Celia Doyle Email & Phone Number

I have specialised in child protection and welfare since working as a psychiatric social worker alongside Dr Margaret Oates OBE, Perinatal Psychiatrist in Nottingham in the 1970s. Inspired by Margaret to focus on child protection I worked for 11 years as a Team Member at the Nottingham then Northants NSPCC Special Units. On the frontline of child protection, I began to question why so many of the maltreated children I encountered stoutly defended their abusers and had a strong attachment to them. I realised a clue lay in the survival dynamics associated with the Stockholm syndrome, a topic which became my first field of research. A sudden expansion of my own family due mostly to a multiple birth led to a career rethink. Consequently, I became an independent play worker and then obtained employment at the University of Northampton. To extend my understanding of child development, I acquired psychology qualifications. I also continued to provide play work to vulnerable children and wrote academic books such as 'Working with Abused Children', 'Child Sex Abuse: A Guide for Health Professionals' and 'Helping Strategies in Child Sexual Abuse'. Profoundly influenced by the children, with whom I worked professionally, who suffered neglect and psychological maltreatment, I researched the emotional abuse of children for my doctoral thesis. Finding myself a widow with young children led inevitably to an interest in childhood bereavement. My research into the impact of neglect and emotional trauma on the developing child has culminated in a recent publication, 'Child Neglect & Emotional Abuse', co-authored with Charles Timms, who helped provide a valuable specialist understanding of neurological and physiological growth and development.

Listed skills include Research, Child Welfare, Child Development, Interventions, and 15 others.