The treatment-now.com team

Who are treatment-now.com?

treatment-now.com was created to ensure a high quality service to all of our patients and treatment providers. Years of experience in the field of drug and alcohol rehab and detox and psychiatry enables us to ensure our patients are completely supported through both residential and community treatment. Led by three experienced professionals with a staff of qualified and friendly care managers we pride ourselves on the quality of the services we provide.

Chief Executive Officer: Leona Cronin

Leona has worked in the drug and alcohol field for 18 years at both clinical and management levels. She has a Diploma in Counselling from CSCT and a Diploma in Addictions Counselling from Canterbury Christ Church University. She also has qualifications in Management Development and Marketing. Having worked for community based treatment providers and a number of residential clinics she has gained enormous experience of the addiction treatment field. Additionally she gained experience of drug and alcohol work in the criminal justice system whilst working with the Probation Service within prisons in Ireland and was responsible for the development and running of treatment programmes in both Cork and Portlaoise prisons. Leona has also worked with the Home Office supporting the development of a National Programme and briefly supported the lead on the Drugs in the Workplace policy development and implementation until the Home Office itself restructured its response to the issues. As the Chief Executive Officer Leona has overall responsibility for the strategic direction of the company and works closely with clients, contracted providers and care management staff.

Medical Director: Dr Robin Lawrence MRCP, MRCPsych

In addition to his duties as Medical Director for treatment-now.com Dr Lawrence has also worked in his own busy private psychiatric and outpatient psychotherapy practice since 1997, which is based in Harley Street, London. He has special interests in psychotherapy, depression, anxiety and addictive disorders of all kinds. He believes that psychotherapeutic insights are useful in the management of all patients and indispensable in the management of many. His early research work in psychiatry was in community psychiatry with particular emphasis on its consequence on patients (with schizophrenia and other major mental illness) and their families, but whilst he worked at the Maudsley Hospital with Prof. Isaac Marks he developed an interest in obsessive compulsive disorder and continued to be intrigued by the similarities and differences between this and addictive behaviour. Dr Lawrence did his pre clinical medical training in Birmingham University Medical School and his Admission was in September 1975 and his Second MB was awarded in June 1977. Dr Lawrence has a total of three years general medical experience with sub-speciality experience in geriatrics, renal medicine, thoracic medicine, cardiology, neurology and paediatrics. He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians before he started his training in psychiatry. Dr Lawrence has worked in the area of both general psychiatry and addiction for the past 27 years and has held both senior and research posts in some of the most prestigious and well know clinics in the UK.
Treatment-now.com is delighted to have such an experienced and well known consultant psychiatrist with a wide range of skills and expertise on the team.

Operations Director: Ben Hughes

Ben has worked in the drug and alcohol field for over 15 years and has worked at both clinical and management levels. He has a diploma in counselling from the AEB and has completed short, specialist courses in Motivational Interviewing, Solution Focussed Brief Therapy and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. He also has qualifications in Training Practice and Presentations Skills. Having worked as treatment unit staff in prisons in the UK he has extensive experience of both drug and alcohol treatment in the criminal justice field. At Horfield prison in Bristol and Erlestoke prison in Wiltshire he was a member of the teams that developed and managed the treatment programmes and the associated testing and policy development. In the past he was responsible for the successful management and co-ordination of a high level strategic partnership developing the local delivery of the National Drug Strategy, “Tackling Drugs to Build a Better Britain” and its subsequent updates, managing the commissioning and contracting of drug and alcohol services and the development of both enforcement and education/prevention strategies. Ben has also worked with the Governments of prospective member countries of the European Union to assist in the development of local delivery structures for their National Drug Strategies.
Ben, as the Operations Director for treatment-now.com, has responsibility for overseeing the strategic development of the company processes, developing and performance managing agreements between treatment providers and treatment-now.com and monitoring quality and governance issues. Ben has recently been elected to the Board of the European Association for the Treatment of Addiction (EATA).

The Care Management Team

All of our Care Managers are experienced professionals from the areas of Addiction and Psychiatry and all are qualified to deal with all of our patient’s needs effectively and sensitively. We recruit our Care Managers from a wide range of professions including; Nursing, Social Working, Therapy and Counselling.