The Faculty

Who We Are

Kate Hill, Solicitor

Director and Trainer

Kate Hill is a medical law and ethics specialist with a background in clinical negligence. She worked for a leading law firm for 25 years representing health and social care professionals at Coroners Court and advising NHS Trusts and Private providers on policy and procedure, particularly in the risk management arena. Kate was one of the legal advisors in the reported case of Bloom.

She has particular expertise in Complex Systems, Systems Thinking, Human Factors, Mental Health and Mental Capacity, Data Protection, information sharing, complaints management and consent to treatment (including in Clinical Trials).

Kate has been training on incident investigation for over 20 years as well as carrying out investigations for organisations.

She has been special advisor to NICE, sat on the National Advisory Group for Approved Clinician training and has written and contributed to a number of medico-legal text books.

Kate has provided training for thousands of healthcare professionals and for organisations such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists, The British Orthopaedic Association, NHS England, The Royal College of Nursing and The British Medical Association and has trained across the globe in countries such as the United States of America, China, Argentina, Costa Rica, Malaysia and Estonia.

Kate is married to a Cornish farmer, likes dogs and prawn cocktail crisps.

Joanne Haswell, Barrister

Director and Trainer

After completing a Law degree at University College London, Jo qualified as a Barrister in 1998 and received a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from City University.

Jo started InPractice with Kate Hill.

Jo is an experienced trainer and investigator, with a particular interest in human factors, quality improvement and complaints management.

Jo has co-authored a web based training programme on consent and systems based approach to investigation. She has written numerous articles on healthcare Law for both the national and specialist press.

She is also a parent founder of Forest Bridge School in Maidenhead (www.forestbridgeschool.org.uk) which is a special needs school for pupils on the Autistic Spectrum.

Jo lives with her teacher husband, son James and two rescue cats called Linen and Fleur. Jo is a fan of Salt and Vinegar crisps and Sauvignon Blanc.

Simon Robinson, Barrister

Trainer

Simon Robinson is an experienced barrister and a CEDR Accredited mediator specialising in employment and equality law and cases on mental health and mental capacity. He has a particular interest in human and minority rights and has an LL.M in Human Rights Law. Simon is a CEDR Accredited Mediator, a Civil Mediation Council Registered Mediator and a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators.

Simon provides advice and representation, in both Tribunal and the Court of Protection, in mental health and mental capacity cases, including lasting powers of attorney, deputyship and deprivation of liberty cases. He also teaches at Manchester Metropolitan and Northumbria Universities, including mental capacity law.

Simon has experience of working with senior clinicians and healthcare managers. He is a regular speaker at national conferences for health and social care providers on topics including duty of candour, investigations, mental capacity and safeguarding.

Simon lives with a menagerie of dogs, cats, a tortoise, fish and a consultant clinical psychologist. He prefers ready salted crisps.

Articles & Publications

Mental Capacity Act: Overview (Westlaw Insight)
Mental Health Act (England): Overview (Westlaw Insight)
Mental Health Professionals (Westlaw Insight)

Professional Memberships

Member of the Court of Protection Practitioners Association
Mental Health Lawyers Association (including Court of Protection list)

Philippa Slinger

Consultant

Philippa Slinger is a highly experienced NHS England Regional Director, Integrated Systems Leader, NHS Trust Chief Executive, NHS Improvement Director and private sector Managing Director.

Philippa started her career as a Mental Health Nurse and since then has worked in organisations such as Devon STP, NHS E/I East of England, Berkshire Healthcare NHS FT and Care UK (now Practice Plus Group). Her skills and experience include systems leadership, fostering and developing collaborative relationships, designing systems of governance, strategic and operational management of large healthcare organisations, leading large capital projects and working as a regulator.

Alex Ruck Keene, Barrister

Trainer

Alex Ruck Keene is an experienced barrister, writer and educator. His practice at 39 Essex Chambers is focused on mental capacity law (broadly defined) in which he is able to provide specialist advice and representation, as well as delivering expert training for front line professionals. He also writes extensively in the field, editing and contributing to leading textbooks and (amongst many other publications) the 39 Essex Chambers Mental Capacity Law Newsletter, the ‘bible’ for solicitors (and others) working in the area. He is the creator of the website www.mentalcapacitylawandpolicy.org.uk, providing resources and expert commentary on some of the most difficult mental capacity issues.

Alex is an Honorary Research Lecturer at the University of Manchester, a Wellcome Research Fellow at King’s College London and a Research Affiliate at the Essex Autonomy Project, University of Essex.

He is also mildly obsessed with B-movies.

David Temkin KC, Barrister

Trainer

David Temkin has been a barrister since 2000 following a first career in teaching. At the Bar, he practises in criminal litigation and in professional disciplinary/regulatory work. He has particular experience in cases involving doctors and other health professionals before the range of courts and tribunals. He also represents police officers before the criminal courts and in misconduct proceedings.

