Following a career in acute paediatrics in the UK and South Africa, Sue Jenkins specialised in Community Paediatrics, working as a clinician and researcher at the Thomas Coram Research Unit in London before becoming a Consultant Community Paediatrician in City and Hackney in 1987. During this time she was also a member of the Editorial Board of MacKeith Press, publishing the journal Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology and for several years she was Convenor of the Community Paediatric Group of the British Paediatric Society. Sue worked in the UK in inner city areas, becoming Director of Community and Child Health Services within Bart’s NHS Trust in East London, involving a combination of clinical, managerial, teaching, research and community development activities.

Sue’s major field of interest and research has been the health, development and wellbeing of children aged under five, and the development of services to meet the needs of children and families from a diversity of backgrounds and cultures. She has written many papers and co-authored a book on the health development and behaviour of young children.Sue has undertaken consultancies in the UK and overseas, predominantly in developing countries. She re-located to Tasmania in the mid-90s, and has recently been working for the Tasmanian Government and in New Zealand in the field of strategic planning for children and young people’s services. Her work in Tasmania includes the design and development of the Kids in Mind Project to support children of parents with mental illness, and the development of the Whole of Government Policy Framework for the Early Years. Sue was Interim Commissioner for Children for Tasmania from December 2006 to April 2007.