Lorraine Khan joined Centre for Mental Health as Associate Director for Children and Young People in 2007. She is extensively published in the field of children’s mental health and parenting with a particular focus on the needs of vulnerable children and young people. She has contributed to a number of local and national policy, strategic and practice developments. Whilst at the Centre, she designed and rolled out national point of arrest health screening for children in trouble with the law and works closely with local areas to help stimulate change on the ground and to support strategic and system developments. She is passionately committed to placing children’s and families’ choices and voices at the centre of change and is a champion for the development of new and better ways of working to improve children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing in local areas.
Before joining the Centre, she spent 17 years in the Probation Service specialising in the management of substance misuse services and in the design of cognitive behavioural and motivational interviewing programmes in custody. She subsequently worked as a consultant for DrugScope and then as Research Director for an independent social science research company for seven years evaluating interventions on behalf of the Youth Justice Board, the Home Office, the Armed Forces, local commissioners and the Police.
