Directors and Leads

Through the mid 1990's John led the design of the CORE System as the first UK standardised quality evaluation system for psychological therapy. Engaged in the evaluation of UK psychological therapies and counselling for over 20 years, John's special interest in organisational development and change management has led him to regularly publish and present on a range of topics focused around service quality development.

As Managing Director of CORE IMS John leads on commercial and strategic development. Key interests include: developing an expanding portfolio of free quality measurement tools; growing a significant repository of practice-based evidence to complement and balance evidence-based practice; and creating collaborative academic and clinical international networks sharing a common passion for exploring the delivery and development of best practice.

After graduating from Kings College London with a BSc in Business Management, Alex worked at the Metanoia Institute research department, producing innovative multimedia training software for the Institute's counselling and psychotherapy training programmes. In 2001 Alex co-founded CORE IMS with John Mellor-Clark.

As IT Director Alex authored CORE PC and leads the on-going development of CORE Net. He provides technical consultancy and support for CORE users and IT departments in the purchase, installation and support of CORE PC and CORE Net systems. Alex is also the company's information security manager under ISO 27001.

Laura has a professional background in clinical psychology. Educated first at Edinburgh University, followed by clinical training at Plymouth and Bristol, Laura has held senior positions in both public and private sectors.  She was lead for Child and Family Psychology in Fife for 7 years, before joining ICAS as their International Clinical and Operations Director.  More recently Laura was CEO with Columba 1400 - a leading charity and social enterprise for young people in Scotland. Laura joined the Board of CORE IMS in 2011.

Kitty is a Business Development Manager for CORE IMS. Her role is in helping services to get the best value out of their investment in CORE software through offering support, training and consultancy in service review and development. After 17 years in teaching and management in the secondary, further, adult and higher education sectors Kitty worked for 13 years in student counselling. Her interest in using the CORE System for evaluating the effectiveness of counselling began when she introduced CORE PC into the university counselling service which she managed from 2001-7. 

Ellie started working for CORE IMS in 2010, although she has been involved with CORE one way or another for almost 10 years. Before the days of CORE IT systems she was one of the original team of researchers who worked at the Psychological Therapies Research Centre (PTRC) at Leeds University, the birthplace of the CORE System. Here she manually scanned clients' forms to generate service reports, dealt with enquiries from practitioners and wrote academic papers.

While at Leeds, Ellie completed an Open University degree followed by an MSc in Applied Statistics. Her MSc project was the development of the YP-CORE measure (for young persons), which remains a particular area of interest.  When PTRC closed in 2008, she began work as a freelance Research Consultant and remained involved in many CORE projects.

Ellie acts as Research Lead on various projects within CORE IMS, as well as supporting services by undertaking data analysis for them. She also works on sector-specific benchmarks and has produced benchmarks for the Higher Education sector and updated Primary Care benchmarks.