About Us

Work and Wellbeing Consultants aims to provide evidence based services with an emphasis on practical solutions that are tailored to the needs of its clients.

Rebecca Lancaster, Managing Director
Services: business management, project management, stress risk management programme design and delivery, training, health improvement research design and management.

Background: Rebecca is an Occupational Psychologist and Member of the International Stress Management Association. She worked for large consultancies for 10 years before founding Work and Wellbeing Consultants in 2005.

She has been working with Health Scotland to develop, revise and provide training on the Work Positive stress management resource pack since 2001. Work and Wellbeing Consultants was commissioned by Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to align Work Positive with the HSE Management Standards for Workplace Stress, and it continues to be one of their recommended risk assessment approaches.

As well as managing various health improvement projects, Rebecca also works with a number of organisations to support design and implementation of tailored stress risk management and wellbeing programmes; supporting them to achieve target outcomes such as reducing sickness absence, employee engagement, improved staff morale and wellbeing. Rebecca also manages health improvement research projects.

Rebecca splits her time between our two offices, one in the centre of Edinburgh and the other in the Community Hub in Peeblesshire (close to her home), in order to achieve a healthy work-life balance!

Beth Cummings, Associate
Services: team development, management coaching and health improvement research.

Background: Beth works mainly in the voluntary sector, developing and delivering learning programmes and training materials, and supporting organisations and teams to develop new ways of working. She is a trained coach, providing workplace coaching for managers in a range of settings. Beth also conducts research in health improvement. Beth originally worked as a staff nurse in both general and psychiatric nursing before moving into the voluntary sector in 1981. She worked in a number of settings including a hostel for homeless women, a major housing association (supporting 16-25 year olds and people with mental health problems maintain their tenancies), and Scottish Women’s Aid (designing and facilitating a range of training courses on domestic abuse and other topics at a National level). She became a freelance consultant in 1996.

Miriam Newton (OBE), Associate
Services: senior management coaching and training.

Background: Miriam works at executive level, providing management coaching and training for senior managers. She has worked within Health Scotland for 10 years, leading the Workplace Programme and latterly as Partnership Manager, supporting development and maintenance of relationships between Health Scotland and Health Board partners to achieve Health Improvement Targets set by the Scottish Executive. She initially qualified as a nurse practitioner in 1989, and moved into occupational health in 1990, taking up a range of management roles before joining Health Scotland in 1999.

Judith Simms, Associate
Services: public health research

Background: Judith is a public health researcher, specialising in women’s health. She has conducted a number of research projects investigating barriers to health among minority groups. For example, Barriers and facilitators to culturally competent maternity care: a qualitative investigation of staff’s experiences in Lothian, Ethnicity and experiences of pregnancy in Lothian, and Cervical Screening and Learning Disability: experiences of women and their carers.