Stuart Sorensen’s background is mental health nursing and as such he has a wealth of
direct experience of working with people suffering from all forms of mental health
problems. From early voluntary work with elderly people as a teenager to unregistered
care assistant posts and then clinical practice as a qualified nurse Stuart has a real
understanding of the issues faced by workers at all levels on a daily basis.
Stuart qualified as a nurse in Stafford 1995 and gained his post graduate diploma in
Psychosocial Interventions (PSI) from Sunderland University in 2003. His wealth of
practical experience allows Stuart to engage with a variety of participants in training that
has the feel of reality about it rather than the ‘ivory tower’ type of presentation that
comes from merely reading a book. He was a full time trainer in health and social
care from 2006 to 2011. Committed to both training and clinical practice he’s been back at the coalface ever since but still finds time to deliver sessions and presentations across UK.
Stuart is passionate about recovery from mental disorders and much of his clinical and training work has been based around helping people to recover from serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia and working with people diagnosed with various forms of personality disorder. He is particularly interested in ways of ensuring that vulnerable service-users are protected whilst still retaining the right to make decisions.
As a trainer Stuart is keen to help staff ‘at the coalface’ to find a balance between the
conflicting (and seemingly impossible) rights of workers, carers and service-users. After
years of experience as a nurse and clinical specialist, Stuart understands the difficulties
and dilemmas facing workers on the front line because he has faced them too.
Stuart has extensive experience of delivering many aspects of training around care provision and human/civil rights including training around balancing Rights and Responsibilities, the Mental Capacity Act and the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards, Person-centred Planning and Maintaining Therapeutic Relationships, particularly in relation to Challenging Behaviour. He is also very experienced in delivering training on topics such as Introduction to Mental disorder, Safeguarding of Vulnerable Adults (SOVA), specialist training on mental health related issues and, of course, Deliberate Self Harm.
Stuart has long been interested in the effects of different communication styles and in particular non-verbal communication strategies on service-users, colleagues and, of course, training participants. He also trains other trainers in these techniques as a method of developing and maintaining engagement or coping with disruptive participants without creating conflict.
Stuart is very well versed in the principles of therapeutic risk and enabling activities that carry the risk of harm having written and delivered training nationwide on Risk Appreciation to mixed groups of inspectors from both the Health & Safety Executive
(HSE) and the now defunct Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI).
Generally speaking Stuart likes to begin by emphasising similarities between workers and
service-users to develop empathy before using everyday situations to illustrate the points made throughout the training. He has worked extensively for various county and borough councils and also provided training on safeguarding and on mental capacity and related legislation on behalf of both the UK and Scottish governments.