Events

Carole was a GP in Bristol for over 30 years until retirement from clinical practice in 2017. She persuaded the Royal College of General Practitioners to make autism a clinical priority in 2014 and became the clinical champion of the same for the following 3 years. She remains the autism representative and represents the college at priority setting meetings with, for example, NHS England. She also works closely with Autistica and is involved in research and teaching on neurodevelopmental conditions. Added to that she has lived experience as a mother of a 30-year-old who has autism, a severe learning disability, epilepsy and a history of insomnia.

Dr Catherine Tuffrey has been a consultant community paediatrician for 10 years. She trained clinically in Wessex including spending 6 months in general practice in order to learn about primary care paediatrics. She then spent 4 years doing research for a PhD and developing clinical teaching in Northumbria before returning south for her current post. She is currently Clinical Lead for the Community Paediatric Medical Service in Portsmouth for Solent NHS Trust as well as autism lead for the department and consultant lead for paediatric research. She is presently academic convenor for the British Academy for Childhood Disability.

Dr Catherine Hill is an Associate Professor of Child Health within Medicine at the University of Southampton. Extensively published in over 70 papers, her research interests include sleep and neurocognition in children facing hypoxic challenges, both with sleep disordered breathing and at high altitude, sleep related rhythmic movement disorder and chronic insomnia in children with chronic health or neurodevelopmental disorders.
As a Consultant in Sleep Medicine at Southampton Children’s Hospital, Dr Hill leads a supra-regional multi-disciplinary diagnostic and therapeutic service for children with non-respiratory sleep disorders. Over several decades, Dr Hill has championed the importance of sleep in children through multiple media events including documentaries on the BBC and the United Kingdom’s ITV channel, as well as radio appearances and articles in the national press.