Geraldine Miskin
Breastfeeding and newborn specialist consultant
Geraldine Miskin is a former Maternity Nurse with 10 years' experience working with families and newborns. She has completed the Australiasian Lactation Course as well as several breastfeeding and lactation courses in the UK. She currently runs a private practice in London offering home consultations for all baby related problems as well as breastfeeding and baby care lessons. Her philosophy is to promote and encourage breastfeeding and to support ALL parents regardless of their infant feeding choice.
Roni Jay
Parenting consultant consultant
Roni Jay is a professional writer and publisher specialising in parenting subjects. Her most recent books include 'Kids & Co', which is about how to use business ideas to raise children, and 'Babies for Beginners', a humorous, no-nonsense guide that takes the stress out of looking after a newborn. She is married and lives in Devon with her three young children. She also has three grown-up stepchildren.
Lisa Barnes
Homeopathy consultant
Lisa Barnes has been prescribing homeopath for the past 9 years, working with both classical and modern approaches to homeopathy. Completing a post-graduate course in Women?s Health & Midwifery, Lisa specialises in children?s behavioural problems and ailments, all stages of pregnancy, to the actual birth itself & post-natal issues. Working very closely with the London based National Childbirth Trust and private Midwifery teams have lead her to gain a wealth of experience in these areas. On a personal level of experience, Lisa had a water home birth with her first son and a natural childbirth with her twin boys.
Mary Elder
Childcare Expert consultant
Mary Elder has run the Sevenoaks branch of The Childcare Company since January 2004.
Mary?s knowledge of childcare is based on real experience. She has worked as a nanny and grew up with au pairs in her home. Mary studied Politics and
English at Loughborough University. Her first job after leaving
university was for the international organisation Au Pair in America
where she assessed the suitability of the applicants for the cultural
exchange programme and ensured they were placed with an American family.
After several years in marketing she trained and qualified as an English
teacher at secondary level. She has taught English at primary and
secondary level in the state and private sector.
Mary now has her own family and has two daughters called Beatrice and Cordelia. She has employed both nannies and au pairs.
Allison Marlowe
Parent Coach consultant
Allison Marlowe, the founder of Pace of Life Coaching specialises in helping parents. She is passionate about parenting and has over 20 years of extensive experience working with children and their parents. Before gaining her Advanced Diploma in Life Coaching she lectured in Early Years.
Allison lives with her husband and four children and knows first hand the challenges many parents face, she regularly contributes to both national and local press.
Pace of Life supports parents who are feeling the pressures of every day life and enables them to solve any parenting situation so they can enjoy time with their children and lead the life they desire. From sleepless nights to rebellious teenagers, juggling childcare to finding some regular time for yourself, you will be able to reach your full parenting potential and develop a positive relationship in which to raise happy, responsible and confident children.
Elaine Lambe
Educational consultant
Elaine trained as an Occupational Therapist before working as a tutor for children with autism on early intervention programmes. She has had experience of supporting children with special educational needs in mainstream schools adapting the curriculum to make it accessible. Through her work in the home she taught helped parents to support their child?s learning, implemented behaviour plans and assisted with teaching self help skills for example toilet training, self-feeding and dressing. After the birth of her first child, Elaine started Littlesheep Learning www.littlesheep-learning.co.uk an online store with an ever-growing range of teaching and learning materials to help all those who work with children.
Christine Bailey
Food and Nutrition consultant
Christine Bailey MSc, PGCE is an experienced and trained chef, cookery / health trainer/advisor and food and health writer with over 10 years of experience. She is a member of the Guild of Health Writers and writes regularly for many national magazines and websites on food, health, family and women?s health. She is a cookery teacher and health trainer at various cookery schools, adult education colleges, childcare training centres and universities, teaching children and adults with a specialism in healthy eating and health foods. She is also an advisor to Early Years teams and the National Childminders Association and works with various health food companies providing advice and recipes.
Emma Wayland
Employment Law consultant
Emma Wayland has been running SLM Recruitment since February 2007. Prior to this she worked in the City as an employment lawyer at Slaughter and May and Latham & Watkins, advising both employers and employees on their rights and obligations, drafting contracts of employment, advising on benefits and negotiating settlements.
SLM Recruitment has been providing nannies to families since 1996 and is staffed by extremely experienced consultants.
Iain Stewart
Children's Hygiene consultant
Before setting up his own specialist hygiene and decontamination company, Iain worked in the UK for one of the largest global hygiene service providers. Having been tasked to decontaminate a nursery after a major E-Coli outbreak, Iain realised that the information and advice available to parents, childminders and nurseries was varied, ambiguous and often provided by organisations with no actual experience or desire to get their hands dirty.
ToyGuard started off as a challenge to fill the hygiene gap in the preschool industry and has grown into a crusade, getting hygiene into perspective and doing it rather than talking about it. ToyGuard has sought to bring best practice and cutting edge technology to the industry and give simple, practical solutions to everyday questions and situations. ToyGuard not only provides free online support and information regarding all aspects of hygiene, for instance, How do you clean a sandpit?, it also offers a full range of specialist services to the preschool industry with nurseries from Inverness to Ashford benefiting from ToyGuard expertise and advice.
Mandy Gurney
Sleep consultant
Mandy Gurney is a registered nurse, midwife, health visitor and infant massage instructor.
During her 20 years working as a health professional with families in the NHS, she saw first-hand the many problems caused by sleep deprivation.
This motivated her to set up one of the NHS's first childrens sleep clinics.
The outstanding results encouraged her in 2000 to set up Millpond Childrens Sleep Clinic. It is now the country's leading clinic helping parents around the world; specialising in babies and older childrens sleep problems.
"For me solving a child's sleep problem is like putting together a jigsaw. By taking parents through all the issues, however apparently small, that could be contributing to the problem, I find the missing piece. Together we put it in place, and completing the picture is often a transforming experience for the family, and the best job in the world for me!"
Mandy is asked to head sleep seminars and workshops both in the private and public sector. She is consulted by the consumer press for expert comment, is regularly seen on television and is a sleep consultant to the NHS.
She is co-author of the sleep bible Teach Your Child to Sleep (Hamlyn, 2005), which has sold tens of thousands of copies worldwide and has now been published in eight languages.
As a mother of two children, Mandy knows only too well how sleep deprivation can affect a family. Her first baby suffered from a variety of sleep problems, which is what ignited her interest in child sleep therapy.