This is exactly why we created The Kitchen Table. In this episode, we sit down with Dr Lisa Cherry to explore what it really means to care for the people who care, in schools and services that are holding more than ever before. From trauma-informed practice to leadership vulnerability, from exclusion to belonging, this conversation is honest, searching and deeply human.
Lisa shares how her own cancer diagnosis reshaped her thinking about organisational care, why self-care on its own is never enough, and what leaders must model if psychological safety is going to be more than a poster on the wall.
Dr Lisa Cherry is an author, researcher and international trainer who has spent over 35 years working across Education and Children’s Services. She supports schools, services and wider systems to rethink how they respond to the legacy of trauma, combining academic research with professional expertise and lived experience. Her work has reached more than 35,000 people globally across education, health, adult services and criminal justice. Her MA research explored the long-term impact of school exclusion on care experienced adults, and in 2024 she completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford examining how care experienced adults who were also excluded from school make sense of belonging. She is the author of Conversations that Make a Difference for Children and Young People, The Brightness of Stars, Weaving a Web of Belonging and Caring for the People Who Care.
What We Explore
- Caring Beyond Tokenism: Why wellbeing hours and helplines mean little without cultures that genuinely protect and value staff.
- Belonging as a Turning Point: How exclusion, care experience and education shaped Lisa’s journey and why one teacher can change a life trajectory.
- Vulnerability as Leadership Strength: Why modelling help-seeking and repair after rupture is the foundation of psychologically safe organisations.
We reflect on moral injury in schools, rising exclusions, the weight carried by safeguarding leads and pastoral teams, and the danger of placing all the responsibility on individual resilience. Lisa reminds us that trauma does not sit only with children. Adults in our systems carry their own histories too, and ignoring that reality comes at a cost.
There is something powerful in her phrase that educators are “there in waiting”. That the conversation you have today may not show its impact for years, but it still matters. That belonging is not soft or sentimental, it is structural. And that if we want people to stay in caring professions, flexibility, supervision and relational cultures are not optional extras.
If you lead in education, health or any caring profession, this episode invites you to look again at how you hold your people.
Connect with Phil Banks
thebelongingcollective.blog
Connect with Mohamed Abdallah
Drawbridge Collective | Mohamed Abdallah | Substack
Connect with Danielle Lewis-Egonu
Danielle Lewis-Egonu | Substack
The Kitchen Table are grateful to our sponsors Magma Maths, Zen Educate, St Christophers Trust, Cygnus Academies Trust, The Reach Foundation and it is produced by Urban Podcasts.
45 mins