The Kindness Initiative, led by Valerie Charbit (Red Lion Chambers) and Professor Robin Banerjee (University of Sussex), is a very important new project promoting and structuring good practice in organisations to increase wellbeing and harmony in the workplace as a positive initiative to combat toxicity within firms and from individuals.

Law Friends is delighted to be on board, and we have made a free video to explain the initiative and invite your thoughts, observations and ideas.

Valerie’s diverse practice spans serious criminal cases involving Murder and Manslaughter, Fraud, Health & Safety and Sexual Offences. She also has considerable experience in acting before a number of regulators in Professional Discipline proceedings. She is instructed in the Grenfell Tower Inquiry.

She is appointed by numerous professional and public bodies to do advisory and advocacy work, and has a broad range of clients from across the public and private sectors.

With vast experience in complex and multi-handed cases, she both prosecutes and defends as a leading junior and is public access accredited.

Her defence work includes representing a variety of professionals before their regulatory bodies.

Valerie has a particular interest in mental health and is experienced in vulnerable witness advocacy. She delivers training to barristers on this.

Valerie is appointed as a CPS Panel Advocate (Grade 4, highest tier) and to the specialist rape and serious crime group panels. She was also appointed to the Grade A (top tier) list for Specialist Regulatory Advocates in Health & Safety, and to the Panel A list for the Serious Fraud Office.

Since 2004 Valerie has sat as a part-time judge for the First Tier Tribunal (Mental Health), and she specialises in child and adolescent cases. She also represents health authorities before the First Tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal, in restricted cases.

Valerie is Chair of the Regulatory Practice Group at Red Lion Chambers. She is the Wellbeing Director for Chambers. Valerie has represented the Criminal Bar Association as Wellbeing Director and the South Eastern Circuit on wellbeing. She remains a member of the Bar Council’s working party group on the subject.

Valerie is also an ethics and advocacy trainer for Middle Temple, and a lead facilitator for the vulnerable witness advocacy training for the South Eastern Circuit.

Robin Banerjee is Head of the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex. Robin first arrived at the University of Sussex as an undergraduate student, and stayed on at Sussex to complete his doctoral studies on the topic of social, cognitive, motivational, and emotional aspects of self-presentation in childhood.

He went on to serve as a British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellow and took up a position as Lecturer in Psychology in 2002, progressing to his current position as Professor of Developmental Psychology.