Before training as a child psychotherapist my work included social work with children and their families, the care and supervision of young offenders and research which monitored the implementation of the Children Act 1989 (Aldgate,J. and Bradley, M. 1999: Short-term care in preventing family breakdown. Blackwells)

I trained as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic in London and as an adult psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the British Association of Psychotherapists (now the British Federation of Psychotherapy). I am a member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists, the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists and the British Psychoanalytic Council.

I worked as a Child Psychotherapist in an inner-city borough of great cultural and ethnic diversity in central London for many years, and as a Consultant Child Psychotherapist in a specialist adolescent CAMHS (NHS Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) in London, and in private practice in London and Oxford.

I have also worked in an adult specialist NHS psychotherapy service and in a community-based parent-infant service.

My interest in children who are Looked After (in care) has continued throughout my working life and my doctoral research explores how child psychotherapy works as part of the multi-disciplinary team preparing children for the future.

My work as a child psychotherapist work includes consultation to social workers, foster carers and adoptive parents in the statutory and voluntary sectors.

I teach and supervise child psychotherapists in training and child and adult mental health practitioners from related disciplines including social work, psychology and psychiatry.

Qualifications

• BA Psychology and Social Anthropology
• Post-graduate Diploma Counselling in Education
• MSc. Psychology and Social Policy
• Cert. Qualification in Social Work
• D. Clin Psych. Child Psychotherapy, Adolescents and Parents
• M. Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Adults
• Doctoral thesis: The role for child psychotherapy with children in transition.