arts Academy, and Climbing Out.

I also developed MEDALS Volunteering to get the veterans i support out helping with the pandemic response in the community.

Responsible for Implementation and development OP-REGEN Scotland WWTWs Veterans Volunteer Project a programme built on three Pillars of support for the veteran community. Developing campaigns for veterans to demonstrate their skills and competences to members of the public, corporate partners and other third sector organisations to the benefit of our community's, the environment and for future generations. Currently managing a number of campaigns including Waterside Steading Dumfries, East Renfrewshire Councils Venture Veterans programme and a partnership with STAND International.

Fiona Douglas – SPA Forensic Services

Fiona Douglas was appointed Director of SPA Forensic Service in August 2021 taking up the post on 1 October 2021. She was formerly Head of Strategic Change for Forensic Services. She has 24 years of experience working in Forensic Science with the past 10 years working within Scotland.

Prior to becoming Head of Strategic Change Fiona was Head of Biology within Forensic Services and led the national development of this part of Forensic Services within the Scottish Police Authority, this included the development and implementation of the new DNA24 technology that is now at the heart of DNA services provided to the justice system in Scotland.

Prior to working in Scotland Fiona worked at various locations in England and Wales within the government owned Forensic Science Service with responsibility across multi-disciplinary forensic evidence and organisational change.

Fiona has been instrumental in the development of the Forensic 2026 strategy and in has been responsible for ongoing delivery of the strategy since moving into the Head of Strategic Change role in August 2019.