Celeste is an associate professor for mental health nursing at the University of Salford with a specialism in children and young people’s (CYP) mental health. Celeste is a children and young people’s mental health nurse, adolescent psychodynamic therapist and academic who has been working in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, since 1995. Celeste’s clinical and research interests and publications span psychoanalytic approaches to working with adolescents and their professional networks in relation to self-harm, complex psychosomatic presentations and developmental trauma, Child and adolescent mental health nursing intervention and identity, psychoanalytic approaches to improving relationally-focused care, and enabling organisations who support neurodiverse children and their families.
Celeste’s portfolio of publications includes the first published peer-reviewed research studies in the field of CYP psychiatric intensive care nursing. She is the academic lead for NAPICU’s a three-year programme of stakeholder engagement and research to develop the evidence base to improve care quality and outcomes for children and young people requiring inpatient mental health care, undertaken in partnership with the University of Salford. In her academic research role she co-lead of the mental health and neurodiversity research group at University of Salford’s Centre for Applied Health Research. As an independent psychotherapist she continues to provide clinical consultancy and supervision for NHS CYP mental health inpatient settings and third sector providers.
Celeste has been selected as the 2025 Skellern Lecturer – The Skellern Lecture is a highly prestigious annual event that celebrates advances in the field of mental health and mental health nursing (www.skellern.info). She will be delivering her lecturer entitled ‘It is only with the heart that one can see rightly: revealing the nature of children and young people’s mental health nursing’, at the University of Manchester on 5th June 2025.
