Outstanding leader

Professor Gillian Bendelow, Professor in Sociology of Health and Medicine in College of Social Sciences, was honoured in the Kent, Surrey and Sussex Leadership Collaborative Annual NHS Recognition Awards for her collaboration between health and local government.

Professor Bendelow has been working in close partnership with Sussex Partnership NHS Trust and Sussex Police on the consistently high rates of police detentions of vulnerable people since 2013, leading the British Academy/National Institute for Health Research-funded study ‘Section 136 in Sussex’. This started in 2013 and has grown into a wider programme of research in the School of Applied Social Sciences at the university.

Professor Bendelow and Claire Warrington, Visiting Research Fellow, organised a symposium at the university’s Falmer campus called ‘Parity of Esteem in Emergency Mental Health Care ’ to tackle mental health crisis response. The event was attended by practitioners and policy makers from local police, health and social care workers, also commissioners and national representatives from NHS England and the Home Office. This event has helped shape future plans about how to join up mental health care to ensure people get the treatment they need in the right place at the right time.

Professor Bendelow said: “This nomination is one of the most important achievements in my career – as a former mental health professional, I became an academic researcher with the  explicit aim of developing research that improves the care of people in extreme  distress.”