Richard has led many successful initiatives to support people’s wellbeing at a local and national level. He believes in learning from all of those experiences and here is a timeline of some of those successes and learning experiences.
Richard led a team to deliver key leadership skills to people who are seeking promotion in the early years and social care sectors.
Using a community learning grant, Richard led a campaign with two aims. The first was to help unemployed West Sussex residents overcome barriers to getting them into work. Richard developed an intensive 4-week programme that aimed to identify a person’s particular barrier and help them to overcome it. The second aim was to improve the skills of education staff in supporting the social, emotional and mental health of their pupils. Almost 100 West Sussex residents accessed the support.
As the Department for Education’s funding for training for mental health leads was coming to an end, Richard oversaw the transition from the National Network of Mental Health Leads to the Association of Mental Health in Education. The Association supports thousands of educational settings across the UK and further afield.
Yes, Richard owns a Gruffalo costume and has been seen at various family festivals and children’s events looking for the mouse.
Continuing on his mission to celebrate mental health work and promote mental health awareness, Richard’s next project was to launch the Mental Health in Education Awards to celebrate the work being done in the education sector to support wellbeing.
Richard loves Ghostbusters (although not as much as Dr Who) and got himself the equipment to dress up as a Ghostbuster. He started being invited to events and formed the Hampshire and Dorset Ghostbusters in 2023. You can see their website at https://hantsdorsetghostbusters.wordpress.com/
Richard worked with the Public Health Team in Birmingham to explore the concept of workplace training on health literacy. Richard wrote evidenced-based courses for all staff, managers and senior organisational leaders.
In 2021 the Department for Education announced their response to the 2017 green paper ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’, which included the funding of training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges across England. Using his experience of training the National Educational Leaders in Mental Health, Richard established a national consortium of over 100 trainers to deliver training approved by the Department for Education, the British Psychological Society and Open Awards. Training was delivered to over 2,000 schools and colleges, approximately 15% of the funding.
Having played cornet as a child, Richard picked up his instrument again after a gap of 25 years. He plays solo cornet for Hamwic Brass, a community band based in Southampton.
Using the European Social Fund, Richard led a team who delivered mentor and mental health training to preschools and nurseries across Berkshire.
In March 2020 the United Kingdom went into national lockdown as a result of the pandemic. Life shifted for many people, with some having to isolate, others finding themselves out of work and changes to daily life for everyone. The service began as a fundraising campaign to train people to harvest food (as the pandemic restrictions meant seasonal workers were not available.). Skills for Progress was initially called the Employability Clinic during this time, changing in late 2020 to Skills for Progress. The service exists to help people overcome barriers to moving forward into or in work. You can visit the website at www.skillsforprogress.com
Richard was one of only three mental health experts, and the most-widely used expert, in the development of teaching resources for the mandatory Relationships, (Sex) and Health Education curriculum. His theories, research and ideas can be seen in classrooms across the country.
Believe it or not, until Richard established the Mental Health Awards, there was no national or international recognition for innovative or successful mental health interventions. Envisioned as an equivalent of the ‘Pride of Britain’ awards, the launch was interrupted by the arrival of the pandemic and national lockdown. However, Richard persevered, and the awards continue to grow from strength to strength, becoming international in 2025. You can visit the awards at www.thementalhealthawards.com
Richard led his team in delivering mentoring qualifications and related wellbeing courses to employers across the Solent region through the European Social Fund.
Following the release of the green paper ‘Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision’ in 2017 Richard started to develop courses to help meet the mental health needs of pupils and staff. These were developed into qualifications and eventually delivered through the National Network of Mental Health Leads to 1000s of schools in England.
Richard’s passion for mentoring was recognised in being invited to join the All Party Parliamentary Group for Mentoring at the Houses of Parliament.
Recognising that many mentors report a feeling of isolation and lack of professional development, Richard attempted to set up a network for mentors. Running several successful events for mentors, the network was ultimately unsustainable due to the lack of budget for mentors to access the support.
Richard has led his team at The Mentoring School in committing to improving the quality of apprenticeships. He has written an Apprenticeship Journal to help apprentices keep a log of their activities and reflect on their learning. Combined with training high quality mentors for apprenticeships, the work has impacted 100s of people in the UK and beyond.
