Jill is Course Leader for university qualifying and post-qualifying (CPD) AMHP education and training which are tailored according to workforce need. Jill’s background is in mental health social work and she has worked within mental health services for over thirty years in both in-patient and community settings. Jill qualified as an Approved Social Worker in 2000, acted as Practice Assessor and she continues to practice as an AMHP. She completed an MA in CBT With Individuals With Psychosis and Their Families. Jill is an external panel member for a Local Authority’s qualified AMHP reapproval panel and an Education and Quality Inspector for AMHP and BIA programmes for Social Work England. She has completed a PhD relating to the variables (organisational and environmental) influencing AMHP decision-making, with a particular focus on Shared Decision-Making (SDM), power and conversational dynamics. More recently, research and training interests have been in AMHPs’ experiences of moral distress and moral injury and how to manage this challenging aspect of practice. Jill is a founding member of the AMHP Research Group (ARG), a group co-opted to the national AMHP Leads Network, and she supports current national AMHP Workforce Development initiatives including the modernisation of AMHP programmes and ways in which universities can support the recruitment and retention agendas. Jill is a Specialist Member in the Mental Health Tribunal service. She also developed and maintains the Critical AMHP Blog https://www.the-critical-amhp.com/ along with colleagues.

Publications

· Hemmington, J. (2023) Approved Mental Health Professionals’ experiences of moral distress: ‘Who are we for?’. The British Journal of Social Work https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcad258

· Hemmington, J and Vicary, S (2023) Making Decisions in Compulsory Mental Health Work: Boundaries, Frames and Perspectives. Bristol, Policy Press

· PhD Thesis: Approved Mental Health Professionals and Mental Health Act Assessments: A Study of Power, Structures, Communication and (Shared?) Decision-Making

· AMHPs, BIAs and People with Lived Experience: An Exploration of Professional Identities and Practice. A report prepared for Social Work England May 2021 https://www.socialworkengland.org.uk/media/4046/amhp-bia-research-report.pdf

· Practice Journal: Research Informed Practice; Practice Informed Research – co-editor of special edition Vicary, S., Stone, K., Hemmington, J and Leah, C (2020) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09503153.2020.1800622

· Matthews, S., O’Hare, P and Hemmington, J (2014) Approved Mental Health Practice: Essential Themes for Students and Practitioners, London, Palgrave