Dr Lynda Teape joined us in July last year as our first Director of Services Development, a role funded by the National Lottery. Lynda is an experienced senior clinical psychologist. She has worked in the NHS for over 20 years and in private practice for eight. During this time, she has worked across various physical health specialities including neurology, palliative care and oncology and brings a wealth of experience in developing new services.
We took five minutes with Lynda to ask how she had settled into the role, adapted to the charity sector, and what she has planned for the development of Tom’s Trust services.
L-R: Rebecca Wood TT CEO, Dr Lynda Teape, and Debs Mitchell our CoFounder
Can you tell us about your role?
I am here to bring a greater clinical understanding to the work that we do in the Trust. I have knowledge and insight into how the NHS works that will in turn help us to think about how we work to best support our families and services. Day to day, what does that actually look like? Being part of a small team, you get involved in so many other things you don’t expect. One day I might be helping to develop the strategy, and another I will be speaking to the services, clinicians, and/or families. I also lead reflective practice groups to support our team who are hearing difficult stories every day, and I write content for our resource hub. It’s such a varied role and I can get involved in so many different things that I wouldn’t have the chance to do in an NHS setting. I’m sure it’s going to evolve over the next year as well.
You are over six months into your new role with Tom’s Trust, what have been your top three highlights?
My top one was talking directly to one of our families in a team meeting, we had the honour of hearing their full story first-hand. I don’t think since starting it had really struck me just what our families go through and the difference that Tom’s Trust makes. It felt really important to sit through and witness the pain of the family. That was definitely the most important one.
The other experience that really struck me was seeing some of the new services come online. Our new service based in Oxford really stood out to me. I’d spoken to Jeni who’s their lead psychologist before their new Tom’s Trust clinical psychologist had started. I heard about the challenges they faced and the lack of resource, and then seeing Emily (the new Tom’s Trust clinical psychologist) start and what a huge impact she made in such a short time is wonderful. What was interesting as well was hearing from other clinicians from other services in Oxford, who had nothing to do with brain tumours, but even they were seeing the impact because those children who would been on their waiting list were now being seen by the new Tom’s Trust clinical psychologist, so their capacity was freed up too. A great positive knock-on effect.
The third thing for me is being part of bringing the new centres for 2025/2026 online. We’ve had all the applications come in and then we’ve got the interviews next month. It’s interesting to see how many different ideas people have got, how they want to develop the services, and just such a lot of innovation and creativity in terms of how we can support these children and their families. I think that’s going to be really exciting in the coming year to see where that takes us.
You are in the process of developing the charity’s next five-year strategy. Can you give us any insights into the vision you have for service development?
The current model and the current strategy is still really important. There’s a real value to going out to one centre at a time, although it can be slow. Each time a new centre comes on, we learn something and have time to adjust what we do next in response. Continuing with that core model is really important and valuable. We’re aware of the huge inequities across the country where smaller hospitals can’t access any support. It’s going to take a long time for us to get to everybody. We will want to build on our work like the sibling toolkit, which we’ve seen has been so helpful in reaching those groups that our centre services don’t yet cover.
We have so much to offer with our Resource Hub, future toolkits, and some of the work that our Family Liaison Coordinator is doing around peer support groups, and camps. We are thinking more creatively about how we can better support all families and children and more quickly.
There are also the clinicians that are already offering the support but perhaps don’t feel skilled or have the resources available to them to have those conversations with the people that they’re looking after. So that’s what I really hope that we can look forward to with the strategy and whatever else happens alongside it.
As an experienced senior clinical psychologist who has worked in the NHS for over 20 years and in private practice for eight, what has most surprised you about both working in the charity sector and mental health support for childhood brain tumours?
It has made me realise how little I knew about the charity sector. Because even though I’ve worked with charities most of my career with Maggie’s and Macmillan, I knew so very little about what goes on behind the scenes. It’s been a steep learning curve to understand the governance, how they operate and the skills and the professions within the charity as well. I also hadn’t really appreciated just how much charities prop up the NHS and fill the gaps – I think we take that for granted. The speed has been a bit of a shock, the NHS is such a huge system and so making any kind of impact takes time and patience, whereas at Tom’s Trust things can happen overnight.
In terms of working in mental health support for brain tumours – that’s probably the area I felt most comfortable with, it’s something I’m passionate about and know the value and the importance, not just for the child, but for the family, the schools, everybody around that child. What surprised me most is speaking to the clinicians that do the front-line work in the hospitals, and just how passionate and unwaveringly dedicated they are. They really do go above and beyond.
What do you love about your job?
It’s wonderful to be in an organisation that’s so focused on its core mission. It is really energising to be part of. It motivates you to want to make a difference as well and see where you can help to steer that. I like that I can talk directly with and meet with the people who can make those changes, and then seeing those things happen quickly. You can start to feel a little worn down in the NHS with so many competing demands on time and resource, whereas here it feels like everybody wants to make positive change happen and they achieve it.
What are you most excited about for 2025?
2025 is going to be an exciting year with the new strategy. It’s going to build a lot more on the work of the charity and hopefully broaden our scope and allow us to be so much more innovative as we consider different ways of working alongside the rolling out of the new centres.
The post An interview with Dr Lynda Teape, Director of Services Development at Tom’s Trust appeared first on Tom's Trust.