Laura is a Lay Leader at Streatham Baptist Church and has experience in church risk management,  complex decision-making, challenging pastoral and safeguarding interventions, discipleship and racial justice strategy, service leadership, outcome measurement, Biblical Counselling and  more. In 2022, she was made a Teaching Fellow at Spurgeons, along with Adrian, to develop a new unit on Effective Christian Leadership.

 

Since becoming a Christian in 1976, she has led on church and LifeGroup leadership training, a homegroup, youth group, drama group and pub outreach, discipleship, mentoring, prophetic encouragement, prayer ministry, worship and several surveys after three years leading a mobile theatre outreach in Youth With A Mission in UK and abroad.

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Laura retired as a specialist mental health Occupational Therapist in 2018 after 31 year’s NHS management experience and six years in senior management where she honed skills in outcome measurement, training, service-user empowerment, disability equality and satisfaction surveys. She led a national special interest group for Occupational Therapists in eating disorders for 16 years providing Masterclass training, published research and ten national conferences, for which she received a Professional Merit and Lifetime Achievement Award. She received training in a wide variety of therapies including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Cognitive Analytical Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Compassion Focussed Therapy, Family Therapy and more.

 

Laura was a Care Quality Commission Specialist Advisor and represented her profession at national advisory groups including NHS England’s advisory group for eating disorders, the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Quality Network for Eating Disorders and NICE Guidelines. As Clinical Training Lead in Beat (the UK’s eating disorders charity) she developed eating disorders training packages and recruited over 20 trainers to deliver these to clinicians, educators, employers, carers and sufferers across the UK.

 

Laura is an action-oriented, natural leader who loves family, people, multicultural unity, and fun. She cares deeply about effective church leadership, discipleship and enabling people to overcome psychological distress. She enjoys zooming with family, jogging in nature, singing in the shower, digging the garden, sea-kayaking, painting and thrashing Adrian at Scrabble.

 

Laura is passionate about enabling church leaders, and their partners, to lead effectively and make truly devoted disciples of Christ.