Helen is Professor of Clinical Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has over 25 years’ experience developing clinical training programmes and working with children and families across a variety of health and education services, in-person and online. She is Director of Clinical Programmes for Psychological Practitioners at RHUL and Programme Director for the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology, one of the largest Doctoral Programmes training Clinical Psychologists for the NHS in the UK.

Helen’s research focuses on digital competences, child mental health and behaviour, adolescent cognitive processes, family functioning and mental health literacy, with a particular focus on digital interventions. She is a mental health lead for the StoryFutures Creative Cluster, ensuring that the best psychological research evidence informs immersive solutions for mental health and wellbeing that are developed by the Cluster and its industry partners. This work draws primarily on CBT and systemic psychological intervention evidence. Recently Helen has been focusing on immersive, VR and AR-game-based learning and psycho-education apps to support youth mental and wellbeing in schools. She developed MindAid - a mental health literacy app for teachers and young people trialled across many schools in the UK.

Helen has been supporting the take up of innovative digital solutions by psychology practitioners in the UK, and chairs the Digital Healthcare Committee for the British Psychological Society (Clinical Division). She established the UK digital practice competence framework for psychological practioners and developed elearning to ensure effective take-up of digital solutions by health staff which has been rolled out in HEIs and the NHS in the UK.

Helen established and chairs the South East Research Network for Schools (SERNS) at RHUL, bringing together best practice from researchers and education staff to enhance children's learning and wellbeing.

Helen is on the editorial board of the Journal of Family Therapy and wrote a manual for systemic therapy which is used internationally for research and psychotherapy education (MRC funded).