Susan Gill

Sue is a qualified Social Worker with an extensive background in a range of  front line and management roles across Children and Families services.

Her work for Interface includes creating and facilitating training around Trauma Informed Practice, Family Hubs, Reflective Supervision, Safeguarding, Risk Management, Professional Curiosity and Leadership Programmes. She also delivers trauma informed supervision and the Capacity to Change programme (devised by the University of Bristol as an additional and complementary assessment process for better understanding parental capacity to change).

Sue has worked in a range of settings which include a variety of Local Authority Teams including Assessment, Family Support Team, Early Help, MASH, and Commissioning; a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service; a British school overseas and a University. 

Many of her roles have involved the training and development of a multi-agency workforce. She was one of the first Primary Mental Health Workers appointed in the country where as well as providing training and consultation for local professionals she also developed a Tier 2 Early Intervention Service and co-created local multi-agency allocation groups which enabled co-working across agencies and for families to be supported by the most appropriate service(s) in the area. She later managed both this and the Tier 3 Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. 

As a Commissioning Manager she held responsibility for introducing the Common Assessment Framework into the area which involved the creation and delivery of a large-scale training programme delivered across the County. She also supported the development and delivery of the ‘Every Child Matters’ work strands within the Local Authority. This led on to her having responsibility for the creation of a revised Thresholds document for the Authority and the training and delivery of this across partner organisations.   

Sue has managed a number of Early Help services and led on the Targeted Mental Health in Schools project (TAMHS). She is passionate about both early intervention and integrated working approaches and used her negotiation and project management skills to co-develop a MASH which she then went on to manage. 

Sue was a Senior Lecturer in Social Work and the Course Co-ordinator of the post qualifying MA in Applied Social Work Practice at the University of Bedfordshire. Her teaching portfolio encompassed all aspects of Leadership and Management and Children and Families work, and her areas of particular interest were in Supervision, Coaching and Mentoring, and working with leaders and managers to better understand their role and to critically reflect on their practice and develop their potential. She also delivered a unit which focused on students completing a Service Improvement Project and regularly supervised Dissertation students.

Sue has a passion for relationship based and strengths-based working and as a trainer for Interface she has been able to bring these into her delivery of trauma informed practice training in order to consider how these approaches can support children, young people, adults, and staff.

Sue’s main areas of expertise are:

• Trauma informed practice
• Reflective Supervision
• Leadership and Management
• Coaching and Mentoring
• Early Help
• Integrated Working
• Relationship and Strengths Based approaches, including Solution Focused working.
• Safeguarding including Risk Management and Professional Curiosity
• Supervising Student Social Workers

Professional Qualifications

MSc (Econ.) Applied Social Studies /Diploma in Social Work – registered with Social Work England

Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS)

Certificate in the Teaching of English as a Foreign Language

NVQ Level 5 in Management

Solution Focused Working

Practice Educator Stages 1 and 2

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)