Welcome

I am a registered therapist with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and I specialise in counselling children using play and the creative arts therapies.

'Play and creativity is the innate way in which we make sense of our inner world'

C J Jung

Why play?

Children may have considerable difficulty verbalising what they feel or how experiences have affected them but through play and the creative arts therapies they can express themselves effectively through the safety of symbol and metaphor.

Play has been identified as ‘the work of the child’, it is how children make sense of their world and it is their natural medium of communication.

Play and the creative arts therapies can reveal to us:

- What the child has experienced

- Reactions to what was experienced

- Their attachment relationships and early infant experiences

- Their feelings, needs and desires

- A child’s perception of self

Through play and the creative arts therapies we can help a child to:

- Process traumatic events

- Develop confidence and self-esteem

- Externalise and mentalise difficulties enabling a more coherent narrative and understanding of self to emerge.

- Help their body regulate and repair

How I work

I have worked creatively and therapeutically with children experiencing mild to complex mental health needs in mainstream primary schools and in private practice and I am also commissioned by the Local Authority to work with adopted children and their families.

I am an integrative practitioner so I have trained in a variety of different therapies and I draw from a range of different modalities and techniques to suit every individual but I am particularly interested in psychodynamic, person-centred and arts therapy approaches. I also use attachment, systemic and neuroscientific theory when thinking about the child and their experience of the world.

I can offer a safe space where children can feel free to explore a range of art and play materials and we can gain insight into their inner world and work out how best to support them. Children are invited to play in a non-directive way, their internal world can be explored, externalised and processed.