He completed a clinical doctorate at the Institute of Psychiatry and a PhD at Birmingham University. He has worked in mental health for over 30 years and in this time been a pioneer of early intervention in psychosis and a member of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guideline group for psychosis and schizophrenia in adults.

His previous roles have included Director of Research Training for the Clinical Psychology Doctorate, authorship of professional guidance for the British Psychological Society, membership of international conference scientific advisory committees and supervisor responsibilities for the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Further activities include refereeing and peer reviewer duties for national and international research councils and journals.

Zaffer currently holds a Professorship at the University of Hull and works primarily with complex and serious mental illness, personality disorder and suicidality. For the latter, he has established national and international collaborative clinical protocols to address the challenges facing the NHS and further afield.

He is currently the Clinical Lead for the North Dublin Suicide Assessment and Treatment Service, and former team leader for the Evolve Dialectical Behaviour Therapy programme, both of which are dedicated to responding to suicidality and self-harm within the public mental health services. Eoin is a clinical tutor and senior supervising psychologist with the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Trinity College Dublin and works with suicidal individuals from a diverse range of backgrounds on a daily basis and has done so for the last decade.

Eoin is a highly experienced clinician in utilising the CAMS model. He is a Senior CAMS-care Consultant and has trained hundreds of mental health professionals, counsellors, psychotherapists and volunteers in working with suicidal individuals. He has overseen the roll out of the CAMS model in various mental health services and supervised research examining the outcomes of these services. Eoin also works closely with the parents of suicidal young people in private practice. Eoin frequently delivers public talks, conference presentations, contributes to the media and has published several papers on the topic of suicide.

Sarah has worked for over ten years in public adult mental health settings, utilising the CAMS with adults with significant mental health difficulties, older adults and a refugee and asylum seeker population, working with both inpatients and outpatients.

Sarah worked within the Suicide Assessment and Treatment Service (SATS) in a community adult mental health setting since its inception in North Dublin from 2013 to 2015. Sarah is a trained DBT therapist and specialises in third wave therapies for complex difficulties, including DBT, ACT and predominantly Schema Therapy. She is a guest lecturer on the Doctorate of Clinical Psychology in Trinity College Dublin and Turning Point psychotherapy course.

Her specialist areas of interest include the CAMS, suicidality, personality difficulties, trauma, psychosis and critical approaches.

He was also heavily involved in the early years of the national suicide prevention strategy and the development of crisis teams via the implementation strategies in the late 1990s and the later development of liaison psychiatry working with the Royal College of Psychiatry in its accreditation schemes.

Since then, he has developed within his management career but continues with his interest in self harm and suicide risk and has been an advocate of safe and effective frontline services, ensuring that organisations are able to put into practice clinician confidence when working with suicidal and complex service users. To him, CAMS is the much-needed caveat that brings theory into practice and since its arrival he has been a major advocate of its use across the NHS and frontline services.

Mike’s management career has seen him leading a ‘good to outstanding’ mental health service and has been the lead within NAViGO in the development of provider collaboratives, suicide prevention and the Integrated Care System across North East Lincolnshire.

Nicola completed her degree in Psychology at the University of York (First class honours) in 2017, before completing a Master of Science in Clinical Applications of Psychology at the University of Hull (Distinction) in 2018. Nicola joined Navigo in 2018 during her MSc and began engaging in research around suicidality and Serious Mental Illness (SMI). She gained a place on Clinical Psychology Doctoral training (ClinPsyD) in 2020 at the University of Manchester, which she completed in 2023.

Nicola maintained an ongoing relationship with Navigo and the CAMS team during this time, returning to Navigo to undertake posts as a Clinical Psychologist in Complex Mental Health Rehabilitation and as a Research Fellow with CAMS. Nicola’s special interests lie in utilising attachment-informed approaches to work with complex mental health presentations, aligning well with the CAMS philosophy. She is working toward CAMS-trainer status.