Meet Our Associate Trainers

Stephanie Austin – Founder and Lead Trainer

Prima Cura Training is built on over 25 years of hands-on health, safety, and social care experience. Steph personally selects every associate trainer in the team, oversees quality across all deliveries, and remains the named expert behind every course Prima Cura runs.

Meet Steph

Bob Hall

Bob spent 30 years as a traffic police officer and family liaison officer. He has seen the consequences of being unprepared for an emergency at the sharpest end, and that experience shapes every course he delivers. He does not just teach first aid and health and safety. He puts it in context in a way that most trainers simply cannot.

What makes Bob’s training stick is the balance he strikes. There is humour, but it never tips into flippancy. There is authority, but it never tips into lecturing. The result is training that people actually remember when they need it.

Qualifications and Credentials

• IOSH Health and Safety
• Level 3 Award in Education and Training, formerly Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS)
• Subject matter qualifications across all delivered subjects

Joanne Austin QTLS, LCGI

Joanne has nearly 40 years of experience in health and social care, spanning the private, charity, and public sectors in the UK and overseas. That is not a figure plucked from a LinkedIn profile. It means she has worked as a Lecturer and Curriculum Manager, an NVQ Assessor, and an Internal Verifier. She has designed training from the ground up, assessed it, quality-assured it, and delivered it to learners at every level.

She holds QTLS (Qualified Teacher Status) alongside her LCGI, giving her formal teaching credentials that meet the same standard as a qualified schoolteacher. She is also a five-year British Red Cross volunteer, receiving a special commendation for volunteering throughout the pandemic. Her specialism is social care, and she has particular expertise supporting Personal Health Budget and Direct Payments users.

Qualifications and Credentials

• QTLS (Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills)
• QCA Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults (CELTA)
• D32/33 (A1/A2) NVQ Assessor Award
• Licentiateship of the City and Guilds of London Institute
• Relevant subject matter qualifications across all delivered subjects

Carl Goulding IEng MILP MHEA

Carl is an Incorporated Electrical and Lighting Engineer by profession. But his second career is where things get interesting.

He spent five years as crew on the RNLI Chiswick Lifeboat. For 10 years, he was head lifeguard at the London Triathlon, responsible for a water safety team managing an event with up to 15,000 competitors over two days. He is Chief Coach of Potters Bar Lifesaving Club and a qualified RLSS Pool and Open Water Lifeguard Trainer Assessor. When Carl talks about keeping people alive in emergencies, he is drawing on years of doing exactly that.

Learners regularly feed back that his relaxed manner and practical focus put them at ease from the start. He also has experience delivering first aid directly to Personal Health Budget holders in their own homes.

Qualifications and Credentials

• RLSS Lifesaving Tutor
• NEBOSH Certificate in Construction
• IOSH Managing Safely
• Level 3 Award in Education and Training
• IEng MILP MHEA
• Relevant subject matter qualifications across all delivered subjects

Lynn Forsyth

Lynn served 22 years in the Royal Air Force. That alone tells you something about how she approaches her work. Discipline, adaptability, and the kind of calm under pressure that no textbook can teach.

She is also a qualified Sub-Aqua instructor and spent several years volunteering as a First Responder with the Scottish Ambulance Service. That same hands-on, real-world approach comes through in everything she delivers.

Learners consistently highlight the open, inclusive, and relaxed environment Lynn builds in the room. She takes time with questions and never rushes past the difficult parts. This is particularly valued in her mental health first aid courses, where creating a safe space for the content matters as much as delivering it.

Qualifications and Credentials

• Level 3 Award in Education and Training
• First Aid for Mental Health Instructor: Ofqual Levels 1, 2 and 3 (Nuco/FAA)
• Health and Safety Compliance Instructor (Nuco/FAA)
• Manual Handling Instructor (Nuco/FAA)
• Safeguarding Instructor — Levels 1 and 3 (Nuco/FAA)
• First Aid Assessors and Internal Quality Assurance (FAA)

George Bramble

George spent 27 years in the Royal Navy, 12 as an engineer and 15 as Royal Naval Police, before building a second career in training that now spans first aid, mental health, manual handling, fire safety, medication management, and more. He came out of the Navy with hands-on clinical experience and a very clear understanding of what health and safety look like when the stakes are genuinely high. He has been delivering training since 1980.

Since then, he has worked as County Health and Safety Officer with St John Ambulance, as a safeguarding and safety officer across public events, as a set medic on film shoots, and as a carer for Mencap. Most trainers go deep in one area. George goes deep in several.

In the training room, he is patient, thorough, and not easily rattled. Clients book him back by name. More than one delegate has compared his delivery to David Attenborough.

After a fire marshal session at a client’s premises, he noticed a problem with their defibrillator and stayed behind on his own time to help sort it out. That is not in any job description. It is just who he is.

Qualifications and Credentials

• NEBOSH Certificate
• Level 5 Award in Manual Handling (People)
• Level 3 Mental Health Instructor and Assessor
• Outdoor First Aid and Forestry First Aid Instructor Assessor
• Anti-Ligature Train the Trainer
• Face Fit Testing, Allergen Risk Assessment, Epilepsy and Medication Awareness, Diabetes Awareness and Insulin Administration (Level 3)
• Level 3 Award in Education and Training
• Registered with Highfield and Qualsafe; NUCO registered trainer
• 40+ years with St John Ambulance (employee and volunteer)

Penny Curtis

Penny holds a Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training and brings a wide-ranging background in health and social care to everything she delivers. Her scope goes well beyond the standard care curriculum, including specialist areas such as epilepsy with emergency medication administration.

She is also Prima Cura’s go-to for clients requiring Tier 2 Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training, the nationally mandated training on learning disability and autism awareness for health and social care staff. Her remit extends into conflict management, business, and leadership training too.

Learners consistently describe Penny as professional, warm, and empathetic. She clearly knows her subject, but the feedback is never just about knowledge. It is about how she makes people feel in the room.

Qualifications and Credentials

• Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
• Relevant subject matter qualifications across all delivered subjects

Rhiannon Gallen

Rhiannon came to training from a legal background, which gives her a particular eye for clarity, process, and getting things right. She has built a well-earned reputation for bringing genuine energy and passion to every session she delivers.

11 years of volunteering run alongside her professional career, including contributions to community events such as the Fuse Festival. She is also a Mini Medics instructor, teaching basic first aid skills to children. Anyone who has kept a room full of enthusiastic young people focused and actually learning at the same time will know that it is a skill in itself.

Learners describe Rhiannon as fun, full of energy, and genuinely passionate about what she teaches. That energy is consistent whether she is in a corporate boardroom or a community hall.

Qualifications and Credentials

• Level 4 Certificate in Education and Training
• Relevant subject matter qualifications across all delivered subjects