I am a qualified teacher with over thirty years of experience, and am also therapeutically trained. My pathway through my working life has been anything but conventional; having one foot in education and the other in therapy has made for an interesting journey! 

Initially a music, drama and art teacher in the early 1990s, I most enjoyed working with children and young people experiencing significant distress who as a result, exhibited challenging behaviours. Understanding that a relational, therapeutic stance was at the core of this work, I trained as an integrative arts psychotherapist in the latter half of the 1990’s and took this therapeutic stance with me back into education, firstly teaching in special education and then managing a county behaviour support service. I returned to schools as an interim headteacher and then an interim executive headteacher, steering schools successfully back towards child-centred practice (recognised by Ofsted). 

Leaving state education, I trained schools in attachment and trauma-informed practice, coached middle leaders in education and worked as an education and mental health manager for an autism disability service, working in integrated ways with occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, psychology, education and outreach wrapped around young people with highly complex needs. Alongside this, in recent years I have developed a small private practice offering the SSP to clients experiencing anxiety, some of whom have experienced adverse childhood experiences. 

Throughout my working life I have held the firm belief that everyone can flourish with the right conditions, and have sought to enable individuals and help them towards greater emotional well-being. Polyvagal Theory and the Safe and Sound Protocol offers a new language and new insights working from the inside out, integrating new self-knowledge and assisting people in working towards this goal in a wonderful way. 

Creating Lyssna enables me to bring my experience in therapeutic education and mental health together with my work as an SSP provider, integrating over thirty years of practice and bringing the SSP to the forefront of my work. 

Based in Pembrokeshire, in my spare time I love walking on the beach and coast path, enjoying the sea and being in nature.