I’m an award-winning writer with a lifelong interest in mental health. I worked in a therapeutic community in my twenties before taking time out to have kids and write books. I became interested in culture and psychotherapy, and published papers, book chapters and journalistic essays on what seems to work and what doesn’t.
I then started working in children’s mental health and found working with families the most rewarding part. When working directly with children, I noticed that how well they responded to treatment was usually connected with family input and involvement. I began thinking about how to incorporate more family input into the work I did with kids.
Children are children, rather than mini adults, because their executive function is a work in progress. They need to be supported with love and warmth as well as structures and routines. In recent decades we’ve become better at understanding the love and warmth part of this equation, but we’ve also experimented with removing many of the structures and routines that make kids thrive. As we see them become unhappier, sometimes our instinct is to push the love and pull back on the structure. From everything I’ve learned about children and families, I believe that they need both.
Each child and each family is different. I understand the importance of this and have experience of working with children with learning difficulties, ADHD and ASC. I have an endless curiosity about different people and their different understanding of the world and use this to personalise the work we do, reviewing and adjusting it so that it works for you.