Mr Ian Fleming 

I trained in the North-west of England and qualified in 1981. My first post was in Salford, and since then I have worked in Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Liverpool. My specialist area is working with people with learning disabilities.

I joined the programme team in 1995 and have greatly enjoyed the way that the Manchester programme has combined innovation, curricular developments and the necessary sequelae associated with expansion, with very high standards and good working relationships.

I complement my Programme duties with clinical work in Rochdale and while being quite a "generalist" I have particular interests in the ways that clinical psychologists work as part of multi-disciplinary teams, in service developments, and in developing effective therapeutic relationships. I feel that working with people with learning disabilities requires a clinician to draw on many different areas of skill and experience and is constantly both challenging and exhilarating.

An interest that spans both clinical and training work is that of seeking to look at psychological distress in a wider, social context and understanding the implications this has for clinical practice.

Over the past 20-odd years I have maintained a reasonable attempt to combine research with practice - or at least publishing. Most recently in 2004, Linda Steen and I edited Supervision and Clinical Psychology which we hope will make a clear contribution to developing effective supervisory practice amongst clinical psychologists.

• BA Hons Social Psychology University of Sussex
• British Psychological Society Diploma in Clinical Psychology