After starting out in Law Michelle moved to become a forensic psychologist. In this conversation she tells us about the things she notices about being in a prison, how important support and supervision is and how some professions are denied this passage to mental health and wellbeing.

Michelle Smith is a Chartered & Registered Forensic Psychologist who has worked across a range of forensic settings over the past 30 years including prisons, probation, secure hospital settings (both independent sector and NHS), and community settings. She currently works part time as an Associate Professor at the University of Lincoln and her teaching, research and ongoing independent professional practice centres on the development of trauma-informed ways of working in criminal justice, health and social care systems. This includes a focus on the impact on staff of such work and the development & maintenance of resilience and professional boundary management through reflective processes and systems.

For more detail please see book chapter mentioned in podcast: 

Smith, M. (2022). The Impact on staff of Trauma-Informed work in forensic settings. In P. Wilmott & L. Jones (Eds), Trauma-Informed Forensic Practice (pp. 363-379). Routledge. 

Further reading on some of the models mentioned in podcast: 

Boundary Seesaw Model 

Hamilton, L. ( 2010 ). The boundary seesaw model: Good fences make for good neighbours . In A. Tennant &K. Howells(Eds), Using time not doing time (pp. 181 – 194 ). Wiley- Blackwell . 

Model of Dynamic Adaptation  

Clarke ,J.( 2004 ). The psychosocial impact on facilitators of working therapeutically with sex off enders: An experimental study (Unpublished doctoral thesis). University of York . 

Clarke ,J.( 2013 ). The resilient practitioner . In J. Clarke & P. Wilson (Eds), Forensic psychology in practice: A practitioners handbook (pp. 220 – 239 ). Palgrave MacMillan .  

Human Learning Systems Approach (the brain fog moment!) 

Lowe, T., French, M., Hawkins, M., Hesselgreaves, H., & Wilson, R. (2021).  New developments: Responding to complexity in public services: The human learning systems approach. Routledge. 

Check out the transcript over on substack: https://lockedupliving.substack.com/p/how-does-working-in-a-trama-informed