I initially started training as a counsellor in 1996 before undertaking my Degree in Psychology and my Masters in Psychotherapy. I’ve been working with children, young people, adults and families since 2000 and find it a wonderful, rewarding (sometimes sad) experience. People often come to me in pain or have had a hard time that they want to make sense of and it’s such a privilege to be alongside them as they work through their difficulties and get to a happier place in their lives.

I am an Integrative Therapist, which means that I have been trained in lots of different forms of therapy and seek to use the right methods and techniques to match the Individual client – no one size of therapy fits all! Some of the methods involve creative things like play, drama and art, and some are talking methods: focusing on events, feelings, thinking patterns or behaviours.

I have worked in many, many schools and with lots of different clients in private practice, social services, CAMHs commissions, even on a farm, which was amazing! I am also a supervisor to other therapists both within Butterfly and privately.

Outside of my time with my clients I like to mooch around the woods with my three children, and I like to sing (loudly and terribly) to The Beatles in my car.

I have been a counsellor for Butterfly for four years and have worked at Kinergy for six years where I am a volunteer counsellor, a facilitator for the men’s therapy group and am on the management committee. I am a qualified early years teacher and have extensive experience working with young people with social, behavioural and emotional difficulties in residential and day settings. I have been deputy head in two residential special schools and managed a Steiner residential home for adults with learning disabilities.

I currently work as a counsellor for Butterfly in Bristol and do some private client work. I work with a wide age range of young people - from nursery to college age, requiring different approaches: with the younger pupils this is through play, using puppets, Lego, games and a wide variety of art and craft materials. With older pupils in therapy it is not always necessary to use another medium such as play or art, but at times it can help them to engage in the work and form a therapeutic relationship. A lot of the work with secondary age and above pupils is much more like 1:1 counselling with adults: young people often come with some understanding of the difficulties they are facing and have made a choice to work on some of those problems.

I am an Art Therapist working with children and teenagers within primary and secondary school education who experience emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. The children I see have a range of difficulties including difficulties connected to bereavement, bullying, low self-esteem, neglect, self-harm, family breakdowns, attachment disorders, historical abuse, and anxiety issues. I provide a broad range of play and art materials such as paint, clay, chalks, pens, craft materials, puppets and toys, which help to engage the children/teenagers in the therapeutic process and act as tools for connection, expression, and reflection.

My approach is integrative and tailored to the needs of the individual or group, it is informed by current research into child development and attachment theory, Jungian and post Jungian psychology, and into the treatment of the effects of trauma and emotional dis-regulation.

In my spare time I love to make things out of clay and I occasionally throw pots (on the potters’ wheel not on the floor...mostly!). I also love to garden and I recently made moss grow in the shape of big letters on a wall (eco-graffiti!) as a part of raising awareness for Bristol becoming Europe’s environmental capital!

Health Care Professions Council, MA Art Psychotherapy at Roehampton University, BA Creative Expressive Therapies at Derby University.

I am a qualified BACP registered counsellor who works in an integrative way drawing on person centred, psychodynamic and gestalt approaches.

When I work with children, young people and those who have additional needs, I use a creative style. This allows a person to explore their feelings in a less overwhelming way as they may not be able to put words to what they might be experiencing.

I enjoy trying new challenges and my latest one is stand up paddle boarding. Being on the river means that you get to see Somerset from a different perspective!