Dr Dave Roberts – Head of Outreach / Deputy CEO / Organisational Therapist
A qualified Social Worker and organisational therapist, Dave has worked in residential child care and special schools since the early 1990s. He became head of Mulberry Bush training in 2006, leading them to two National Training Awards, in 2007 and 2012 and two prestigious HRH The Princess Royal Training Award in 2021 and 2024.
He was integral in developing the award-winning Level 5 ‘Foundation Degree in Therapeutic Work with Children and Young People’, with the University of the West of England, for which he was programme leader for 14 years, and the new Level 4 Certificate in Therapeutic Child Care. He has acted as a Specialist Leader in Education (SLE) with a focus on understanding behaviour as a communication and developed and delivered on a wide range of Education, Health and Social Care training programmes across the UK, and Europe.
Dave leads Mulberry Bush Learning and Research, which includes the Outreach support service who have worked with over 1000 organisations, and is currently piloting a reflective supervision in schools programme, which draws on models of reflective practice to support staff well-being and the application to, particularly, mainstream schools.
His PhD study, though IoE/UCL, used a case study approach to follow the lives and stories of four children and their families through the children’s placements at the Mulberry Bush School. The study explored the need for robust staff support systems when working with children made vulnerable through their life experiences.