Dr Camilla Parker

Dr Camilla Parker is an independent legal and policy consultant, researcher, and trainer specialising in mental health, disability, and human rights. She regularly provides training for practitioners in health, mental health, social care, and children’s services. Dr Parker is a member of the Law Society’s Mental Health and Disability Committee and an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Tizard Centre, University of Kent.

From 1995 to 2000, she served as a legal and visiting member of the Mental Health Act Commission and was a non-executive director and special adviser for an NHS mental health trust from 2000 to 2006. Before establishing her consultancy in 1997, Dr Parker was the Legal and Parliamentary Officer at Mind and worked as a solicitor in private practice.

Much of her work focuses on the law and human rights relating to the mental health care of children and young people, which was the subject of her PhD at Cardiff University in 2017. As a consultant for the Department of Health, she led the revision of the children and young people’s chapter in the Mental Health Act 1983 Code of Practice (2015). Dr Parker is also the author of Adolescent Mental Health Care and the Law (LAG 2020).