About me

My Journey to becoming a play therapist is a slightly winding road, but I hope that this adds richness and some alternative angles to my offer than if it had been more direct!

 After initially training as an environmental scientist, I spent a few years working in environmental education and spending much of my time involved in environmental and social justice activism. I then began working in an outdoor based alternative educational provision- offering a place of refuge for some children for whom all other forms of education had failed them. Although my 'in' had been my environmental education experience I quickly realised that for these children learning about the life cycle of a mayfly (for example!) was very far from what they needed. It was the experience of being in the natural environment, alongside sensitive one to one instruction, that was the key to the support they needed. I therefore began to get more and more interested in the psychological landscape of these children, and how both my presence, as well as the forests and fields that we roamed and played in together, could facilitate extraordinary positive change. These pivotal relationships with some amazing children led me to research and explore further how I could deepen my skills and knowledge. It was at this point I found play therapy as a modality, and realised instantly that it was the missing piece in my puzzle. I completed my training in the midst of the covid pandemic which was a great challenge but also pushed my cohort to learn great resilience, and a great empathy for the precarity and unpredictability that perhaps faces many of the children we would be working with and supporting. 

Since then, as well as continuing to work in the same alternative provision, I have worked in an autism specialist school and still work in an SEN specialist school for children with social, emotional and mental health struggles. Offering some private therapy slots as well is a way I can share and combine the incredible power of nature, and my therapeutic experience, to more children who need support.