Marcia is currently on a one year sabbatical from the Young Foundation.

She is working on a voluntary basis as a Mental Health and Wellbeing Development Worker and Training Advisor in Jaffna, north Sri Lanka, as part of VSO's mental health and wellbeing programme goals. Marcia will be working with Shanthiham, a non-for-profit charity and the Sri Lankan Government's Department of Health.

Marcia will be:
- Helping develop and pilot initiatives that are holistic, client centred, recovery-oriented and community based
- Helping train staff and capacity build within Shanthiham, and across the Government, working with public health inspectors, midwives, teachers, and local community members
- Developing capacity in research and evaluation.
Marcia will be returning to the Young Foundation in October 2012. In her absence please contact Nina Mguni or Nicola Bacon with any queries regarding the Young Foundation's wellbeing, resilience and families programme of work.

Dr Marcia Brophy is the programme leader for Wellbeing and Resilience and leads on all work related to wellbeing, resilience and families.

Marcia worked on the Local Wellbeing Project, partnering with Lord Richard Layard from the London School of Economics, the IDeA and three leading local authorities, Hertfordshire, Manchester and South Tyneside, to look at the different ways in which local government and its local partners can promote wellbeing. This unique initiative set up in 2006 tested out practical ways of increasing individual and community wellbeing in areas such as parenting, emotional resilience training for children and older people, neighbourhood empowerment, environmental sustainability, and how local authorities could measure wellbeing.

Marcia is now working on expanding the Young Foundation's emotional resilience work across a range of populations. Currently Marcia is working on Emotional Resilience for Gangs, a piece of work commissioned by Harrow Metropolitan Police to develop and pilot an emotional resilience programme targeting 14 -19 year olds who are offending or at risk of offending. This programme will skill up multi-disciplinary teams of frontline professionals who regularly come into contact with these young people.

Previously Marcia led the first ever UK-wide Inquiry into Self-harm among Young People, funded by the Mental Health Foundation and the Camelot Foundation. This influential Inquiry identified and commissioned innovative approaches to react and influence current knowledge, practice and policy in this field. She has also been the Research Manager at Safe in the City, an  action research programme established to pilot new ways of preventing youth homelessness in London by working with young people and their families.

Marcia has also worked as a researcher at the Institute of Psychiatry on a longitudinal examination of outcomes for English and Romanian Adoptees; at the Institute of Education examining the impact of parents on their children's employability; and has worked freelance as a consultant for PACE helping them evaluate the effectiveness of a therapeutic group work approach to HIV prevention with gay men in North London. Marcia holds a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the Institute of Education and the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, respectively.

Selected publications (other than those published directly by the Young Foundation):

• Brophy, M. (May 2008). 'A Civic Recipe for Happiness. Can local authorities find a way to make us all happy?'. New Start, 23 May 2008.

• Foskett, T. and Brophy, M. (October 2006). ‘Talking Spaces II: A Therapeutic Groupwork Approach to HIV Prevention with Gay Men'. Commissioned and written for PACE.

• Brophy, M. (May 2006). ‘Young People & Self-harm: Findings from a National Inquiry'. Final report; Mental Health Foundation & Camelot Foundation.

• Dunn, J. and Brophy, M. (2005). ‘Communication, relationships, and individual differences in children's understanding of mind'. In: Why Language Matters for Theory of Mind, (eds) Astington, J.W. and Baird, J.A. Oxford: Oxford University Press

• Brophy, M. (2003). ‘Consulting Young People in Hackney - Perceptions Around Homelessness'.

• Internal report for Hackney Council Housing Department's homelessness strategy.

• Brophy, M., Talyor, E. and Hughes, C. (2002). ‘To go or not to go: Inhibitory control in ‘hard to manage' children.' Infant and Child Development, Special Issue on Executive Functions and Development, 11, 125-140.

• Brophy, M. and Dunn, J. (2002). ‘What did mummy say? Dyadic interactions between ‘hard to manage' children and their mothers.' Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 30(2), 103-112.

Contact

marcia.brophy@youngfoundation.org or call 020 8980 6263