Who we are

Dr Katherine Rake OBE took up her post as Chief Executive of the Family and Parenting Institute in October 2009. She has a strong background in social policy and research and is passionate about improving families' well-being. Katherine previously spent seven years as chief executive of the Fawcett Society. Prior to that she was a Lecturer in Social Policy at the LSE and seconded to the Women's Unit, Cabinet Office where she edited a ground-breaking report on women's lifetime incomes: Katherine has advised the Prime Minister's Policy Unit, HM Treasury and a variety of other Government departments. She is a regular broadcaster and has contributed to a wide range of print media. In 2008, Katherine was awarded an OBE for services to equal opportunities, an Institute of Directors 'Good Director' Honour and the Social Policy Association's Annual Award for Outstanding Contribution from a Non-academic.

Sally Gimson joined the FPI as Campaigns Officer in November 2006. Sally has a degree in French and German. Her career started in news journalism. She worked for the European, the Observer and the Sunday Telegraph in London, and was a translator and producer for Deutsche Welle's English language TV news service in Berlin. At the FPI she has run a high profile campaign in support of health visitors. She is chair of governors at the Royal Free Hospital Children's School and vice-chair of Queen's Crescent Community Association in Gospel Oak.

Lucy Lloyd joined Family and Parenting Institute in October 2005 as Director of Communications. Previously, she worked inside Government as Head of Communications for Sure Start at the Department for Education and Skills (2002-4) and until 2002 she was Deputy Director at Daycare Trust, the national childcare charity, running the charity's research and policy programme and the successful consultancy service. Lucy studied at Cambridge University (social anthropology) and later at LSE (MSc in social policy and voluntary sector organisation). She is Chair of Governors at Kate Greenaway Nursery School and Children's Centre in King's Cross, London; and a member of the board of trustees at 4Children, the national children's charity. She has a special interest in early years policy; work/life balance; and building user participation into service planning.

Mary King joined FPI as Director of Finance and Operations in January 2001. She is responsible for the Finance, Information Technology, Personnel and Administrative functions within the FPI. She has a Diploma in Charity Accounting from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales and a Post-graduate Diploma in Charity Finance from South Bank University. She is also a member of the Charity Finance Directors' Group. She has worked in the voluntary sector for many years and before joining FPI she worked for Medical Aid for Palestinians as their Director of Finance and Administration with responsibility for deputizing for the Chief Executive.

Clem Henricsonis a social policy analyst who has specialised in investigating the relationship between the state and the family. She has a particular interest in human and children's rights and has assessed the Government's family policy from a social rights perspective in Government and Parenting, 2000, and the interaction between child and family policy in The Child and Family Policy Divide, 2004. She supervised the work of the Commission into Families and the Wellbeing of Children, which reported on the respective role of state and family in 2005. Clem Henricson has researched family services in England and Wales, and has developed a model for the future of family services which has been instrumental in shaping government strategic planning in this area. She has led a multi - stage national programme for parent support in schools, involving pilots, evaluation and feasibility assessments. She also serves on government and academic advisory committees concerned with family policy.

Anne Page FRSA is responsible for policy development, policy projects and parliamentary work. She is the author of a new FPI research report about partnerships between schools and parents. She recently led a DCSF funded 2-year demonstration project and rollout of a new initiative to promote engaging with parents in schools. Previously she worked at the NHS West London Health Promotion Agency and as a freelance writer and consultant for the education & health services. She has written numerous articles on parenting, child development and health and been a regular contributor to radio. She co-edited 'Changing Minds', published by Gaskell Press, a self-help book for families affected by mental health issues. She worked for thirteen years as a lecturer in further education, where she set up Student Services in two colleges and pioneered counselling courses in the 1980s. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts..

Publications
Page, A. with Das, S., Mangeibeira, W. and Natale, L., School-Parent Partnerships, Family and Parenting Institute, autumn 2008
Page, A., Transition Information Sessions: Learning from the demonstration projects 2007-2008, Department for Children, Schools and Families Research Report DCSF-RW055, 2008
Page, A., with Alexander, T., Pick, R. and Coleman, J., Parent Information Point Toolkit, Family and Parenting Institute, 2003
Page, A, Changing Times: support for parents in pregnancy, at birth and in the first two years, Institute for Public Policy Research & Family and Parenting Institute, 2002
Page, A., with Henricson, C., Parent Information Sessions in Schools: A Feasibility Study, Family and Parenting Institute, 2002

Carena Rogers joined FPI in August 2001. Prior to this she worked for a short time at One Parent Families and for many years in the voluntary sector focusing on disability rights. She has a first degree in Philosophy and Women's Studies and a Masters in Gender, Society and Culture from the University of London. Publications include Implementation of Every Child Matters Green Paper briefing paper and a short series of policy reviews for the Social Capital Research Group based at South Bank University.

Claire James (née Jordan) joined the Family and Parenting Institute in July 2006 as a Policy Officer. During her time at FPI she has worked on a range of policy areas including family and parenting support, welfare reform, housing, and family policy across Europe. Previously she worked at Scope as a Policy and Research Officer and focused on disability rights, independent living and direct payments, before that volunteering for organisations including Anti-Slavery International and the Environmental Justice Foundation.

Educational background:
MA Environment and Development, School of Oriental and African Studies
BA Biological Sciences, University of Oxford

Contact
e:info@familyandparenting.org 

Andrew Carruthersjoined the Family and Parenting Institute in September 2009 as a Policy Officer. Previously he has worked as a solicitor in private practice and at the Independent Television Commission and Ofcom, focusing on media literacy, television advertising and programme policy and compliance.

