I am a qualified Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. Prior to this role, I worked in Education for a number of years as a Teaching Assistant. Currently, I work in a school for children aged 7-18 as a Senior Lead Child Psychotherapist and Well-being Co-ordinator.

The role involves offering therapeutic interventions at a number of different levels. Therapeutic provision is delivered as a whole school approach, which means I am involved in upskilling staff members and providing support to the school team to think about how they can help scaffold a child's learning from a pastoral/therapeutically informed level in the classroom.

I also deliver one-to-one specialist therapeutic interventions to children, following a Psychotherapeutic framework. This is a talking-led therapy which can be both short-term and long-term. The work can also involve meeting with parents to offer parent work sessions with the idea being that we provide a space for the family of the child to think about some of the dynamics that may be occurring and how to approach them at a therapeutic level.

Furthermore, I also work at a group level, coordinating groups in school to work with children in a range of areas such as building relationships, social thinking or exploring themes such as what it means to be a child in school who is perhaps feeling stressed with examinations.

As a School-based therapist, my role involves looking at each child's individual school plan (Education Health Care Plan) and making an assessment along with the school education team about which child may need therapeutic intervention. This involves regular meetings with the school education team to discuss caseloads, school approaches to therapy and any feedback that needs to be relayed to the school from the clinical team.

As part of my role as Well-being coordinator, I work in a multi-disciplinary manner, alongside other therapists such as Speech and Language, Occupational Health and Art therapists. My role involves ensuring there is cohesion between clinical delivery and school ethos and expectations.

I also coordinate and organise weekly team meetings with the clinical team to ensure good practice of clinical provision. As part of this role, I am responsible for gathering Key Performance Indicator Data and feeding this back to my Senior Locality lead. This enables us to identify trends and patterns as to how our clinical service is operating and where we may need to improve our delivery.

My role also involves managing a waiting list and discussing capacity and delivery with the school team.

I also foster close links with social workers, dieticians and any other professionals that are involved in the young person's life to ensure there is a linking up of thinking around that individual.

I also offer consultation for staff members to reflect and think about individual children or class dynamics, this can help alleviate some of the pressures we see from stressed networks and staff.

I run regular reflective practice groups across the school for the education team and also for social workers and external networks that are involved with the child.

My role also involves creating documents and literature that inform the wider school community about therapy and ensuring there is a community sense of the work we do amongst parents, staff and children.

I am passionate about well-being and children's mental health, having received intense Psychoanalytic training and having a rich experience working with children in a variety of settings. Together with my knowledge and experience in education, I believe I am able to make a positive impact on the mental well-being of young people.