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East London NHS Foundation Trust (Luton and Bedfordshire)

East London NHS Foundation Trust provides a wide range of mental health, community health, and inpatient services to young people, working age adults, older adults and forensic services to the City of London, Hackney, Newham and Tower Hamlets. We provide mental health and wellbeing services in Bedfordshire and Luton.

Our 5,500 staff, the heart of our operation, provide £390 million worth of services from over 100 community and inpatient sites.  Our East London population totals around 750,000 and we are proud to serve one of the most culturally diverse parts of the UK. In Bedfordshire and Luton, we are now responsible for a further 630,000 people’s mental health and community health (Bedfordshire only) care needs.

Research Team

Kurt Buhagiar (Principal Investigator)

Diana Romei (Research Assistant)

Diana Romei completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Educational Psychology and Clinical Psychodynamic Psychology in Italy, a Postgraduate Certificate in Child and Young Persons Psychological Wellbeing Practice at University College London and is currently completing a Postgraduate Diploma in Children and Young People IAPT Therapy (CBT Practitioner module) at King’s College London, whilst working as a part-time Research Assistant on the SCENE project.

Diana’s clinical experience extends to different settings with several client groups, such as older adults, adults with learning disabilities and/or psychosis, children and young people in both inpatient and community services and their parents, supporting them with parenting when challenging behaviours are displayed.

Diana's interest in the SCENE project is due to the emphasis on the social aspects to improving quality of life, which is linked to her interest in the themes of social constructivism. Diana is also enthusiastic about early intervention/prevention in mental health and is currently collaborating to a doctoral research project exploring the relationship between pupils’ psychological wellbeing and their academic achievement, in order to better understand how schools can nurture children in both the cognitive and socio-emotional senses.

Diana Romei

Jodie Smith (Research Assistant)

Jodie Smith graduated in Criminology and Psychology at University of Southampton and then completed a masters in Global Mental Health jointly run by King’s College London and London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

She previously worked at Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust for almost three years with Noclor Research Support Service where she worked as a clinical studies officer on various research projects in a range of settings including inpatient wards, CAMHS services, eating disorder services, forensic services, and more.

She then went on to work for Exeter University as Research Associate on the WHELD Programme before joining East London Foundation Trust as a research assistant with the Unit for Social and Community Psychiatry. Her interests are research in social psychiatry, global health and global mental health.

Jodie Smith