Recognising how difficult it was for schools to find mental health professionals, Richard tried a number of different ways of listing independent professionals so that educators could search for support course to them. Ultimately stopped due to budget, the scheme had limited but important impact.
The closure of the Kids Company made national headlines when the charity closed overnight. Richard was one of the experts brought in by the Home Office to arrange support for the children and families affected.
Richard passionately believes in developing others and has hosted 7 entrepreneurs from other European countries, helping them to develop their business ideas and learn vital skills to take their businesses forward. He has won an award recognising him for his excellence at hosting entrepreneurs.
In the 1990s the Labour government introduced a role called the Learning Mentor with subsidised training. In late 2014, Richard realised that the training had been abolished when the coalition government had come to power in 2010. He vowed to resolve this, and ran his first Children’s Mentor course in Brighton in January 2015. After a few months, the team found that other organisations supporting older young people requested training. Richard then researched and developed other versions of mentor training, finally resulting in over ten sector specific mentor courses. In 2017, Richard worked with the awarding organisation Open Awards to write specialist mentoring qualifications at level 3 initially, with levels 4 and 1 coming over the following years. You can visit the website at www.thementoringschool.com
Wanting to celebrate the amazing and inspirational work that was happening across the country with children and young people who have special educational needs and/or disabilities, Richard founded the National Special Educational Needs and Disability Awards in 2015. With the desire to give back to the community that he has worked in for so long, Richard ensured that it was free to nominate outstanding work for an award. The awards can be found at www.sendawards.com
Identifying a gap in the flourishing social media market, Richard developed a secure social media specifically for Headteachers, Principals and other senior education leaders. Unfortunately, although the market fed back this was a good idea, they just simply didn’t have the time or head space to engage with it at the time.
One of Richard’s early learning experiences was about running an online store for special educational needs and disabilities. Richard’s aim was to provide a one-stop place for his schools to get the support and resources they needed to support social, emotional and mental health. A part of this was to offer a small catalogue of resources that could be ordered. Suppliers were still providing physical catalogues in those days and Richard had hoped that his online offering would be enough of an innovation to be successful. It did not take long for Richard to realise how crowded the marketplace was and just how much stock would be required in order to make it a successful venture.
Richard is very passionate about giving back and supporting those who most need it. One of the ways that he did this was by supporting the work of a Parent and Carers Forum as a member of their steering group.
Richard is a pioneer in online learning, developing courses before the Internet and connections could stream them (they used to get sent out on CD-ROM). Alongside the consultancy service that The Root of It offered in its early days, Richard very quickly recognised the need for Internet-based resources, training and continuing professional development opportunities for schools and for early years settings. His first online portal was called The Root of It Vine and offered people working in education online resources in a world where this was not available generally. Consistently since late 2013, Richard’s companies have continuously provided online training, CPD and resources. From online healthy lifestyle courses to courses to help people get work, Richard has developed a style of online content that is engaging and consistently receives as much positive feedback as in person courses.
The Boxall Profile is an assessment tool developed in the early 1980s to assess children who were accessing nurture groups. Working with the Nurture Group Network, Richard was involved with analysing and interpreting the original normalised scores for the Boxall Profile. He then developed a digital version of the assessment tool that enabled progress to be monitored, in addition to group comparisons.
In 2013 Richard launched the multi-award-winning organisation The Root Of It. Richard wanted to achieve multi-disciplinary support to help people get to the root of difficulties. The name originated from Richard looking at all of the things that people said about his work, with a common feature being that he helped people get to the root of problems. Going from strength to strength, the company continues to pioneer ways to help others get to the root of problems or barriers and overcome them. You can visit the website at www.rootofit.com
Working across over 200 educational settings, Richard’s role was to find solutions for children who’s behaviour was putting themselves and others at risk. Referrals were made from educational psychology, local authority advisory teams, counselling service or the exclusions team to Richard in order for him to provide support and find solutions for situations where it looked like a child would be permanently excluded.
Richard taught a number of year groups across Early Years, Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. He held leadership roles including phase leader, assessment coordinator and was even a ICT leader for two local authorities.
Beginning in social care environments, Richard eventually moved into working on acute and forensic mental health wards.
An important value to Richard is that of giving back to community and society. Across his life, Richard has given hundreds of hours of his time to charities and community organisations every year. He has provided first aid at events, crewed ambulances, raised money, helped run Scouts groups and can often be found dressed as a Ghostbuster or the Gruffalo at events.