Dr Josephine-Joy Wright

Senior Lecturer in Clinical Psychology

School of Health and Wellbeing

Department of Psychology and Mental Health

Contact Details

email: j.wright@worc.ac.uk

On her desk she has a quotation, a gift from a service which she helped to lead for many years:

 

“Some men see things as they are and say, why.

I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

(George Bernard Shaw).

 

The quotation encapsulates her attitude to life and to her work.

A Chartered Clinical Psychologist with over 40 years’ experience, 30 of which have been within 4 NHS health authorities in England and Wales, over 20 of which were at consultant level, leading and developing services into the community, specializing in Children and Family work and complex adult and child neuro-developmental disorders, attachment, abuse and trauma. Alongside her NHS work she has taught on post-graduate professional training courses in Higher Education across the UK.

Over the past ten years Jo-Joy has worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Worcester. In addition to her NHS work, since 1992 she has been the Director of Well-Connected Psychological Services, providing assessments, consultation, and supervision.

She holds professional clinical psychology and teaching qualifications, a PhD in psychology and a degree in theology. The need to undertake the latter degree was fuelled by her international work in war zones, discovering that understanding people’s faiths was vital when developing good, evidence-based practice with them.

Jo-Joy's passion is equipping people to fulfill their potential, personally and professionally. Her dream is to change people’s understanding of and practice with adults and children’s mental health long-term, enabling children and adults to be safeguarded and released into their destinies. She remembers “playing with angels” in GOSH at 2.5yrs of age and sees her faith as fundamental to her identity and her calling, the later given to her in a dream when working in a day nursery on a work-placement, aged 15yrs. She will tell you the story if you ask her!

She has significant expertise in developing, training, and evaluating Tier 2 and other community-based services to promote Best Evidence- Based Practice in preventative mental health interventions and therapeutic approaches, with minimum financial resources. 
She loves teaching which works from theory and research to effective practice so that students and professionals can vitally root their practice in a strong understanding of human development and develop strong safe reflective practice. From her experience she has seen that such practice-based training also needs to honour and work with the religious and cultural needs of clients and staff; too much mental health training fails to equip staff in this area, to the detriment of clients and further research/service development.

In addition, Jo-Joy has worked with international disasters and with child and adult victims of paedophile rings and historic abuse since 1989 across numerous contexts, including war zones, enabling people to be seen, and released to fulfil their destinies. She has pioneered psycho-social interventions in disasters, many of which are now seen as standard practices, as well as developing work with child soldiers. 

She was the Director of Training for Viva Network for many years, heading up the international development of the “Celebrating Children” programme to equip people across the world to hear and work effectively with children living in difficult circumstances.

She subsequently edited a textbook of training resources and a training of the trainers’ manual, and travelled across Africa, SE Asia, Europe, and Latin America to equip course providers. She was an Associate Lecturer in several colleges for many years, teaching Masters/undergraduate students and assisting in the development of Masters programmes. 

She has pioneered training initiatives locally and internationally in health, education, and community settings to equip professional and voluntary practitioners in the field at universities, colleges, and community-settings. 

Through her parliamentary advisory work, she aims to catalyze the development of centres around the whole of the UK where specialist therapeutic provision for children and adults who have experienced trauma is readily available long-term, enabling her motto to become a reality in people’s lives. 

“YOUR PAST MAY MOULD YOU BUT IT DOES NOT NEED TO DEFINE YOU"