Katy Woodger

Leadership & Organisational Government (2019 cohort)

My PhD explores how user-led mental health organisations function to support service-users whilst navigating statutory obligations, organisational processes and referral pathway requirements. The research focusses on the challenge’s user- led organisations and their service users face and how they address these tensions. I’m interested in how user-led organisations and service users conceptualise mental health and how these different approaches act as supportive and effective recovery alternatives to psychiatric traditions. 

Katy qualified in 2009 as a Person- Centred therapist and practiced in primary and secondary schools, GP practices and other community settings. She currently has a small private practice while undertaking her PhD. She is a member of the Independent Advisory Board of Lime Culture, a sexual assault training and development organisation. The board of seven is chaired by Sir Keir Starmer MP QC. She co -chairs the National Association for Trauma Specialists, affiliated to the University of Nottingham, where she received her MA in Trauma Studies in 2019. She is one of the contributors to Counselling, Class and Politics: Undeclared Influences in Therapy, by Anne Kearney, republished July 2018 in a new edition by PCCS Books and #Me Too Counsellors and psychotherapists speak about sexual violence and abuse, edited by Deborah A. Lee and Emma Palmer, published in 2020 also by PCCS Books.