About Me

30 Years of Working With Clients

I lived and worked in Cambridge for 30 years, building up training and experience in working first with individuals, then couples and eventually in family work. My initial training was psychodynamic and person-centred, my most recent training was systemic, so I have a working blend of both approaches.

In 1978 I started my initial counselling and group work training, which I continued with both course and client work, and built experience over the next 12 years through training in Cambridge and London.

After my basic training in psychotherapy, in 1987 I increased my therapeutic experience by working in an NHS clinic, teaching on counselling and group work courses, being part of a research team at a university department, and running my own practice in the 1990s. I built up a professional network of colleagues who referred clients to me from schools, Solicitors’ practices, GP practices and charitable organisations in the area.

I moved to Rutland in 2006, where I have started a new practice.

Qualifications

  • BA Hons. (London), 1974
  • PGCE (Oxon), 1975 (specialising in Infants & Juniors).
  • RSA Dip TEFL, 1978 (adults).
  • Diploma in Counselling & Group work, Parkside College, Cambridge, 1985 (working with individuals).
  • Relate Training Certificate, 1987 (couple work) (www.relate.org.uk).
  • Tavistock Intro to Family Therapy Course, 1988.
  • Advanced Tavistock qualification in Systemic Therapy, 1988-90 (family work).
  • Mediation Diploma from Family Mediation Association 1996-97.

Experience

  • Teaching EFL in a Cambridge Language School, 1976-1985.
  • Teaching on Counselling Course, running experiential groups in Cambridge, 1982-86.
  • Relate counselling client work,. 1985-89.
  • Member of a multidisciplinary Family Therapy team in NHS clinic, 1989-94.
  • Family Research Interviewer for MRC in Cambridge, 1996 (interviewing mothers and four-year olds).
  • Interviewer and trainer on research team for Dept. of Experimental Psychiatry, Cambridge University, on a research project into depression with community and clinic samples, and working with parents and adolescents, 1998 – 2003.
  • Set up and run my own private practice working with individuals, couples and families,
    1990 – present.
  • Supervisor at the “Cosmic” Project, Bridgegate Drug Centre in Peterborough, 2007 – 2010. I supervised the Child Counsellors in their one to one and group work with children of parents with a history of alcohol or substance misuse.

Continuous Professional Development

  • Fulfilment of the annual requirements of on-going training for both the BACP & UKCP re- accreditation/registration.
  • Supervision: Monthly individual work and in a group of four for couple and family work
  • Planned and ran an internal communications project for a Start up Medical Technology Company in Palo Alto, California, 2003.
  • Given lectures on systemic work to trainee students in Bury St Edmunds (2004) and Cambridge (2003).
  • Kept in touch with lawyers’ firms, schools, colleagues and doctors’ practices, who all refer to me. This has been especially necessary while moving my Cambridge Practice premises and starting to work a 3-day week there, as well as freeing up time to move house and plan the start up of a practice in Rutland in 2005-06.
  • I offer monthly Supervision of staff teams running groups at Pen Green for Anxiety, Post Natal Depression, and Abuse Survival. (2008 ongoing).