Educational background:
LLB Law, University of Nottingham

Contact
e:info@familyandparenting.org 
t:020 7424 3475

Before qualifying as a developmental psychologist, Helen Barrett (BA, BSc, PhD, PGCE) has worked in the community in a variety of settings including a therapeutic children's home, hospital wards and in the Social Services where she was responsible for the registration and support of childminders. Her recent publications and research have focused on parenting programmes, the nature of the family in UK society, a review of recent evaluations of three early interventions in the UK and investigation into the development of directories of services to children and families. Helen Barrett has a special interest in the effects of separation at all stages of the life cycle. She is chair of the International Attachment Network, a charitable organisation devoted to the provision of information and opportunities for exchange of ideas about attachment.

Key publications

• Couple relationships - June 2009
• 'Hard to Reach' Families- January 2008
• Evaluating evaluations - June 2007
• Attachment and the Perils of Parenting - April 2006
• UK Family Trends 1994-2004 - November 2004
• Parenting Programmes for Families at Risk - December 2003

Yan-Shing Chang joined FPI in 2007 from the University of Cambridge where she received her MPhil and PhD degrees. She has conducted research into a range of parenting issues including cross-cultural research comparing parental involvement in children's learning among white English and Chinese ethnic families in England. Since she joined FPI, she has been researching couple relationships as well as older couples' health and housing issues.

Research interests:
Couple relationships, parental involvement in children's education, home-school relations.

Key publications:
Chang, Y-S and Barrett, H. (2009) Couple Relationships: A review of the nature and effectiveness of support services. London: Family and Parenting Institute.

Contact
e: research@familyandparenting.org 
t:020 7424 3460

Joanne Kellett joined FPI in 2006 from the University of East Anglia where she had held research posts in both the Health and Social Work Departments. She has been involved in a number of research studies exploring parenting and family relationships including the transition to fatherhood, parental separation and child contact, practitioners' assessments of parenting support need and the impact of UK child welfare interventions on children and families of minority ethnic origin.

Contact
e: research@familyandparenting.org 
t:020 7424 3460

Martina Klett-Davies joined the Family and Parenting Institute as a Research Fellow in 2007 from the London School of Economics where she continues to be a visiting Lecturer and an Associate Fellow at the Gender Institute. At LSE, Martina Klett-Davies has obtained national and European research grants. Her work as a Research Fellow has been funded by a EU Human Capital and Mobility' Fellowship, and her doctoral as well as post-doctoral research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

As a sociologist she has specialised in family and gender studies and modern social theories that culminated in her monograph "Going it alone? Lone motherhood in late modernity (Ashgate 2007). At the Family and Parenting Institute, she has conducted a study on the mapping and analysis of parenting services in England (FPI 2008) besides organising conference and editing two books on "Putting sibling relationships on the map: A multi-disciplinary perspective" (FPI 2008) and "Is parenting a class issue?" (FPI 2010). Martina has also contributed to "UK Family Trends" (FPI 2009) and is currently working on a DCSF funded research project into Early Home Learning.

Research interests:
Family dynamics (parenting and paid and unpaid work, lone mothers, sibling relationships and housewives). Her focus is on the interplay between social identities, social policies and social capital.

Key publications

• Klett-Davies M. (ed.) (2008) Putting sibling relationships on the map: A multidisciplinary perspective, Family and Parenting Institute, London,
• Klett-Davies M., Skaliotis E. & Wollny I. (2008) Mapping and Analysis of Parenting Services in England, Family & Parenting Institute, London
• Klett-Davies M. (2007) Going it alone? Lone motherhood in late modernity, Aldershot, Ashgate
• Klett-Davies M. (2005) 'The Diversity of State Benefit Dependent Lone Mothers: the Use of Type Categories As an Analytical Tool, Sociological Research Online (10), 1, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/10/1/2.html

Contact
e: research@familyandparenting.org 
t:020 7428 7738

Dr Sue Virgo joined the Family and Parenting Institute in August 2007. Before joining the Institute she undertook evaluations of parenting support programmes at the University of Brighton. She also worked solely on 3 freelance evaluations of family support for the voluntary sector in East Sussex. She has been a practitioner in a voluntary sector family support project and an Associate Lecturer at the Open University.

Educational background:
DPhil in Women's Studies at University of Sussex
MA in Women's Studies at University of Sussex
BA in Social Policy and Administration at University of Sussex

Contact
e: info@familyandparenting.org 
t:020 7424 3475

Stephen Hunt joined the Family and Parenting Institute as a Research Fellow in 2009 from the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education at the Institute of Education. He previously worked at the London Business School and the Institute of Food Research. His research interests include risk perception, risk communication trust, and national and cross national surveys research. Currently, he is writing a book on UK Family Trends.

Key publications

• St James-Roberts, I. Goodwin, J. Peter, B. Adams, D. Hunt, S.A. (2004) Individual differences in reactivity to undressing, handling and a standard neuro-behavioural examination predict how much 1-week-old babies cry at home. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology.
• Frewer, L .J., Hunt,.S., Brennon,M., Kuznesof, S., Ness, M. & Ritson, R. (2002) The views of scientific experts on how the public conceptualise uncertainty. Journal of Risk Research.
• Hunt S.A, & Frewer, L.J. (2001) Impact of BSE on GM Food Risk Perceptions. Risk Decision and Policy 6 91-103.
• Hunt, S.A, & Frewer, L.J. (2000) Public Trust in Sources of Information about Genetically Modified Foods British Journal of Food 103 (1) 46-62.
• Hunt, S.A, Frewer, L.J. and Shepherd, R. (1999) Public Trust in Sources of Information about Radiation Risks. Journal of Risk Research. 2 (2). p167-180.

Contact
e: research@familyandparenting.org 
t:020 7428 7738