David is equally in demand for prosecution and defence work. His experience and skills led to his appointment to a number of national panels. These include the highest grade of CPS advocates, the Rape and Serious Sexual Offences panel, the Attorney-General’s List of Prosecutors and the List of Specialist Regulatory Advocates. David is a member of the Advocate Panel for the General Medical Council. He regularly conducts hearings at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.

David was Visiting Lecturer in Professional Discipline at the BPP University (2015-2017). His courses focussed exclusively on law and procedure in disciplinary proceedings for healthcare professionals.

David sits as a Recorder (part-time judge) in the Crown Court.

David conducts training courses around the UK for healthcare professionals. He has trained on such topics as ‘Expert Witnesses’, ‘Expert Reports’, ‘Giving Evidence’, ‘The Duty of Candour’, ‘Root Cause Analysis in NHS Incident Management’ and ‘Safeguarding’. He has also conducted courses on a range of topics for police forces around the country. David’s in-depth knowledge of his specialist areas and his previous experience as an educator have resulted in glowing feedback from those attending his courses.

Simon Dinnick, Solicitor

Consultant

Simon Dinnick is a specialist in healthcare law, professional ethics and regulation. He has practised in clinical negligence for more than 30 years and advised on all aspects of professional difficulty for both individuals and health care bodies.

For the last 10 years he was General Counsel to one of the major medical defence organisations and before that was Head of Legal Services. These appointments followed a career as a partner in one of the country’s leading health law firms, where he was a member of the firm’s management team with wide ranging experience of strategic and business development.

He has particular understanding of regulation and compliance in this sector as well as the dynamics and pressures of the modern health service, its staff and institutions. He has career-long experience of the statutory regulators and their changing expectations as well the political environment in which they operate.

He is a Trustee of the Royal Medical Benevolent Fund.

Ben Troke, Solicitor

Trainer

Ben Troke is a solicitor and a mediator with 25 years’ experience working in health and social care, acting for the NHS and private sector providers all over the country.  His particular interest is in decisions about medical treatment and social care, including mental capacity, safeguarding and deprivation of liberty.  He regularly deals with urgent applications to court in emergency situations. Ben is independently rated as one of the leading practitioners in the country in the Court of Protection. He currently sits on the Law and Ethics Policy Unit of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine, and the Law Society’s Mental Health and Disability committee, and has a decade of experience of sitting on the ethics of clinical practice committee of a large acute NHS Trust.  Ben is widely published in the health and sector press, frequent trainer and speaker at conferences nationwide, the author of ‘A Practical Guide to the Law of Medical Treatment Decisions’ by Ben Troke – Law Brief Publishing and is currently working on ‘A Practical Guide to the Law of Deprivation of Liberty’ by Ben Troke – Law Brief Publishing due for publication in the Autumn 2023.

Alison Joyce, Solicitor

Trainer

Alison is a solicitor who specialised in clinical negligence claims in private practice before moving into the NHS in 2000. Since then, she has worked in the healthcare sector providing legal advice but also working in the fields of patient safety, quality, improvement and governance in both provider and commissioning organisations. Alison was also a CNST assessor on behalf of NHS Resolution. She has provided legal advice to many healthcare organisations covering subjects such as capacity, consent, public law and process, information governance, complaint management and compliance.

She has undertaken many different types of investigations, including multi agency/system wide investigations and inquiries. In addition, she has provided training to healthcare professionals and solicitors for many years on record keeping standards, legal issues relating to care at the end of life, mental capacity, complaint prevention and management and consent.

Alison is the Trustee of a charity and after 23 years working in the NHS now works freelance with healthcare organisations as well as providing training.

Alison Brennan, Solicitor

Trainer
Alison Brennan, Solicitor

Alison is a Legal Director in healthcare at Weightmans LLP, which is a national firm that provides a range of legal services. Alison is an experienced and knowledgeable solicitor (LLB Hons) in her field in dealing with clinical negligence claims for NHS trusts across several specialist fields. Alison adopts a thorough and reasonable approach in dealing with a range of complex high value and sensitive claims, including addressing complex clinical issues .

Alison has a background in the health service as a nurse holding a BSc (Hons) and MA degree along with dual qualification in paediatric and adult nursing. She has worked at a senior nursing level and therefore has significant knowledge, insight and understanding of the demands on health services, along with a particular focus on clinical governance and patient safety. Alison remains committed to patient safety and continues to work across health services, including trusts and with clinicians and teams to learn from and address patient safety issues. This includes through presentations, writing articles and discussing specific topics, such as consent and duty of candour, along with organising large events on this subject. Alison also provides regular training on aspects of the patient safety investigation response framework( PSIRF) for providers of NHS care (NHS and independent sector). She is regularly instructed to assist trusts with complex complaints and patient safety incident investigations, taking a thorough, open and transparent approach. Alison also advises national organisations on high level, complex investigatory work and reports.

Calendar

Medico-legal training e-learning courses