About Ruth
25 years of specialist practice — grounded in compassion, trauma, and a commitment to children's needs
I am an independent social worker with 25 years of specialist experience in sexual risk assessment within child protection and criminal justice. Children's safety and wellbeing are the foundation of everything I do, and I have learned that meeting children's needs well requires attending carefully to the whole system around them: the adults who have caused harm, the protective parents and carers trying to keep them safe, and the practitioners navigating complexity under pressure. My practice is built on the conviction that genuinely effective work requires more than technical expertise, it requires an understanding of trauma, the systems people live within, and the care that everyone involved deserves.
My approach
My practice is grounded in the evidence base for working with sexual risk — drawing on established risk assessment frameworks, structured professional judgement tools, screening tools where relevant, and therapeutic models including the Good Lives Model, schema therapy, motivational interviewing, and narrative and attachment approaches. I use these not as a checklist but as a coherent clinical framework: one that supports rigorous assessment, meaningful formulation, and interventions that are genuinely oriented to change.
Alongside that clinical foundation, I bring a trauma-informed and systemic lens to every piece of work. Understanding the trauma histories, relational patterns, and structural contexts that shape behaviour is not a departure from evidence-based practice — it is central to it. Without that understanding, risk can be misread, protective factors missed, and the conditions for change go unaddressed.
Central to that systemic lens is a conviction that individuals and the systems they inhabit are not separate. To understand how someone copes — or how they have caused harm — requires understanding what they are coping in: the structures, relationships, and social realities that have shaped what choices were available to them, what was possible to imagine, and what felt survivable. This is not about excusing harm. It is about understanding it accurately enough to address it — and about recognising that change, for anyone, happens within a context, not in spite of it.
I work with individuals, families, and professionals with the same commitment: to hold complexity with care, to be honest about risk, and to remain curious about the conditions that make change possible — for everyone whose life is touched by this work.
Career history
My career has spanned statutory, voluntary, and independent settings across the UK and Australia, building specialist expertise at some of the leading organisations in this field.
Lucy Faithfull Foundation
Working with individuals and families through specialist assessments and interventions. Facilitating psycho-educational programmes for individuals arrested for online sexual offences and their family members.
Duffy Robilliard Psychologists, Chatswood, Australia
Practising as a registered psychologist, provided expert psychological reports to courts and agencies covering mental health, aetiology of offending, risk assessment, and responsivity issues to inform sentencing and child protection hearings. Delivered one-to-one intervention services for clients convicted of sexual offences, substance abuse, domestic violence, and mental illness. Also reviewed reports and provided consultancy to other psychologists within the practice, particularly where they were working with clients presenting a sexual risk.
Corrective Services NSW — Forensic Psychology Services
Practising as a registered psychologist, provided community and custodial assessment and treatment for adults convicted of sexual offences, with a focus on those with intellectual disabilities or cognitive impairments. Led the development and delivery of training for psychologists, probation officers, and custodial staff on sex offender management and risk assessment methodology.
NSPCC — South London Safer Communities Project
Conducted specialist risk assessments and treatment for convicted and alleged sexual offenders against children. Provided capacity to protect assessments, protective work with partners, child protection training to external organisations, and expert consultation to local authority social workers. Sat on the regional Multi-Agency Public Protection Panel (MAPPP) for high-risk offender management.
Oxleas NHS Trust & National Probation Service
Facilitated community group treatment programmes for personality-disordered high-risk sexual offenders through the Challenge Programme. Assessed, supervised, and managed offenders on community orders, prison licences, and parole as a qualified Probation Officer.
Professional registration and qualifications
Discuss your needs
If you are looking for an independent assessment, therapeutic support, professional supervision, or specialist training, I would welcome a conversation about how I can help.