Julia Food - Co-Founder / Director
Julia originally trained as a social worker at The University of Bath and qualified in 1987. She spent the next 10 years working in child protection and child care for a local authority where she worked extensively with education, health services and the police, caring for children at risk or in the care of the local authority. She developed considerable expertise in court work, adoption and risk management.
From 1997 to 2018 Julia was employed by a local health authority working within Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) on a part-time basis. There she has become familiar with a very wide range of developmental and psychiatric difficulties and has developed the relevant skills to assess and treat children and young people, working with them and their families or carers to reduce risk, increase understanding and improve functioning.
Systemic thinking and practice is a key component of Julia’s work model and she has a strong commitment to working with all the individuals and agencies involved with a child or young person whilst always keeping the child’s needs at the forefront of any intervention.
Her final role within the NHS was leading the local CAMHS service offering emergency assessments for children and young people who had attempted suicide, as well as managing the other local CAMHS assessment clinics.
In 2006 she began to work privately within the field of overseas adoption, assessing individuals and couples seeking to adopt from a wide range of countries including Pakistan, Guatemala, Russia and China. This involve dassessing the family, presenting them to the adoption panel for approval and then supporting and monitoring the subsequent placements and preparing reports for the placing country as required.
This necessitated a comprehensive understanding of attachment issues and difficulties which is a particular area of interest and in 2005 Julia completed a 2-year training programme at The Post Adoption Centre, London, qualifying as an Attachment Therapist. Julia has also completed training with Family Futures. This has led to further work with local authorities, supporting children subject to adoption or SGO orders.Julia has also completed training at BRIEF (The Centre For Solution Focused Practice) in north London.
In her current role within Heads & Hearts, Julia functions as the day-to-day director of services, supporting the team to achieve the best outcomes for children and young people.
Julia is a member of BASW.
